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

To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.

It seems, though, that historically we have now reached a position in which Jews cannot legitimately be understood always and only as presumptive victims.

It is true that non-governmental organisations working within strong human rights frameworks are now confounded by securitarian forms of logic and power that extend the paternalistic bias of their work in new ways.

The United States are such a large place. And there are some states and some cities where the questions of gender or sexuality would not be asked, or where scholars or academics are working in small little corners of the universities trying to raise these questions and being told that either that they're strange or not appropriate or being actively opposed. There are other places where there is very active scholarship going on. Certainly on gender.

The violence of language consists in its effort to capture the ineffable and, hence, to destroy it, to seize hold of that which must remain elusive for language to operate as a living thing.

The idea that speaking at all on the topic, demanding public space in which to have that debate, is itself an act of complicity with violence, and violence against Israelis, understood as synonymous with Jews, and so violence against Jews, clearly stops the speech with an unspeakable allegation.