TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN!: Now, the introduction. For me the most interesting part here is the critique of the binaries assumed by queer theory: subversive/hegemonic, good=antiessentialist (there is no human nature)/bad=essentialist, transgressive/reinscriptive. Prosser points out that for people who talk very dismissively of binaries in general, queer theorists end up creating a whole lot of their own. And so they have a really hard time considering the body as a sublime fact rather than a banal fiction (that’s my phrasing, not Prosser’s). They have an equally hard time, though Prosser only hints at this related difficulty, addressing the fact that not all transgressions are good. It may be true that all hegemonies are bad, but it’s really, deeply false to glorify “subversion” as such. (Again, if Prosser could talk in metaphors of manners or tradition, he might be able to do more than allude to the implied defense of authority here.)