Who's Afraid of Gender?
Ratings4
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings4
Average rating3.8
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Named a Best Book of 2024 (so far) by NPR, Harper's Bazaar, W, and Esquire, and a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Los Angeles Times, ELLE, Cosmopolitan, Kirkus, Literary Hub, Autostraddle, The Millions, Electric Literature, and them. "A profoundly urgent intervention.” —Naomi Klein "A timely must-read for anyone actively invested in re-imagining collective futurity.” —Claudia Rankine From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fueling reactionary politics around the world. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, the "anti-gender ideology movement" has sought to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual and gender violence, and strip trans and queer people of their right to pursue a life without fear of violence. Here, Judith Butler, the groundbreaking thinker whose iconic Gender Trouble redefined how we understand gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on "gender" that have become central to right-wing movements today. Who's Afraid of Gender? examines how "gender" has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and trans-exclusionary feminists. In this vital, courageous book, Butler illuminates the concrete ways in which this phantasm of gender collects and displaces anxieties and fears of destruction, resulting in a movement that demonizes struggles for equality, fuels aggressive nationalism, and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation. An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who's Afraid of Gender? is a bold call to refuse the alliance with authoritarian movements and to make a broad coalition with all those who fight against injustice. Imagining new possibilities for freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us a hopeful work of social and political analysis that is both timely and timeless—a book whose verve and rigor only they could deliver.
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powerful and incisive critique of meta gender politics of the 21st century. i buy phantasm as a framework for understanding reactionary anti feminist positions, with two qualifications: (1) to me it's indicative of how all of us do our thinking more via images, metaphors, genres and thus phantasms, rather than words, sentences and syllogisms - so some analysis of our phantasms on the left would be nice, (2) it's true that the anti-feminists don't engage with the work of the left, but how much do we on the left, beyond our best representatives like butler, truly understand the discontent of our counterparts?
and what about everyone standing nervously in the middle? this book ends with a passionate call to action but it's preaching to the choir using its own songsheets. butler is right, we're not operating in a world of discrete propositions and fair discourse. maybe we must hence more explicitly commit to the politics of collaboration at a time when the left is yet again splintering through purity tests.
