ABSTRACT
The body is culturally shaped by norms of gender and sexuality and should be understood as broadly situated within a social constructionist perspective that does not naturalize it. Taking issue with binary divisions, the author questions the linguistic constructions of “inner” and “outer” as formulated in psychoanalytic notions of the body. Following Michel Foucault and his notion of power as productive, normative gender discourses are viewed as producing heterosexual norms in service of a false gender binary that justifies itself through reproductive heterosexuality. The cultural practice of drag exposes the illusory nature of an inner gendered self that is expressed on the outside or surface of the body. Gender (and sexual, or sexual-gender) identity performances, like the art of imitation that drag queens make salient, are based in imitating norms of gender. These performances are enacted on bodies, bodies that are interpreted for gender, sexuality, and sex from a normative heterosexual principle of social organization. The author suggests that these identity performances are based in the “stylized repetition of acts” that create performances that come into being through the very acts of the performance.
