Butler frames gender as an 'effect of power' and announces the aim of making 'gender trouble' in the 1990 Preface.

Butler argues that defining 'women' as a feminist constituency produces the same exclusionary practices feminism claims to oppose.

Butler argues that the sex/gender distinction conceals gender's role in constructing what we call biological sex.

Butler concludes that 'gender is not a noun' and exists only as a performative construction, not an essential identity.

Butler rejects feminists' appeals to an imaginary pre-patriarchal past as a viable foundation for subverting gender oppression.

Butler examines Lévi-Strauss's kinship exchange theory and finds it conceals repressed homosocial desire between men.

Butler analyzes Freud's theory of gender melancholia, concluding that prohibited homosexual desire is internalized as gender identity.

Butler applies Foucault's critique of the repressive hypothesis to argue that prohibitions generate the very genders they seek to repress.

Butler rejects Kristeva's semiotic as a source of gender liberation because of its heterosexism and subordination to the Symbolic.

Butler critiques Foucault's romanticization of Herculine Barbin as inhabiting a 'happy limbo of non-identity' beyond gender constraints.

Butler examines Wittig's argument that language and the heterosexual contract must be subverted to overthrow compulsory gender norms.

Butler concludes that 'power can be neither withdrawn nor refused, but only redeployed' through parodic political strategies.

Butler uses Foucault's Discipline and Punish to argue that the soul is inscribed on the body's surface rather than contained within it.

Butler reads drag as revealing that all gender — including heterosexual gender — is imitative and performative rather than essential.

Butler concludes that abandoning a stable identity called 'women' opens rather than forecloses effective feminist political organizing.

Butler opens by using genealogy to expose gender as an effect of power rather than a natural fact, then dismantles the concept of 'women' as a stable foundation for feminist politics. She argues that the sex/gender distinction is itself a construction that conceals how both sex and gender are produced by culture and discourse. Drawing on psychoanalysis, Butler traces how prohibitions against incest and homosexuality generate gender identity through melancholia and internalization, using Foucault to show that such prohibitions produce rather than suppress the very identities they target. After rejecting Kristeva's semiotic and critiquing Foucault's romanticization of Herculine Barbin as inadequate accounts of subversion, Butler turns to drag as a model for understanding gender as performative — something done rather than expressed. The book concludes that feminist politics can proceed without a stable identity called 'women,' as the performativity of gender opens new configurations for political organizing.

The core arc of Butler's gender theory, from feminist critique to performativity.

Butler contextualizes Gender Trouble in the 1999 Preface as an unexpectedly foundational work for queer theory.

Butler shares the autobiographical account of her uncle's persecution for nonconforming gender and her own experience navigating homophobia.

Butler critiques the mind/body binary as a holdover of masculinist thinking that undermines any body-based feminist liberation project.

Butler examines Irigaray's argument that 'woman' is merely an absence within masculinist discourse rather than an independent identity.

Butler argues that coalitional feminist politics can function without requiring agreement on a unified or essential definition of women.

Butler examines Wittig's claim that 'fictive sex' — sex masquerading as nature — serves the economic needs of compulsory heterosexuality.

Butler analyzes Lacan's having-versus-being-the-Phallus account and questions why gender differentiation must take the form of a strict binary.

Butler examines Riviere's theory of femininity as masquerade, finding it conceals women's desire to become authoritative speaking subjects.

Butler raises the possibility that heterosexuality might itself be understood as 'disappointed homosexuality' rather than a primary sexual position.

Butler examines Gayle Rubin's 'Traffic in Women' essay as a feminist attempt to derive subversive potential from pre-prohibition identity.

Butler examines an MIT researcher's genetic sex-determination study and finds it reinscribes an active/masculine versus passive/feminine binary onto biology.

Butler examines Mary Douglas's concept of 'polluted persons' to explain how gender-transgressing bodies are expelled from dominant social orders.

Butler reads the media's homophobic response to the early AIDS epidemic as compulsory heterosexuality policing bodily boundaries.

Butler uses Kristeva's concept of abjection to argue that bodily boundaries are constructed through exclusion and fantasy rather than nature.

Butler argues that gay and lesbian communities' reappropriation of terms like 'dyke' and 'queer' destabilizes fixed categories of sex and gender.

Butler opens the 1999 Preface with autobiographical reflections grounding her theoretical project in personal stakes, including her uncle's persecution and her own experience of homophobia as a young lesbian. She then critiques the mind/body binary and engages theorists including Irigaray, Wittig, and Lacan to show that feminist coalitions need not depend on a unified feminine identity. Secondary engagements include Riviere's masquerade theory, the suggestion that heterosexuality might be 'disappointed homosexuality,' and Gayle Rubin's feminist reading of kinship prohibitions as an attempt to locate subversive potential. Butler also extends her critique into biology by examining a flawed genetic study that reinscribes gender hierarchy onto chromosomal science, and into cultural theory through Mary Douglas's concept of polluted persons and Kristeva's abjection. The pool closes with Butler's recognition that parodic reappropriation of derogatory terms by gay and lesbian communities reveals how both bodily and linguistic boundaries are constructed rather than naturally given.

Secondary arguments, supporting critiques, and theoretical engagements across the full text.

Butler reveals in the 1990 Preface that she came to understand the gender binary as power concealing itself as natural fact.

Butler uncovers that the sex/gender binary is circular, always returning to male-marked bodies as privileged and creating a theoretical impasse.

Butler argues that de Beauvoir's claim that women freely 'become' ignores how the body is already constrained by cultural construction.

Butler argues that insisting on feminist solidarity as a prerequisite for political action risks reinserting new forms of exclusion.

Butler reveals that 'intelligible' gender identities require coherence among sex, gender, and desire — rendering non-conforming identities culturally impossible.

Butler exposes that Lacan's account of masculine autonomy is illusory, depending entirely on women's performance of masquerade to sustain it.

Butler argues that the prohibition against homosexuality exerts as much formative force on gender identity as the prohibition against incest.

Butler reveals the 'double denial' unique to femininity — prohibiting both the homosexual love-object and any acknowledgment of the desire itself.

Butler argues that incorporation — a literalizing fantasy — is the mechanism by which gender differentiation is inscribed onto and in the body.

Butler concludes that heterosexuality and homosexuality are both produced by the same prohibitions, fundamentally undermining the binary opposition between them.

Butler discovers that Kristeva's semiotic ironically excludes female homosexuality from its sanctioned eruptions, revealing Kristeva's own paternal-heterosexual privilege.

Butler finds that Barbin's journals describe a life of tragedy, constraint, and eventual suicide rather than the sexual nonidentity Foucault celebrated.

Butler argues that Wittig's call for a universal lesbianism paradoxically requires heterosexuality as a stable Other, reinstating the binary it sought to destroy.

Butler reveals that what appears as natural gender is actually the sedimentation of historical, ritualized acts that have hardened into apparent essence.

Butler argues that since no original gender exists to imitate, the proliferation of gender configurations outside the masculine/feminine binary becomes politically possible.

Butler opens by revealing that the masculine/feminine binary is power concealing itself as natural fact, then uncovers that the sex/gender divide is circular, always privileging male-marked bodies and producing a theoretical impasse for feminism. She then establishes that 'intelligible' gender requires coherence among sex, gender, and desire, rendering non-conforming identities culturally impossible and invisible. Key turning points in psychoanalytic theory reveal that Lacan's masculine autonomy is illusory, that homosexual prohibition is as formative as the incest taboo, and that femininity uniquely requires a 'double denial' in which even the desire itself must be disavowed. Butler then works through productive contradictions in Kristeva, Foucault, and Wittig — finding that Barbin's journals narrate tragedy rather than liberation, and that Wittig's universal lesbianism reinstates the very binary it targets. The pool closes with the revelation that all gender is sedimented imitation with no original, making possible an entirely new range of political and gender configurations.

The pivotal discoveries and conceptual reversals that reframe the logic of gender throughout the text.