In the specific case of the body, Judith Butler has argued that its boundary, as well as the border between internal and external, is “tenuously main tained ” by the transformation of elements that were originally part of identity into a “defiling other ness” In this formulation, there is no originary or sovereign presence that inhabits a prediscursive domain and gives the body, sex, and gender as naturalized and unproblematic.But for their claim to be persuasive, we would have to overlook (among other issuse) the multifarious normalizing codes that abound in our society for the constitution and disciplining of sexuality. In seeking to establish and police understandings of what constitutes the normol, the accepted, and the desirable, such codes effect an admission of their constructed nature and the contingent and problematic nature of the identity of the body.