  In Butler's view, the taboo against (heterosexual) incest presupposes a prior taboo against homosexuality (which effectively constitutes heterosexual desire as such) (1990, 82). Yet the taboo requires that the loved object as well as the homosexual desire itself be given up. In a process of melancholy the lost object is not grieved because the desire cannot even be acknowledge in the first place. So the lost object is internalized through this process of identification by which the individual now psychically takes on the attributes of the lost object, thereby acquiring a heterosexual gender identity (1990, 78–81; 1991, 26–7). In this way, imitation lies at the root of the very formation of gender identity.