I know that some subjective experiences of sex are very firm and fundamental, even unchangeable. They can be so firm and unchanging that we call them "innate". But given that we report on such a sense of self within a social world, a world in which we are trying to use language to express what we feel, it is unclear what language does that most effectively. I understand that "innate" is a word that conveys the sense of something hired-wired and constitutive. I suppose I would be inclined to wonder whether other vocabularies might do the job equally well.

I have simply taken some of the same questions and reposed them in new ways. But, you see, I must live. Right? I mean I can't stay the same for everyone to be consumed as the author of "Gender trouble". I have to continue to live and that means I have to "reposer les questions".

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.

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

There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results.

When I was twelve, I was interviewed by a doctoral candidate in education and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said that I either wanted to be a philosopher or a clown, and I understood then, I think, that much depended on whether or not I found the world worth philosophizing about, and what the price of seriousness might be.

So there might be a kind of collective effort that allows for those risks to be taken, pose a certain danger but not a suicidal one.