From Barbie to Mortal Hand Job

[Terrance]

Gender, then, as the identification with one sex, or one object (like
the mother) is a fantasy, a set of internalized images, and not a set of
properties governed by the body and its organ configuration. Rather,
gender is a set of signs internalized, psychically imposed on the body
and on one's psychic sense of identity. Gender, Butler concludes, is
thus not a primary category, but an attribute, a set of secondary
narrative effects.

Gender is thus a fantasy enacted by "corporeal styles that constitute
bodily significations." In other words, gender is an act, a performance,
a set of manipulated codes, costumes, rather than a core aspect of
essential identity. Butler's main metaphor for this is "drag," i.e.
dressing like a person of the "opposite sex." All gender is a form of
"drag," according to Butler; there is no "real" core gender to refer to.

http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/butler.html

" Thus, whereas almost all present-day psychoanalytical theory starts
with a clinical syndrome or symptom -for example, stealing, depression,
or schizophrenia - and makes hypotheses about events and processes
which are thought to have contributed to its development, the
perspective adopted  here starts with a class of event -loss of
mother-figure in infancy or early childhood- and attempts thence to
trace
the psychological and psychopathological processes that commonly
result. It starts with the traumatic experience and works
prospectively." 

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/3041/controversy.html

http://www.yorku.ca/crm/Conferences/literature.htm

Tim Strzechowski wrote:
> 
> Good links, Terrance.  Thanks!