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In Judith Butlers groundbreaking early work Bodies That Matter, gender-queer and
transgender people are theorized as symbols of resistance where normalizing gender and sex
roles are mimicked and confronted through drag and trans crossings. Trans people became a
symbol for queer theory as the subversive parody of heterosexism and rigid gender roles. Trans
became queer. Butlers use of drag, gender queer, and transgenderism, however, is not without
problems. As trans visibility grows and new discourses are being formed around trans legal
politics and trans bodies, its important to revisit Butlers work to see how a trans politics today
Jay Prosser raises interesting critiques of Butler because of queer theorys link between
heterosexism and gender. Since queer theory places heterosexism as the view that gay men really
want to be women or lesbians really want to be men, refusal or queering of gender becomes a
prime issue in anti-heterosexist resistance. If one wants to destabilize the matrix of domination
one must understand how that matrix theorizes gender in relation to sexuality, but it also must
theorize how to avoid being caught within those ideological trappings. From this perspective,
transgenderism becomes a key site for queer resistance, a symbol that can disrupt the status quo,
but also a symbol inextricably bound within the gender/heterosexism linking. Queer theory uses
transgender to make its points about and against heterosexism while also showing how
transgenderism and trans-sexuality can fail a queer politics and reaffirm the status quo. By being
double bind within Butlers queer theory. Trans serves a purpose for a queer politics but it also
serves a purpose against queer politics. Queer theory marks out an either or position for trans
domination. Theres an erasure of trans desire and crossings at work, and for Butler only a
certain type of transgenderism resists. This raises important political questions regarding
Today the trans movement is growing. With trans visibility in mainstream magazines, on
television, and in fashion shows, a wave of trans politics is being ushered to the forefront of
culture. In such an era it becomes necessary to revisit early queer theory so that we may find
ways to move forward for trans people. Butlers works, although radical for their time, place
transgender at the margins of her text where trans bodies became the materiality of queer politics.
Jay Prosser states that in Butlers work transgender is always at the margins of her texts, what
acts as the implicit referent even though Butler seeks to displace many referents as effects of
discursive construction. The transgender person has become the example for queer. Trans is the
Becoming gendered, for Butler, humanizes individuals, and failure to comply has
punitive consequences. The goal towards which gendered beings function is an idea created by
types of acts. As we behave in certain ways the idea of gender is developed. Butler claims that
our idea of what gender is supposed to be would not exist without these series of acts. This
repetition of acts can never fully reach an end, but the acts form the very idea they are trying to
achieve. It is through certain acts of resistance, sometimes found in drag performance and gender
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parody that reveal the construction of gender. Drag and parodic gender performance play an
important role for Butler in that they can create subversive repetitions that displace gender
identity. In Gender Trouble, Butler uses drag as an example of how gender parody can be
politically resistant:
As much as drag creates a unified picture of woman (what its critics often oppose), it
also reveals the distinctness of those aspects of gendered experience which are falsely
1990, p. 137).
For Butler drag performance re-contextualizes gender in a way that heterosexist domination
cannot control. Drag performance shows how gender can be recreated and performed so as to
displace the meaning of the original. It exposes the naturalization of gender as fiction. As a result
to a set of imitative practices which refer laterally to other imitations. (Ibid, p. 138)
Drag as gender parody, however, is not implicitly politically subversive. Gender imitation
works both ways for drag performance as well. Butler emphasizes that gender is also naturalized
through our imitation of the ways we are expected to behave. This is the way we are gendered.
Simply imitating or even parodying gender does not automatically resist gendering. Exposing the
nature of gendering does not resist the system that naturalizes it even though it is the first step
Butlers positioning of drag in Gender Trouble as potentially resistant not only leads one
to think of all gender as a theatrical display but it is the first step in Butlers works where trans-
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related issues are linked with subversiveness and with queer. In Gender Trouble trans is already
becoming the symbolic figure of queer resistance. Following Prosser, in Gender Trouble trans is
linked with gender performativity, and performativity is linked to queer which is subversive.
Trans becomes about sexuality and not about sex and gender. The implications for a trans
identity are severeif one can never really become their gender and are just culturally bound to
keep trying then a trans desire can never be affirmed even when a post-operational body is
concerned. If gender for Butler is an idea that can never be fully achieved than trans identity
becomes an identity that cannot actually cross genders. Trans becomes moving between two
failures, and any realization of trans bodies that begins with a goal fails as queer. Butlers radical
theory of gender works for cis-gendered people but in light of trans identity it fails. Prosser states,
In Butlers reading transgender demotes gender from narrative to performative. That is,
gender appears not as the end of narrative becoming but as performative moments all
along the process: repetitious, recursive, disordered, incessant, above all, unpredictable
Gender Trouble takes trans out of narrative crossing and instead into performing repeated acts
towards an unachievable idea that should be exposed as solely the random display of repeated
acts. How can we salvage Butlers theory of gender without sacrificing a transgender narrative?
If we never fully become woman or man, does this mean, following Butler, that transgenderism
is always a failed attempt at crossing genders? Further, can trans people accept Butlers theory
without invalidating their identity? Where does this position leave transsexuals who alter the
After Gender Trouble, Butler began writing about the materiality of bodies and
the discourses that produced them. Her work Bodies That Matter was incredibly important for
the way it described the materialization of sexed bodies, and she further outlined a theory of
queer resistance. It is in this book that Butler addressed trans-sexuality as a symbol of resistance
but also as a symbol of heterosexist dominance. However, following Prosser, in Bodies That
Matter, Butler attempts to re-distinguish gender from sexuality but inevitably ends up collapsing
gender into sexuality so that sexuality can be queered through gender, or that gender can be
queered through sexuality. Further, since sexed bodies are reiterated through citationality one can
never fully become woman, which pulls gender apart from teleology. Pulling gender apart from
teleology becomes a key factor in Butlers analysis that invalidates a transsexual crossing,
Butler states,
What will, I hope, become clear in what follows is that the regulatory norms of sex
specifically, to materialize the bodys sex, to materialize sexual difference in the service
The regulatory norms of sex work in a performative fashion in that sexing discourses must be
cited over and over again, repeated and performed, over and over. The heterosexual matrix must
continue to reaffirm and repeat sexing discourses so that it may attempt to stabilize its own form.
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Further, Butler seeks to show that sex is not pre-discursive but created by discourse, and
gender emerges, not as a term in a continued relationship of opposition to sex, but as the terms
which absorbs and displaces sex (Ibid, p. 5). Sex is then reduced as prior to gender and prior
to discourse, as natural. Bodies are materialized through a reiteration of sexing discourses. This
opens up an important philosophical move in that there is no longer any possible reference to a
pure body prior to any norms, there is only other possible formations of that body, all of which
are dependent on the passing of time and discourse. Every discursive reiteration and every bodily
enactment based on these norms is a performative act that reinstates something. This
philosophical move also opens up the possibility of resistance, but at a certain cost to transsexual
identity. For Butler the temporality of materialization cannot be linked to any goal. Teleology,
for Butler, seems to be an effect of the heterosexual matrix. If the temporal materialization of
bodies cannot have a goal that can be reached than any attempt for a transsexual crossing not
only reaffirms sexed materialization but also links any transsexual attempt as doomed to failure
However, Butler states that every reiteration opens up possible space for something to go
awry, to move in a different direction, and to repeat something beyond those norms. Its
important here to understand that the heterosexual matrix produces these materializing effects,
but that matrix cannot ensure that the desired effects will happen the way they are intended. It is
here Butler uses trans-sexuality to show how queer resistance can happen. Trans-sexuality shows
how the materializing of bodies can fail, and how one can rematerialize ones body in ways that
the heterosexual matrix cannot anticipate. However, this rematerialization cannot be linked to a
In Butlers work there is a transgendered becoming which we should affirm and support,
but the problem is that many trans people have the desire to become something stable, to be
something beyond a transition. For some trans people being stuck in the ground of always
queering the heterosexual matrix could negatively effect their safety and it may be counter
productive to their personal goals and internal feelings. Butler sets up trans desire to become a
woman as oppressive, and as a result, devalues any trans identity that has this goal. There are
be (Prosser, p. 264). The constative, for Butler, however, represents a stable heterosexual matrix.
Prosser states,
What gets dropped from transgender in its queer deployment to signify subversive
gender performativity is the value of the matter that often most concerns the transsexual:
the narrative of becoming a biological man or a biological woman (as opposed to the
performative of effecting one)in brief and simple the materiality of the sexed body
(Ibid, p. 264).
Prossers quote goes to the heart of Butlers theory. The trans-sexual desire to be the opposite
sex and to materialize their body completely falls into heterosexual dominance for Butler. The
queer use of transgender is only the use of certain types of gender crossing where trans is the
symbol for queer rather than the creators of new narratives of crossing. Not all transgender
subjects are queer. Not all trans people are homosexual and to conflate trans with queer or
homosexual is to erase and invalidate trans identities as trans rather than as queer. In theorizing
the heterosexual matrix in the way she does, Butler establishes the necessity for a link between
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trans and homosexuality in that homosexuality is viewed as men who want to become women or
women who want to become men. What Butler misses is the distinction of trans and
homosexuality. She refuses a narrative of trans becoming for a trans politics and instead uses
trans for queer. Her necessity for removing any teleology for bodies to be resistant means that
any transsexual desire to transition has already failed. Butler refuses a narrative of becoming a
biological male or female rather than performing one. For many transgender people the goal is to
Butler then turns to the unfortunate case of Venus Xtravaganza as an example of how a
transsexual can go wrong and encounter drastic reality enforcement while trying to dupe the
heterosexual matrix. This example is a particularly difficult and sad one due to Venus being
murdered by a John. Venus was a transgender prostitute who desired to be real, to pass, and to be
taken care of by a wealthy man. Her desire, based on Butlers theory, neglects the resistant
possibilities of her trans status and instead reaffirms the heterosexual matrix. Butler says that
hegemonic power re-naturalizes Venuss sex by erasing her crossing as trans, and the result is
death. As much as she crosses gender, sexuality, and race performatively, the hegemony that re-
inscribes the privileges of normative femininity and whiteness wields the final power to re-
naturalize Venuss body and cross out that prior crossing, an erasure that is her death (Butler, p.
133).
Any resistance or crossing does not mean an escape from hegemonic dominance. Butler
states,
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When Venus speaks her desire to become a whole woman, to find a man and have a
house in the suburbs with a washing machine, we may well question whether the
denaturalization of gender and sexuality that she performs, and performs well, culminates
What Butler is saying is that Venuss trans-sexual desires do not resist the heterosexual matrix
and instead re-instate its norms. This re-instating of the norms she could have queered, according
to Butler, provoked reality enforcement that lead to Venuss death. For Butler Venuss trans-
sexual desire is a product of heterosexual dominance. Its here that Butlers analysis places trans-
potentially radical role for queer, yet for itself that role is potentially lethal. While Venuss
murder symptomizes the triumph of the heterosexual matrix, in her desires Venus is duped by
this same heterosexual ideology into believing that a vagina will make her a woman (Ibid, p.
274). From Butlers perspective not only does Venuss desire to fully transition become a
hegemonic desire, but since nobody can ever fully become a woman, Venuss desire is doubly
misinformed. The heterosexual matrix is therefore already asserting its hegemony in Venuss
trans-sexuality even before her death (Ibid, p. 274). One step further, the matrix asserts its
hegemony even before Venus began to transition. According to Butler the dominant matrix
For Prosser Butlers failure for a trans politics is that Venus is theorized as a failure to be
white, to be woman, and to be either homo or heterosexual. Her death is indexical of an order
that cannot contain crossings, a body in transition off the map of three binary axessex (male or
female), sexuality (hetero or homo), and race (of color or white) (Prosser, p. 264). Venuss
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death was the result of her multi-leveled crossing, her trans-itioning. Following Butler, Being
real as trans-sexual lacks the resistant capacities of simply doing gender or sex critically. To be a
sex is to re-literize the oppressive aspect of heterosexuality and the dominant matrix. Following
Butler, the heterosexual matrix has already tricked Venus in that she believes that having a
vagina will make her a real woman. Venus is already a product of the status quo based on her
trans desire.
Butler also reads Venuss trans-sexual status as a queer symbol rather than as a
heterosexual female. For Butler trans-sexuality for queer subversiveness only functions if trans
identity doesnt have an end result. For Butler trans doesnt mean transition so much as it means
standing in the crossing where sex cannot formto be a continuous queer rupture of sex for
Butler then uses her argument about Venus Xtravaganza to show how imitation alone is
an ambivalent practice and only strategically resists the status quo. For Butler Paris is Burning
shows Venuss death as the cost of being a trans prostitute when she should have known that she
would be read as gay male seducer due to her penis. Butler reads Venuss murder as homophobic
violence rather than as trans violence. Prosser states, The implication is that Venus is murdered
in her hotel bedroom on being read by her client, killed for having a body in excess of the
femaleness he imagined he was paying for; killed, then, as a transsexual (Ibid, p. 273). Venus
couldnt completely pass. She was exposed due to her penis and killed due to homophobia. But
being exposed as having a penis doesnt amount to homophobia. The presence of the penis on
Venuss body renders neither her a homosexual mannor her death an effect of homophobia
(Ibid, p. 273) Butler privileges the penis as sight of gay male identification. This view cannot
account for the status of the penis on a trans-sexual woman and how that may be interpreted.
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Her identification not as a gay man or a drag queen but as an incomplete (preoperative
transsexual) woman highlights the impossibility of dividing up all identities along the binary
homosexual/heterosexual (Ibid, p. 273) Prosser argues that it is Venuss trans-sex status that
gets her killed, not her being read as a gay man by the John. Butler here frames trans-sexuality
Her desireto be a complete woman for a manis heterosexual, and it is more this
desire in combination with her transsex that kills her: not as a homosexual man, then, but
The existence of Venus penis does not make her a homosexual man, nor does it make her death
the effect of homophobia. Venus herself identifies as an incomplete heterosexual woman. This
identification questions Butlers collapsing of gender and sexuality or sex and sexuality. Venus is
killed because of her trans-sex and her heterosexual desire rather than from being queer gendered
and being reality checked as to her status as a homosexual man. For Butler, Venuss desire was
already doomed from the beginning, and her transsexual crossing is already a product of
heterosexist norms. Butlers claim, ultimately, is that drag performers who play at being real can
hegemonic constraint that the desire to be real lacks; and following this, that the
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Butlers claims not only place trans-sexual desire as a product of the dominant matrix but she
also sets up an ethical/political stance where one should resist trans-sexuality so as to serve a
queer purpose.
CONCLUSION
Ultimately, Judith Butlers early works fail trans-sexuality and transgendered people.
Although she brought critical and theoretical attention to trans issues in the early 90s, they
ultimately served a queer purpose. It is from here, however, that we can begin to extract trans
from queer and further theorize a trans politics that pushes beyond queer theory. Moving forward
perhaps it will be important to re-theorize a trans temporality that re-links teleology with
subversiveness in a way where an end result can pass through but not stop at a normative sexed
role. Most importantly, however, we must make sure trans desire is reaffirmed, and if that means
repealing any recourse to queer theory then let it be. However, its important to see how queer
theory laid out its own plan so that a trans politics may learn from queer theorys mistakes.
Overall, Prossers critique not only outlines philosophical flaws in Butlers use of trans but also
places the reaffirmation of trans identities as the most important point that queer theory.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. (New York:
Routledge)
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Butler, Judith. (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. (New York:
Routledge)
Prosser, Jay. (2006) Judith Butler: Queer Feminism, Transgender, and the Transubstantiation of
Sex in: S. Stryker and S. Whittle (Eds) The Transgender Studies Reader. Pp. 257-281
(New York: Routledge)