Pandora's Box: Gender and De[con]struction

I found Judith Butler's "Gender Trouble" difficult to read for several reasons.

First, her tone, diction, and style made her language extremely esoteric. When I read passages of her text to my mother, she responded that Butler could have said the same thing in fewer, more accessible words. I tend to agree with her. I understood Butler's meanings, but I feel that she has put on the verbal trappings of an elite academic, and while this may appear to give her authority, it in fact contradicts the fundamentals of her message that repeat "performances" create hegemony and authority. Nevertheless, she intended this work to be political, and although it would not reach the average voter, her thoughts about gender construction have seeped down through the academic hierarchy to popular culture. The effects of this filtering have caused unhealthy societal turmoil-- and dare I say human pain and destruction-- since she first published this text.

As I completed this excerpt, I couldn't help but consider the frightening implications of her logic. Her text obviously descended from Derridean thinking and terminology, as I saw evidence of deconstruction throughout her work. On the surface, I find deconstruction fascinating and even plausible, but I oppose the idea that deconstruction proves the nonexistence of metaphysics, primarily because of my relationship with God. This issue of metaphysics and Butler's justification of "alternative lifestyles" scares me not because I hate homosexuals or because of her work's density but because the heart of her argument could justify any number of behaviors. What's to keep rapists, murderers, and slave traders from applying Butler's deconstruction of Otherness to their own situations? Since she supposedly has exposed regulations as fictions, there remains no distinction by which to judge ethical behavior.