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el_tuttle's review
1.0
The gender wars have arrived and after a 20-year hiatus on gender theory, so has Judith Butler.
Who’s Afraid of Gender seeks to address the various concerns of the “anti-gender ideology movement,” including its manifestations in politics, the church, feminism, and globalization.
Butler lays out several concerns raised by this movement:
-Gender is a fabrication; only natural sex is real
-Gender will bring about a totalitarian regime
-Gender exemplifies hyper-capitalism
-Gender has stolen creative powers from the divine
-Gender is a force of destruction and colonization and harms children
These disparate concerns collapse into one, using gender as an overdetermined boogeyman (or what Butler refers to as the “phantasm of gender”). Their primary concern in this text is establishing the anxieties behind this phantasm as well as the hatred and anger it mobilizes.
This book is best suited for a feminist audience looking to better understand the cultural landscape around the current gender discourse and controversies. It is not necessarily formulated to convert those with the fascist anxieties, merely to explain the flaws in their lines of thought.
It’s honestly impressive how much I disliked this. I have been looking forward to one of the most prominent gender theorists weighing in on the great gender discourse of the 21st century. I spent the majority of my 20s as a huge Butler stan, frequently assigning their work in various classes. Butler touches on everything - gender, sexuality, activism, democracy, statelessness, their work is relevant to any humanities or social science context. At long last, Butler returns to gender theory when everyone could use some clarity on the subject.
And yet this could have been a Substack.
And not one I would subscribe to.
Even if it were free.
For clarity, I will confess my identity (since this work seems to demand it): I’m politically aligned with the far left. I am a white, cis, bisexual, middle-class woman who asserts transwomen are women and that trans and youth rights should be protected. But I could hear incredibly valid counter-arguments from “the other side” in my head each chapter, counter-arguments Butler narrowly avoids by relying on straw men arguments. It takes a hell of a lot for a former idol of mine to get me agreeing with my political enemy.
Yes, “gender” has become a phantasm that stands in for many other anxieties. None of which are quelled in this text.
The first third focuses on high power players like politicians and the Vatican, but does not address the concerns of actual people who support the same policies. The arguments in these chapters are incredibly obvious if you have not been living under a rock: concerns around gender from the church largely have to do with concerns around homosexuality, teaching comprehensive sexual education does not make children gay, and trans affirming healthcare does not harm cis people.
They then proceed to focus large portions of the text on folks like DeSantis and J.K. Rowling, rather than dealing with the intricacies of concerns from regular people. Yes, those heavy hitters are the ones mobilizing the phantasm of gender and keeping people anxious, but how do we realistically address those anxieties held by much of the population in a democratic way? How do we reconcile parental agency and the needs of children? How do we provide appropriate healthcare for children whose parents believe such healthcare is actually violence? Why does the hateful rhetoric employed by right wing politicians work so effectively? Those are the more interesting questions.
While I understand their assertion that critical reading is fundamental to a successful democracy, it’s absolutely hilarious to see a theorist who is very famously and frequently accused of being inaccessible lament that people won’t just read more gender theory before refuting it. Like if only Trump picked up Gender Trouble then he would be better informed. Butler is also making a mistake in that realm with the strange assumption that anti-gender-ideology folks (and other gender theorists) all necessarily value democracy.
Butler has an outstandingly bizarre way of waffling on materialism. They take no materialist approach at all in the first half of the book (or their career), then claim to incorporate materialist elements very abruptly. It’s clear Butler’s discussion of the co-construction of the social and biological aspects of sex is only to pacify their materialist critics. Despite this supposed co-constitution, there remain large portions of the text that continue to uphold a nature/culture binary and speak in pretty traditionally constructivist terms.
In other sections, Butler simply falls into tired liberal tropes. Even if the political right is against both critical race theory and “gender ideology” in schools, these are not equivalent. They are entirely different discourses with different histories and concerns, and yet Butler flattens them as though they are qualitatively equivalent. It seems Butler is contributing to rather than negating this phantasm of gender by treating separate issues as having a singular answer. Butler also appears to root much of the problem with gender in colonialism, as though the history of patriarchal power only begins in recent history. They recognize the concept of gender has an issue of linguistic and cultural translation, but does not adequately historicize the concept. I expected greater nuance from one of the most significant theorists of our time.
I have saved my critique of the TERF chapter for last because I understand it’s the chapter in which we are most expected to snap our fingers and nod in agreement. Yes, TERFs are bad. I think it’s a bit of a misnomer as not all “gender critical” feminists that very intentionally exclude trans women take perspectives that align with radical feminism, but that’s not really the point so we can leave it aside. Butler comically refuses to use “gender critical” because TERFs misuse the term “critique.” As though sex can be reassigned and gender can be reconstituted throughout one’s life, but the definition and application of “critique” must be stagnant. To define gender would be epistemic violence, but to define critique is within Butler’s authority.
The entire chapter on TERFs and “gender-critical feminism” didn’t address a huge underlying issue: the mutual dependence between the categories of “woman” and “lesbian.” Much of the TERFish emphasis on “sex” is rooted not just in the idea that penises rape (more on that in a moment), but that many lesbians consider the evolving definition of gender to be an affront to their sexual identity. If there is no substantial validity to this argument, then why doesn’t Butler address it? It would be an easy takedown, and yet the glaring omission remains.
Butler uses this chapter to make a “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” style argument regarding rape. As though it is entirely unreasonable someone might associate rape with traditional male anatomy. This is not to say that women don’t rape, that all men have penises, that transgender women are predatory, or that sexual dimorphism is a natural fact - it is simply to live in reality; certain tools and the socialization around them enable violence. You can understand there is a relationship between penises and rape without believing trans women are rapists or denying their womanhood. Instead, Butler makes this ridiculous claim:
“If the implicit point is that someone who has a penis, or even someone who once had one, will rape, because the penis is the cause of rape, or the socialization of those who have penises is the cause of rape, then surely such claims should be debated. Rape is an act of social and sexual domination, as many feminists have argued, arisen from social relations that establish masculine domination and access to women’s bodies without consent as a right and a privilege.”
Let me get this straight: Butler does not agree that the socialization of those who have penises is a cause of rape but does assert that social relations which establish masculine domination are a cause of rape (in the same paragraph, no less). Is the socialization of those who have penises not relevant to the social relations which establish masculine domination? Especially within the psychoanalytic framework Butler claims to draw from? In lieu of an explanation Butler merely states that masculine domination is not biological, upholding the culture/nature binary they later claim to be against. A consistent argument would require Butler to address the co-constitution of the biological and the social as they relate to power. Butler instead opts for self-contradiction.
Every chapter is essentially Butler disagreeing with a claim that they purport exists in society, while misrepresenting that claim in order to make their counterarguments. You could weave an Etsy shop full of baskets with the dearth of straw.
Butler concludes the text with a call to arms for all who have been harmed by these anxieties around gender to take up an ill-defined strategic alliance, rather than developing strategies for mitigating or refuting those anxieties. With decades of experience in theorizing both gender and democracy, Butler is uniquely positioned to propose such strategies yet fails to do so. Who’s Afraid of Gender is wildly bad theory: academically dull, intellectually lazy, and politically tired.
I thank NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the e-arc in exchange for my unfortunately honest opinion.
Who’s Afraid of Gender seeks to address the various concerns of the “anti-gender ideology movement,” including its manifestations in politics, the church, feminism, and globalization.
Butler lays out several concerns raised by this movement:
-Gender is a fabrication; only natural sex is real
-Gender will bring about a totalitarian regime
-Gender exemplifies hyper-capitalism
-Gender has stolen creative powers from the divine
-Gender is a force of destruction and colonization and harms children
These disparate concerns collapse into one, using gender as an overdetermined boogeyman (or what Butler refers to as the “phantasm of gender”). Their primary concern in this text is establishing the anxieties behind this phantasm as well as the hatred and anger it mobilizes.
This book is best suited for a feminist audience looking to better understand the cultural landscape around the current gender discourse and controversies. It is not necessarily formulated to convert those with the fascist anxieties, merely to explain the flaws in their lines of thought.
It’s honestly impressive how much I disliked this. I have been looking forward to one of the most prominent gender theorists weighing in on the great gender discourse of the 21st century. I spent the majority of my 20s as a huge Butler stan, frequently assigning their work in various classes. Butler touches on everything - gender, sexuality, activism, democracy, statelessness, their work is relevant to any humanities or social science context. At long last, Butler returns to gender theory when everyone could use some clarity on the subject.
And yet this could have been a Substack.
And not one I would subscribe to.
Even if it were free.
For clarity, I will confess my identity (since this work seems to demand it): I’m politically aligned with the far left. I am a white, cis, bisexual, middle-class woman who asserts transwomen are women and that trans and youth rights should be protected. But I could hear incredibly valid counter-arguments from “the other side” in my head each chapter, counter-arguments Butler narrowly avoids by relying on straw men arguments. It takes a hell of a lot for a former idol of mine to get me agreeing with my political enemy.
Yes, “gender” has become a phantasm that stands in for many other anxieties. None of which are quelled in this text.
The first third focuses on high power players like politicians and the Vatican, but does not address the concerns of actual people who support the same policies. The arguments in these chapters are incredibly obvious if you have not been living under a rock: concerns around gender from the church largely have to do with concerns around homosexuality, teaching comprehensive sexual education does not make children gay, and trans affirming healthcare does not harm cis people.
They then proceed to focus large portions of the text on folks like DeSantis and J.K. Rowling, rather than dealing with the intricacies of concerns from regular people. Yes, those heavy hitters are the ones mobilizing the phantasm of gender and keeping people anxious, but how do we realistically address those anxieties held by much of the population in a democratic way? How do we reconcile parental agency and the needs of children? How do we provide appropriate healthcare for children whose parents believe such healthcare is actually violence? Why does the hateful rhetoric employed by right wing politicians work so effectively? Those are the more interesting questions.
While I understand their assertion that critical reading is fundamental to a successful democracy, it’s absolutely hilarious to see a theorist who is very famously and frequently accused of being inaccessible lament that people won’t just read more gender theory before refuting it. Like if only Trump picked up Gender Trouble then he would be better informed. Butler is also making a mistake in that realm with the strange assumption that anti-gender-ideology folks (and other gender theorists) all necessarily value democracy.
Butler has an outstandingly bizarre way of waffling on materialism. They take no materialist approach at all in the first half of the book (or their career), then claim to incorporate materialist elements very abruptly. It’s clear Butler’s discussion of the co-construction of the social and biological aspects of sex is only to pacify their materialist critics. Despite this supposed co-constitution, there remain large portions of the text that continue to uphold a nature/culture binary and speak in pretty traditionally constructivist terms.
In other sections, Butler simply falls into tired liberal tropes. Even if the political right is against both critical race theory and “gender ideology” in schools, these are not equivalent. They are entirely different discourses with different histories and concerns, and yet Butler flattens them as though they are qualitatively equivalent. It seems Butler is contributing to rather than negating this phantasm of gender by treating separate issues as having a singular answer. Butler also appears to root much of the problem with gender in colonialism, as though the history of patriarchal power only begins in recent history. They recognize the concept of gender has an issue of linguistic and cultural translation, but does not adequately historicize the concept. I expected greater nuance from one of the most significant theorists of our time.
I have saved my critique of the TERF chapter for last because I understand it’s the chapter in which we are most expected to snap our fingers and nod in agreement. Yes, TERFs are bad. I think it’s a bit of a misnomer as not all “gender critical” feminists that very intentionally exclude trans women take perspectives that align with radical feminism, but that’s not really the point so we can leave it aside. Butler comically refuses to use “gender critical” because TERFs misuse the term “critique.” As though sex can be reassigned and gender can be reconstituted throughout one’s life, but the definition and application of “critique” must be stagnant. To define gender would be epistemic violence, but to define critique is within Butler’s authority.
The entire chapter on TERFs and “gender-critical feminism” didn’t address a huge underlying issue: the mutual dependence between the categories of “woman” and “lesbian.” Much of the TERFish emphasis on “sex” is rooted not just in the idea that penises rape (more on that in a moment), but that many lesbians consider the evolving definition of gender to be an affront to their sexual identity. If there is no substantial validity to this argument, then why doesn’t Butler address it? It would be an easy takedown, and yet the glaring omission remains.
Butler uses this chapter to make a “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” style argument regarding rape. As though it is entirely unreasonable someone might associate rape with traditional male anatomy. This is not to say that women don’t rape, that all men have penises, that transgender women are predatory, or that sexual dimorphism is a natural fact - it is simply to live in reality; certain tools and the socialization around them enable violence. You can understand there is a relationship between penises and rape without believing trans women are rapists or denying their womanhood. Instead, Butler makes this ridiculous claim:
“If the implicit point is that someone who has a penis, or even someone who once had one, will rape, because the penis is the cause of rape, or the socialization of those who have penises is the cause of rape, then surely such claims should be debated. Rape is an act of social and sexual domination, as many feminists have argued, arisen from social relations that establish masculine domination and access to women’s bodies without consent as a right and a privilege.”
Let me get this straight: Butler does not agree that the socialization of those who have penises is a cause of rape but does assert that social relations which establish masculine domination are a cause of rape (in the same paragraph, no less). Is the socialization of those who have penises not relevant to the social relations which establish masculine domination? Especially within the psychoanalytic framework Butler claims to draw from? In lieu of an explanation Butler merely states that masculine domination is not biological, upholding the culture/nature binary they later claim to be against. A consistent argument would require Butler to address the co-constitution of the biological and the social as they relate to power. Butler instead opts for self-contradiction.
Every chapter is essentially Butler disagreeing with a claim that they purport exists in society, while misrepresenting that claim in order to make their counterarguments. You could weave an Etsy shop full of baskets with the dearth of straw.
Butler concludes the text with a call to arms for all who have been harmed by these anxieties around gender to take up an ill-defined strategic alliance, rather than developing strategies for mitigating or refuting those anxieties. With decades of experience in theorizing both gender and democracy, Butler is uniquely positioned to propose such strategies yet fails to do so. Who’s Afraid of Gender is wildly bad theory: academically dull, intellectually lazy, and politically tired.
I thank NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the e-arc in exchange for my unfortunately honest opinion.
lisztaffe's review
4.0
“Who’s Afraid Of Gender” is an exploration of the rising animosity towards gender, a word that has come to embody everything from reproductive freedom, changing roles for women to different sexualities and transgender rights. Butler discusses this phenomenon from a multitude of view points: the origins of the antigender movement within Catholic circles, its global spread and how gender has come to encompass so many ideas, the legal disputes it has raised in Trump’s America and the rise of the TERF movement especially in the UK. But the work also deals with the philosophy and science of gender itself, its relation to sex, as well as the racial and colonial legacies tied up with our understanding of both and even what it means to talk about gender in a multilingual world.
Having watched the rise of “gender panic” in the last few years I was eager to read this book. Butler’s work is timely, level and often compassionate. They manage to pack an incredible breadth of topics into a relatively thin package. As someone who has been following these issues always only in isolated national instances, the summary of the development of the antigender movement and current trends is especially interesting, showing the full scope of the problem we face.
Looking at the topic of gender from so many different lenses was perhaps even more illuminating. Whether or not you agree with the conclusions Butler draws, opening yourself to thoroughly questioning your own assumptions is certainly worthwhile, and the thorough notes provide a springboard for further research.
An often mentioned issue with Bulter’s writing is that it can be rather difficult to navigate. And indeed, much of the text, especially the repetitions, could probably have been shortened without losing the meaning. This was a shame, because many of the points were both clear and poignant and, if the text had been a little tighter, might have been that much stronger.
This is not a book that is going to change anyone firmly on the anti-gender side’s mind. There’s too much reference to Marxism or psychoanalysis for anyone who is already staunchly opposed to “leftist academia” to be open to. But this also isn’t a book for them. It’s for those of us who see the growing trends and have been asking ourselves how we can counteract them. As Butler concludes, only together.
I thank Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Having watched the rise of “gender panic” in the last few years I was eager to read this book. Butler’s work is timely, level and often compassionate. They manage to pack an incredible breadth of topics into a relatively thin package. As someone who has been following these issues always only in isolated national instances, the summary of the development of the antigender movement and current trends is especially interesting, showing the full scope of the problem we face.
Looking at the topic of gender from so many different lenses was perhaps even more illuminating. Whether or not you agree with the conclusions Butler draws, opening yourself to thoroughly questioning your own assumptions is certainly worthwhile, and the thorough notes provide a springboard for further research.
An often mentioned issue with Bulter’s writing is that it can be rather difficult to navigate. And indeed, much of the text, especially the repetitions, could probably have been shortened without losing the meaning. This was a shame, because many of the points were both clear and poignant and, if the text had been a little tighter, might have been that much stronger.
This is not a book that is going to change anyone firmly on the anti-gender side’s mind. There’s too much reference to Marxism or psychoanalysis for anyone who is already staunchly opposed to “leftist academia” to be open to. But this also isn’t a book for them. It’s for those of us who see the growing trends and have been asking ourselves how we can counteract them. As Butler concludes, only together.
I thank Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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