I think it is incredibly interesting how much Butler had to push back on gender as consumer good - and how perfectly this aligns with Serano. Dare I be cynical, I'd say liberal feminism took what it could sell from Butler, and we see the consequences of this in Serano's indictment.
“Performativity has to do with repetition, very often the repetition of oppressive and painful gender norms to force them to resignify. This is not freedom, but a question of how to work the trap that one is inevitably in.”
- Kotz, Liz;Butler, Judith, “The Body You Want: Liz Kotz Interviews Judith Butler”, in: Artforum 31/3, 1992, p. 82 - 89, p. 84.
"They seem empowered by the way these sayings give the impression that gender is merely a fiction. A facade. A figment of our imaginations. And of course, this is a convenient strategy, provided that you’re not a trans woman who lacks the means to change her legal sex to female, and who thus runs the very real risk of being locked up in an all-male jail cell. [...] It’s easy to fictionalize an issue when you are not fully in touch with all of the ways in which you are privileged by it.
Almost every day of my life I deal with people who insist on seeing
my femaleness as fake. [...] Because I’m transsexual, I am sometimes accused of impersonation or deception when I am simply being myself. So it seems to me that this strategy of fictionalizing gender will only ever serve to marginalize me further."
- Serano, Julia, Excluded. Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, California: Seal Press 2013, p. 106f.