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Yes, Judith Butler wrote 'Gender Trouble' (1990) but also wrote 'Bodies That Matter' (1993) which clarified a lot of misunderstandings about performativity. Also clarifying that of course physical bodies matter, sexed bodies matter, identity categories matter politically...
“In this sense, it remains politically necessary to lay claim to ‘women’, ‘queer’, ‘gay, and ‘lesbian’, precisely because of the way these terms, as it were, lay their claim on us prior to our full knowing. Laying claim to such terms in reverse will be necessary....
to refute homophobic deployments the terms in law, public policy, on the street, in ‘private’ life” (Butler, 1993:229). In the 2004 book 'Undoing Gender' Butler reiterates that political action requires us to mobilise under categories that we cannot refuse & the categories matter
“A reductive relativism would say that we cannot speak of the human or of international human rights, since there are only and always local and provisional understandings of these terms....
and that the generalisations themselves do violence to the specificity of the meanings in question. This is not my view. I’m not ready to rest there" (Butler, 2004:38).
Butler's theories on sex & gender actually used a lot of anti-essentialist Radical Feminist theory, from Adrienne Rich, also from Monique Wittig for example. There was nothing new about separating gender roles from bodily sexed characteristics & researching the meaning of those.
Butler is not the inventor of queer theory. Queer theory is not a state project, the idea is bizarre - yet this seems to be a popular misunderstanding. While, eg the current & previous popes talk of 'gender theory' & 'gender ideology' like they are subversive anti-govt cults.
