In the early days, queer theory was not a men’s rights vehicle as it is now. It started out as a move away from rigid thinking in terms of binaries. That all social categories were neat and bounded and there were no overlaps between good/bad, gay/straight, black/white etc. Butlers theory of performativity in relation to gender was, in my opinion, very useful, in that it allowed us to not see gender as innate, but socially constructed and learned through the reiterating the practices associated with masculity and femininity respectively. In the earler days of trans advocacy, she was eschewed by trans advocates, for the denial of girl and boy brains.
I still find the concept of performativity useful, particularly in relation to masculinity and TRA behaviour. In my view, if we look at trans arguments and demands through a ‘performativity lense, this shows a performance of male entitlement. I am not saying no woman or girl ever acts entitled to anything, but I am saying that a lot of transwomen are performing an aspect of masculinity through their claims to entitlement to women’s rights.
I think queer throry has developed in a very dangerous direction, and it is now being used in a way that completely ignores power structures and inequalities, as TRA’s by use of neo-queer theory, identify as the most oppresseed group ever. The concept of performativity never implied power structures had become obsolote, butarther gave us a tool for analysing how they are played out in practice, on micro levels of how men, women, boys, girls interact with each other, and meso levels of how institutions interact with people, and macro levels of states policies etc. It is a great shame that a useful tool for analysis has been highjacked to pretend power structures no longer exist, and obfuscate any talk of structural inequality and it’s effect on women and children.