It is clear that whatever language of democracy Obama and his administration use is very tactically deployed, and has as its main aim the extension of US power and interests.

If we are looking for signs of democratization, then surely we are looking as well for forms of living on equal terms in and among cultural differences.

We lose ourselves in what we read, only to return to ourselves, transformed and part of a more expansive world.

You're an evolving and transforming person, right? And how do we capture that dynamics of sexuality in that complex sense? There may be times when someone feels oneself more overly masculine or maybe more feminine, or where the terms themselves become confused, where passivity and activity also don't maintain their usual meaning.

Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act… a doing rather than a being.

If you speak [ about violence against Israelis], you are in an unspeakable place, have become a Nazi or its moral equivalent (if there is a moral equivalent). It certainly terrifies, but perhaps also it is a linguistic permutation of state terrorism, an assault that stops one in one's tracks, and secures the continuing operation of the regime and its monopoly on politically intelligible speech.

Perhaps the promise of phallus is always dissatisfying in some way.