According to Judith Butler, gender and sexuality are always in freeplay. Heterosexuality is always going to insist on being the original. It always seems like there is an original, but there is not. Conventionally, how do people know they are a certain gender or sexuality? It would make most sense to determine this anatomically, but not for Butler; bodies have no meaning. Language constructs all of the ideas that we have surrounding gender, queerness. It is cultural and social. It shifts with the times and social changes. Because of the overarching element of language and how it determines what we "are", I felt that it would be most suitable to illustrate these key concepts with language.
You can’t have any binary meaning that is only on one side. If there was only one sexuality hypothetically, then there would truly be none, because nobody would ever talk about it. What does it mean for something to be constructed by language? Am I constructing something by writing right now? Am I essentially asking the same question and doing the same thing that Butler was doing in the beginning of the article when she said "But I am writing here now: is it too late? Can this writing, can any writing, refuse the terms by which it is appropriated even as, to some extent, that very colonizing discourse enables or produces this stumbling block, this resistance? (Butler)".
and we are
now nothing
like what
we used to "be"—
deviated
from the original
to become something
new but it truly
doesn’t even exist;
then what are we
please tell me what are we
my mother insults,
scolds-
“Go, go!
to that
girl;
the one that took your brain.”
—i hope we’re all
the same in the
end;
some of the best
looking things
i’ve ever seen.
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