Identity itself, for Butler, is an illusion retroactively created by our performances: “In opposition to theatrical or phenomenological models which take thegendered self to be prior to its acts, I will understand constituting acts not only as constituting the identity of the actor, but as constituting that identity as a compelling illusion, an object of belief” (“Performative” 271). That belief (in stable identities and gender differences) is, in fact, compelled “by social sanction and taboo” (“Performative” 271), so that our belief in “natural” behavior is really the result of both subtle and blatant coercions. One effect of such coercions is also the creation of that which cannot be articulated, “a domain of unthinkable, abject, unlivable bodies” (Bodies xi) that, through abjection by the “normal” subject helps that subject to constitute itself: “This zone of uninhabitability will constitute the defining limit of the subject’s domain; it will constitute that site of dreaded identification against, which-and by virtue of which-the domain of the subject will circumscribe its own claim to autonomy and to life” (Bodies 3). This repudiation is necessary for the subject to establish “an identification with the normative phantasm of ‘sex'” (Bodies 3), but, because the act is not “natural” or “biological” in any way, Butler uses that abjected domain to question and “rearticulate the very terms of symbolic legitimacy and intelligibility” (Bodies 3). By underlining the artificial, proscribed, and performative nature of gender identity, Butler seeks to trouble the definition of gender, challenging the status quo in order to fight for the rights of marginalized identities (especially gay and lesbian identity).