"Gender trouble" is old. I mean, you know, in New York, it is old. I mean it's sweet. I mean people are really kind about it but it's like a former love affair you had and you're done.

Where is democratic process or popular sovereignty for the endangered population? It cannot be "given" or "allocated" by some other power without that same power claiming the right to withdraw what it gives.

You only trust those who are absolutely like yourself, those who have signed a pledge of allegiance to this particular identity.

The state or global forms of power that seek to protect populations considered in danger may well extend their own power through those acts of protection.

Do we need recourse to a happier state before the law in order to maintain that contemporary gender relations and the punitive production of gender identities are oppressive?

To operate within the matrix of power is not the same as to replicate uncritically relations of domination.

We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.