> reason); Butler (wrongly) doesn't think that gender can be abolished.
> Her philosophy _conserves_ gender. Instead of arguing for the
> abolition of gender through political struggles, she advocates -- to
> the extent that her theory can be said to advocate anything --
> mobilization, subversion, and proliferation of genders.
> Gender-bending, instead of abolitionism.
Abolishing gender would mean getting rid of everything from a globally gendered division of labor (female workers in electronic sweatshops, etc.) and 10,000 years of patriarchal history, to the total lack of affordable childcare for single moms, and tons of other social structures. How do you do this without bending gender (along with class and all the other identity-constructions)? Abolition is a juridical term; gender is not, however, a set of laws, but rather a complex set of behaviors, cultures, norms, ideologies, performances and lived experiences. These can't be simply abolished by fiat, they have to be *sublated*.
-- Dennis