Again, I never said it didn't.

you did claim that what's socially necessary has nothing to do with subjectivity. you also claimed that the objective conditions are not socially contingent but rather determined by the forces of production. but marx, in the letter i linked to above, seems to claim that the forces of production are in fact socially contingent.

Those are, sure, but that's not where Marxian theory starts. It would be odd to say the least if you were worried about your jeans before you've secured your means of subsistence.

capital, which i've mostly been referring to here, does not start with a distinction between the means of subsistence and luxury. even if it did, marxian theory goes beyond subsistence.

i had read the preface before. i take it to say, in short, that what we've been calling subjectivity is limited by the economic base. that doesn't mean that what a given society takes to be socially necessary is not, at least partially, determined by subjectivity.

Here's a refutation of her argument that explains it clearly: https://medium.com/arc-digital/is-sex-socially-constructed-81cf3ef79f07

Rather than enter the labyrinth of Butler interpretation, let us try something different.

that's kinda funny but i think the refutation fails completely. when i apologize, it doesn't mean that i now have some permanent essence of being an apologizer. to keep being an apologizer, i'd have to keep repeating the action of apologizing. butler doesn't believe that there is an essence to gender and does hold that gender is an action you repeat. you can change it up!