its own. The inadvertency of erections is what manifests the authenticity of desire, thereby flattering both their owners and their observers (when not dismaying them).
“Nothing about the organ per se produces rape,” says Butler. Like a gun lobbyist insisting that it’s the person, not the gun, that kills, this ignores the fact that some tools are more dangerous and unpredictable than others.
I hadn't seen that argument before, but yes, the gun lobby argument fits perfectly. "It's the person, not the gun." But without the gun, you don't have to worry about the person. Likewise, without the penis a woman doesn't have to worry about the person sharing her intimate space. Or these vicious American Bully dogs. It's the owner, not the dog, they say. But if you have a bad owner (and what are the chances of a bad owner with a nasty macho dog bred for aggression?) then the results, instead of a nip on the ankles, could be serious injury or death. Why take the risk?
As O'Grady notes, this latest book is "less opaquely written" than Butler's hugely influential Gender Trouble. It takes a certain amount of youthful energy, not to say hubris, to come up with page after page of the elaborately impenetrable postmodern jargon of thirty years ago. She clearly can't keep it up – as it were. So, inevitably, it becomes much easier now to see how bad her arguments are.
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