>Over the past three decades feminist philosophy has undergone an immense shift. Once preoccupied with developing modes of thought and expression capable of representing the female ‘sex,’ the publication of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble in 1990, and her subsequent rise to the forefront of the discipline, announced a new line for feminist philosophy. No longer should the focus of feminists be on “the body itself.” For should we look to it for answers, all we’re likely to find are the discursive issuances of the “patriarchy” or “the law.” The task of feminism, then, is not to seek refuge in the falsifying immediacy of self-identity. Instead, it must forge ahead in pursuing processes of discursive resignification that accord with our activistic impulses—and that relinquish the naïve notion of binary sex, itself a retroactive projection of the socially constructed binary of gender.

"...the Skopje conference proffered two versions of feminism that, while both influenced by Marx, remain starkly opposed: an automation-happy, trans inclusive feminism of the alien other which celebrates capitalist alienation as the means through which (to quote Marx) “feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations” can be liquidated. And on the other hand, a trans exclusionary feminism that seeks to attenuate alienation on account of the way in which it estranges women from their (to quote Marx again) “natural” or “vital powers.”" One thing that is striking about the clarification of difference here is the ways in which it is so thoroughly ensconced in the modern and postmodern views of alienation. Alienation (of various kinds) obviously plays a large role in Marx, but WHAT IF that alienation can be addressed beyond each of these? If there is a developmental (dare I say dialectal) process, it may be that these are only partial waystations on the road to a deeper sense of connection (dare I say comradery) . The initial "alienation as the means through which" to liquidate "feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations” serves to differentiate the embedded being from the previously invisible contexts. The trans-exclusionary feminism that seeks to attenuate alienation "on account of the way in which it estranges women from their" “natural” or “vital powers" is a partial (incomplete) attempt at reintegration of vitality with a new context, albeit one that jettisons fellow travelers along the way. If we thoroughly deconstruct/alienate the essences (whether biological, mental, cultural, technological, or economic) we pave the way forward for the new. BUT if the essences we reconstitute are inadequate to the new whole they will only replicate in modified form the initial oppressive conditions. Shuffling the alienation is not curing alienation. A deeper essence must be found, even if it is only every playfully and ironically held.