But my main concerns with Butler really have only tangentially to do with her inability (or perhaps unwillingness) to write clearly. The trouble with Gender Trouble is that it is not written from the lived experience of a transgendered person. Butler is a non-transgendered woman with white skin privilege and the institutional power and access to institutional resources that tenure at a leading university such as Berkeley confers.

The trouble with the author of Gender Trouble is that she exercises a position of hegemony in transgender studies in a field that largely excludes transgendered people. How many openly transgendered people have gotten tenure in US universities (or, for that matter, in other countries) based primarily on their work in TG studies, having secured that tenure-track position as an openly transgender-identified person? The answer, as far as I can tell, is none. There are a few openly transgendered tenured faculty members at US universities and colleges, but most transitioned after they got tenure; and most did not get tenure based primarily on work in TG studies. In fact, there are quite a few transgender-identified people who participate in TG studies, but they are mostly untenured: graduate students, independent scholars and a sprinkling of tenure-track faculty members, none of whom have eal power within the institutional context of academia. As a transgendered person of color, I am also moved to ask how many openly transgendered people of color have been granted tenure based primarily on their work in TG studies. The answer to that question is an even more certain 'zero.'

The trouble with transgender studies is that it is a field dominated by someone who herself is not transgender-identified and who exercises enormous power in shaping how transgendered people both within and outside the academy construct identities. It would be a source of considerable concern at any US university if the African American studies department (or program) were all-white and had no black members either tenured or even on tenure-track. And yet, we accept a similar situation in TG studies with equanimity.

Note that I am not saying that it is illegitimate for non-transgendered people to participate in TG studies, any more than it would be illegitimate (in my view) for white scholars to participate in so-called 'ethnic' studies (African American, APA, Latino or Native American studies). But I do think that the lack of openly transgendered tenured faculty who have gained tenure through their work in TG studies raises important and troubling questions about relations of power in the field. If most tenured faculty actively participating in TG studies are non-transgendered, then those transgendered grad students and tenure-track faculty who are coming up in the ranks (or attempting to, in any case) will be evaluated largely by non-transgendered faculty. And that situation is not likely to change anytime soon. This month, I have spoken at TG-or LGBT-related conferences or events at three academic institutions (two large universities & one small liberal arts college); at none of these was there a single openly transgendered faculty member (tenured or tenure-track); in fact, I was the only openly transgendered person with a Ph.D. who attended the TG conference at one of those universities. It would be a source of immediate concern at any college or university in this country if an 'ethnic' studies conference could not bring a single tenured (or even tenure-track) faculty member from the relevant racial/ethnic group as a speaker to the conference, and yet that is the norm for TG studies conferences in the United States.

I should also state that I do not think that those of us who are interested in theory construction should simply abandon that enterprise because not everyone can participate; after all, many (if not most) transgendered people (of color or not) -- just like many (if not most) people in general have no interest in theory construction.

I found it interesting that some on the list construed my characterization of Butler as a bad writer as anti-academic or even anti-intellectual; it was nothing of the kind. Actually, I've had some activists & community members question my 'authenticity' as an activist or community member simply because I have a Ph.D. I even had one transgendered woman tell me that because I had a Ph.D., I couldn't possibly legitimately represent or speak on behalf of the TG community or understand the struggles of ordinary transgendered people. Well, anyone who has finished a dissertation can speak personally to a particular kind of struggle, and the assumption that the possession of an advanced degree is de-legitimizing is based on the false premise that such an individual couldn't come from a disadvantaged background. I have little patience for such false populism, because it is based on false premises & results in a disempowering discourse. However, I do think the issue of the accessibility of the academic discourse of TG studies to members of the TG community is a real one.

Equally important (if not more so) to my mind is the relevance of TG studies to activism, and in truth, much of it (including Butler, in my view) has little to say to activists 'in the field,' as it were. Butler's notion of the 'performativity' of gender, for example (probably her most widely popularized concept), has little relevance outside of academia & academic discussions of gender identity. Certainly, as an activist, I can't think of how it could be used to advance the community's agenda. Not that analytic concepts are to be evaluated solely on the basis of their practical use in activism, but I was genuinely astonished to read in one post that Butler thinks of herself as an activist. The problem with 'performativity' is that it is not only useless to activists, it is not very useful in constructing theory, either. But Butler and Butlerian notions now constitute a cottage industry and there are many academics invested in the growth of that industry, regardless of whether those ideas accurately reflect the lived experience of transgendered and gender-variant people and regardless of whether those ideas have any relevance for the struggle of transgendered and gender-variant people to achieve equality and acceptance in society.

And that is the trouble with transgender studies.