In Butlers “Critically Queer” piece, she examines how the term “queer” changes from a form of degradation and shame to signifying a new set of meanings. She talks about what this change in meaning implicates for the future of queer politics. She opens her discussion with queer trouble in which, the term "queer" is connected to pathology, and the “queer” term historically was presented in an injurious way such as an insult. This notion is a slogan whose powerful effects have to do with signifying a word used to abject and shame into a positive side of identification.
She then begins to ask questions about queer politics and if the appropriation of queer in relations to politics and identities would end up excluding other individuals. She argues that the term "queer" changes as different groups of people re-appropriate and re-signify it for different purposes. She therefore argues that, the term “queer” meaning is never stable and that it holds flexibility or vagueness as opposed to being categorized and limited. She argues that it is this instability, that allows for new possibilities and changes to emerge. Butler also talks about gender performativity and drag. She talks about how gender performativity gets misconstrued and argues that many theorists use performativity to explain how gender roles are like clothes that we put on and take off
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She argues that no one performs their gender roles to portray the ideal "man" or "woman". She argues to try to demystify the idea that you can take gender up out of free will. For example, “I” is unshackled by ones historical actions and we can perform gender outside what we are born into. Similarly, Butler talks about gender and sexuality performativity and draws on drag to help with her argument. She makes implication of performance and drag, in which the drag performance (hyperbolic masculine or feminine) is an allegory of how inhabitable/impossible the heterosexual gender norms