  In his reply to Halberstam, Prosser contrasts what he sees as the oppositional positions of queer and trans. He takes issue with a tendency in queer theory to represent gender/sex as performance and, in Halberstam's work, fictions. (As has been noted, for some trans people, the view that gender is unreal or artificial seems to undo their very attempts to see themselves as “real men” or “real women”). Yet, while there may be some grounds for some political complaint with this theoretical account, Prosser falls prey to a view which holds butch lesbian masculine presentation as merely artificial or gender play, in contrast with the “reality” and “depth” present in the case of FTMs. In this way, he does not sufficiently differentiate between lived lives that may (or may not) be described as “queer” (e.g. butch masculinities) and an academic queer/postmodern theoretical starting point (1995, 487). The latter may very well involve viewing all gender as performance and identity as fictional. However, “queer” lives (involving butch masculinities) need not be viewed this way. To distinguish butch as artificial and transsexual as real is to refuse to acknowledge the relationship of many butch individuals to gender and identity.