  Butler's discussion of the film is especially notable for its explicit treatment of transsexuality. She is largely responding to bell hooks who criticizes the film for the invisibility of the subject position of the director (a white, Yale-educated, lesbian woman) in shaping an objectifying spectacle of non-white gender and sexuality (1992, 150–1) and the very behavior and attitudes of the individuals documented in the film (147–50). Following in the tradition of Raymond, hooks raises worries about the masculinity involved in the drag performances (citing the competitive edge involved in the balls as well as the celebration of sexual objectification) (148–9). Moreover, she points out that white femininity seems elevated in these balls as the canonical form of femininity (150). Butler, by contrast, aims to highlight both subversion and the ways in which such subversion is constrained and even erased through dominant heterosexist forms of gender.