M. Butterfly

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, antigay bias, racism, gender discrimination, suicidal ideation, and death by suicide.

The play jumps forward to 1986. Song has finished removing his disguise, revealing a man in a suit. Song tells a judge, as well as the audience, how he arrived in Paris in 1970 without any money and convinced Gallimard to take him in with the baby.

Until 1985, Song participated in demonstrations to maintain his cover. When Gallimard took a job as a courier carrying high-level government documents, he took pictures of them for Song to pass to the Chinese embassy. Song isn’t sure whether Gallimard understood what Song was doing with the documents. Throughout this time, however, Song tried to ensure that Gallimard never discovered his gender during sex. Song explains how he distracted Gallimard by telling him things he wanted to hear in bed and by taking advantage of Western men’s internalized mentality of objectification regarding people from the East, using Gallimard’s inability to see Song as a man because Western men associate the East with exoticism and femininity.

Song’s political theory annoys the judge, so he asks Song directly whether Gallimard was ever aware of his gender.