Judith Butler, that’s who.
The blurby bit
Join us for this event at which Judith Butler will talk about their new book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?
From a global icon, Judith’s book is an account of how a fear of gender is fuelling reactionary politics around the world. Judith Butler, the ground-breaking philosopher whose work has redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on gender that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed ‘anti-gender ideology movements’ dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous threat to families, local cultures, civilization – and even ‘man’ himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to abolish reproductive justice, undermine protections against violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights. But what, exactly, is so disturbing about gender? In this vital, courageous book, Butler carefully examines how ‘gender’ has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations and trans-exclusionary feminists, and the concrete ways in which this phantasm works. It is an intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who’s Afraid of Gender? is a call to make a broad coalition with all those who struggle for equality and fight injustice.
Meet our speaker and chair
Judith Butler is Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School and former Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. They were the Founding Director of the Critical Theory Program and International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs at UC Berkeley. Butler is active in gender and sexual politics, human rights, anti-war politics, and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.
Sumi Madhok (@sumi_madhok) is Professor of Political Theory and Gender Studies at LSE and faculty associate at LSE International Inequalities Institute. Quite unusually, she is a feminist political theorist with an ethnographic sensibility. Her most recent book Vernacular Rights Cultures: The Politics of Origins, Human Rights and Gendered Struggles for Justice was awarded the Susan Strange Prize Best Book Prize and The Sussex International Theory Prize, 2022.
From the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) website
Introduction
I don’t blame you if you couldn’t be bothered to read the above blurb for the event. Summary: Judith Butler has a new book out and the lead academic of the gender studies department at the LSE was the one what brown-nosed her. Sorry, them, as it was all too noticeable that Sumi Madhok awkwardly managed to refer to Butler by her preferred pronouns. So, what happened? Butler gave an ethereal lecture, lasting about forty minutes, appealing to her listeners’ supernatural inclines.
To get an idea of how popular Butler is, in-person tickets sold out and about 2,500 people watched on the livestream. Now that the video is online, I’m sure it will continue to do good numbers relatively-speaking. For example, the seminar the LSE had done with her a month before, Transnational anti-gender politics and resistance (essentially this seminar’s topic was the same) had garnered 7.7k views at the time of writing.
The lecture
Jude’s awakening
Butler first saw the spectre of what she calls the ‘anti-gender ideology movement’ back in 2017. Essentially she is a story-teller and her chosen metaphor was the effigy of herself being burnt. She had been in Sao Paulo, Brazil, for a conference on the future of democracy and there were people outside protesting her and the teaching of queer theory outside.
Right-wing critics were particularly incensed by what they called the ‘Gender Ideology’ of the American philosopher, an ideology ‘that disguises a Marxist agenda and promotes the destruction of the Family and [apologizes for] depraved sexual practices and pedophilia.’
Looking Back 2017: Judith and Holofernes in Brazil, Freize magazine, 18 December 2017
Butler said the conference was to discuss the rise of authoritarianism around the world and there had been a campaign to keep her from entering the country. According to an article published by Frieze magazine, over 370,000 people signed a petition, Butler believes many of these were bots. She had to travel with security and was alarmed by the signs people held and, in particular, that an effigy was made of her. She believes the effigy depicted her as the devil, with horns and ‘bright red eyes’, thus anti-semitic in nature. I believe the photo above is of the effigy which was burnt and we have the Buzzfeed footage posted on Twitter. As you can see, it doesn’t look like a devil effigy per se and does not have bright red eyes, though she has been given red hair, co-ordinated with pink bra and long sleeve pink T-shirt under a short sleeve black T-shirt. Butler witnessed the burning and in her talk implies that it was just the one, so I think we can safely assume this is the effigy in question.
The hullabaloo was organized by a few small conservative groups, like the TFP (Tradition, Family and Property) — a far-right group founded in 1960 — and a group led by former D-list actor [and gay porn star] Alexandre Frota, which has a strong online presence. On the other side, supporting Butler in greater numbers, were leftist groups, some of them carrying antifa flags.
Please Watch This Insane Footage Of Judith Butler Being Called A Witch In Brazil, Buzzfeed, 8 November 2017
Butler noted that the signs said things like ‘no paedophilia’ and ‘no gender ideology’ and it sounds like she was alarmed only until she noticed the counter protesters, who greatly outnumbered her detractors. However, it occurred to her that they had put her in ‘drag’ with a ‘bikini top’ and was confused by this (I think it is just a bra) and depicted her a ‘demonic force’. (What counts as drag for a non-binary person anyway?) It was the first time that she realised that there was an anti-gender movement, which was particularly anti-trans, and felt that she had been depicted as a Jewish witch. To be fair, they did chant ‘burn the witch’.
As an aside, Butler didn’t mention that the right wing politician, Alexandre Frota, was involved in the protest, despite him being a seriously obnoxious sexist pig, and I wonder if that is because, like her, he is a bit blind to sex and also a previous sex worker:
Yet there are striking differences between Frota’s attitude towards sexuality, partly expressed through pornography, and the political norms in congress. Frota occasionally starred in gay porn and, while he’s only publicly dated women, has said he’s attracted to men and is “very open minded about all these issues.”
A porn star turned politician says the biggest porn stars are all in congress, QZ, 12 July 2019
The Catholic Church
Feminists she knew in Brazil had been tracking the anti-gender movement since the early 1990s, which just sounded like groups linked to the Catholic Church to me, likely opposing abortion one would imagine.
She claimed that Pope Francis had described genderists as ‘Hitler Youth’ and more dangerous than the ‘atomic bomb’. I tried to find a citation for that with Google and drew blanks (my research practice is still more reliable than that of most gender studies student, I reckon). However, there was this incredibly recent statement:
Pope Francis on Friday again spoke out against gender theory describing it as an “ugly ideology of our time”, because it erases all distinctions between men and women. To cancel this difference “is to erase humanity. Man and woman, instead, exist in a fruitful ‘tension’”, he said.
Pope Francis: Gender ideology is the ugliest danger of our time, Vatican News, 1 March 2024
This is entirely in line with Pope Francis’ previous statement on gender theory, made in February 2020.
Our side is not very powerful and we are normally pacifist, whined Butler in response to the false allegation. Which is funny because after the talk by Butler, which members of the public could attend and was held in central London, this was central London a few days later when medics met to discuss the medical harms of puberty blockers:
Also: We are useless, said Butler, which had the crowd tittering. Not only were genderists not very formidable, they were also up ‘against the patriarchy’ and didn’t have any funding, a particularly hypocritical statement when the event was being hosted by LSE’s gender studies department with almost every university having one nowadays. Notably the audience roared with applause at the beginning of the lecture when Sumi Madhok merely mentioned she was the head of gender studies. Hitler Youth, indeed.
Butler felt that the Vatican accepts certain kinds of feminism but ultimately took a creationist view (actually Pope Francis has been emphatic in his support for scientific theories, as were the two previous) and that genderists, like herself, challenged that. You might be forgiven at this point for thinking: ‘Yeah, but what does this have to do with gender critical feminism?’ and you’d be right. Absolutely nothing. Butler had absolutely nothing of relevance to say about the actual critiques made by the ‘anti-gender ideology’ movement when it came to the contributions of largely left-leaning feminists.
And, unfortunately for Butler, the actual facts about the Vatican’s stance on transgender people simply does not tally with her rhetoric. She simply had to do some Googling to find that out. Take, for example, a recent bold piece of PR by the Vatican, where trans-identified males were invited to dine with the Pope on the Church’s World Day of the poor.
To her surprise, Salas, a former sex worker, found herself seated opposite the pope, who is also Argentinian, at the main table in the auditorium, where the pontiff holds his general audiences in winter.
Italy’s transgender women thank pope for making them feel ‘more human’, Reuters, 21 November 2023
You might get the impression from the Reuter’s article that it was just a handful, it was actually about a hundred and twenty.
This was co-ordinated with a Vatican statement that trans-identified persons could be godparents, witness weddings and be baptised, made a few weeks earlier. So, it seems the men in frocks aren’t that bothered by the men in frocks. Fancy that!
Not only that, but this was the main pillar of her argument, the power of the Vatican was still all powerful and pervasive in the world, despite church attendance rapidly decreasing across the West. No mention either of that other troublesome Abrahamic religion, the one which very recently perpetrated the worst pogrom since the Holocaust. You’d think a jewish feminist Professor of Critical Theory might at least be interested in mentioning the authoritarian and blood thirsty nature of Jihadism, especially the sexual violence, but clearly a Pope who invites a bunch of trannies to break bread with him is far more of a concern to her.
On gender studies
Butler acknowledged that critics of gender ideology felt children could be harmed by being taught about gender and understood the charge of indoctrination. Naturally she doesn’t believe that gender studies has anything to do with indoctrination – why, they argue all the time! There was a lot of serious critique going on in gender studies, you know! And she went on to mention absolutely no contentious matters whatsoever, rather a list revealing she was teaching a lot of rude spoilt brats. She also managed to misgender herself, whilst talking about herself in the third person. Priceless.
Does anyone actually imagine that a gender studies class might sit down and seriously critique the WPATH Standards of Care for ‘eunuch-identified people’? Or that Butler might dare even hint that she disagreed (not that it’s likely she would)?
SOC-8 FAQs – WEBSITE
Why are the needs of eunuch-identified people included in the SOC-8 for the first time?
Eunuchs and eunuch-identified people have existed for millennia. Some eunuchs or eunuch-identified people experience dysphoria about their genitalia and desire that their reproductive organs be surgically removed or rendered non-functional. Due to social stigma and perhaps a lack of previous medical access and information, some eunuchs or eunuch-identified people may attempt to do this by themselves or with people who are not sufficiently trained, often leading to unfortunate outcomes.
https://www.wpath.org/media/cms/Documents/SOC%20v8/SOC-8%20FAQs%20-%20WEBSITE2.pdf
It just wasn’t true that people in academia couldn’t challenge the facets of gender ideology when it was a critical enquiry itself. In fact, they should call Butler ‘gender critical’!
Political scapegoats
Then Butler tried to make some comparisons between the democratically elected Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, who hasn’t invaded any sovereign countries and the not so democratically elected President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, who has. Butler claims they had both said something to the effect that transgenderism took your sex away, which seems a fair criticism when there are men and women who have undergone gonadectomy in the pursuit of gender fabrication.
The last point she wanted to make was that gender did not just refer to gender identity and that the opposition to it was deeply anti-democratic and authoritarian, then excused herself from commenting specifically on the UK debate (I guess the cases bought by Keira Bell, Maya Forstater and Harry Miller, et al, might prove a little difficult to talk about). Why were ‘anti-gender’ feminists aligning themselves with fascists?, asked Butler. Of course, she didn’t give a single example, but here we are.
If you read her new book you would get some top tips on how to take on these anti-gender feminists, which ultimately sounded like doing thought experiments with kindness, I’ll be honest, I’m shaking in my boots.
Butler’s inconsequential confused speech, though entertaining in places, then ended to enthusiastic applause.
Conversation with host
Please talk about your ethical vision, centring critical enquiry and coalition building
Butler trashed GC peeps by saying we don’t have robust arguments and rely on rhetoric. Big yawn. Also, she could have written a book proving that all the criticisms levelled at gender theory were wrong and completely disprove everything. Naturally she hasn’t done this because the anti-gender ideologists are sneaky bastards and it wasn’t possible to fight such a ‘shapeshifting’ movement. Convenient. The Vatican had argued that gender theory was a subversion, so Butler dropped a gratuitous mention of the child sexual abuse scandal the Catholic Church has been embroiled in for at least the last thirty years. Butler felt the main problem was that critics weren’t reading anything in gender studies, not only that, they (theologians) were against reading because they were worried about being seduced. It was an anti-intellectual and anti-academy. One got the sense that Butler was very scared of mentioning the ordinary woman on the street, who simply didn’t want a bloke in the bogs, and was doing everything she could to avoid mentioning mothers.
So she digressed instead into DARVO, accusing critics of allowing ‘a certain religious dogma to frame and form one’s own intellectual position’. Then gender woo proper: in place of constructing valid arguments she ‘had to give an account of this phantasmic structure’ instead, which involved blathering on about the syntax of dreams and how it was difficult to understand your own dreams (and quite boring for other people, if the truth be known). In other words, Butler has nothing. Literally nothing. No arguments. No demonstrable evidence that she even understands or has followed the arguments critics have made about gender theory being a pile of poppycock.
No, saying ‘phantasmic’ a lot was much easier. People who were ‘anti-gender ideology’ were projecting the fear, anxiety and desire experienced out onto the world stage. For example, when Meloni talked of wanting to take trans right away, she was projecting her own fear and this had a contagious effect. In essence, Butler was running some sort of public shrink session for gender adherents.
With the self-awareness of a gnat, Butler then about-turned and said that it wasn’t wise to be snobbish and label the enemy as stupid, even though she just had. Instead, they needed to create a ‘counter imaginary’ which was more compelling and identify the sources of fear their critics experienced, which sounds insidious and authoritarian to me. Madhok furiously scribbled her responses down.
Tell us more about the counter imaginaries
Butler felt they needed to think more about ‘deep anti-intellectualism of this right wing movement’ and get more people from the academy into the real world (I think there is already a surfeit of such people, what would more look like?). The animal/human distinction also needed to be meditated on and put forward new ideas on what co-habitation meant – it wasn’t always harmonious and beautiful.
Interestingly Butler didn’t understand why Hannah Arendt had wanted Eichmann dead (by which she meant, Arendt agreed with the death sentence handed down). It’s something Butler has written about – see here for the surprisingly lucid article she wrote for the Guardian back in 2011. Interesting too, that the article is bereft of any mention of gender or transgender as concepts and acknowledges that the main victims of Nazi genocide were ‘Jews, Gypsies, gay people, communists, the disabled and the ill’. Nothing about crossdressers or the gender confused. The internet is a bitch Judy, cope.
What had become banal – and astonishingly so – was the failure to think.
Hannah Arendt’s challenge to Adolf Eichmann by Judith Butler, Monday 29 August 2011
Butler urged the room and online watchers to be in solidarity with each other through co-habitation whilst the anti-gender movement grew.
Q&A
First round of questions
It is worth pointing out that they were mainly gender studies students, past and present, in the room and many of the questions came from those who identified themselves as such.
To be honest, it isn’t really worth reproducing the questions that were asked, mainly because their word salad was predictably more impenetrable that the utterings Butler had just treated us to. However, one wanted to know what the was the most compelling form of counter imaginary techniques, could it be poetry? Another wanted to mention the ‘death of community members’, meaning the rather singular and tragic death of Brianna Ghey and said ‘like’ a lot. Another asked about ‘lexical capture’.
Butler waffled away about doom, ecological destruction and violence in the name of a nation state or nationalism. Anti-gender feminists were locating their sense of doom in the wrong place and it was up to her and her ilk to offer another version. If anti-gender feminists ended their opposition to puberty blockers this would be proof they did not wish to do harm. For Butler, puberty blockers are healthcare and denying access to them was harmful.
On the issue of ‘lexical capture’, they need to steal the language back that gender crits had stolen. The word ‘harmful’, for example, as in ‘puberty blockers are harmful’. Interestingly Judy had a little Freudian slip when she described them as ‘gay affirmative healthcare’, before quickly correcting herself. Oops.
And if somebody says to you, ‘Well, tell me, [employs mocking tone] what is it- can you tell me what a woman is? How do you define it?’ I think the only way to answer that question is to say that feminism begins with the critique of the various ways that women have already been defined and opens up the question ‘what does it mean to be a woman’ and keeps the question open. For all time, because we don’t have the answers yet and there is no one answer, but methodologically speaking, keeping that question open is the job of a critical enquiry into gender. [Spontaneous applause]
Judith Butler, 20 March 2024, starts around 1.16 minutes
It’s actually quite simple dearie, there is biological sex, ultimately defined by gamete size and motility, and then there is gender, which relates to the ideas of what it is to be feminine, masculine or neutrum, which can differ vastly from person to person and culture to culture – you don’t need a degree to understand something this simple. Fucks sake.
Second round of questions
In the second round there were four questions asked with just seven minutes to go. One wanted to know why so many in the community were negative about neo pronouns (e.g. xe, xir, xirs) and neo genders (god knows). Another pointed out that Butler had focussed on the Catholic Church and wanted to know what she thought about the role of other religions in the anti-gender movement.
Butler, with just a few minutes left to tackle these pressing issues, revealed that it wasn’t possible to have solidarity with everyone and that frankly, if someone was on a different page politically, they weren’t welcome in the solidarity network. It was for the younger generation to sort out the internal conflicts regarding neo pronouns and neo genders. On the issue of religion, Butler revealed that she wouldn’t talk about the toxicity of fundamentalist Islam by not talking about Islam at all, preferring instead to mention that there were evangelical christian churches, there was the Russian Orthodox Church and there were also christian apostolic churches in Africa, all part of the anti-gender ideology movement. She mentioned that Confucianism was also anti-gender but clearly this was just lip service to mentioning other religions. Terfs were positivists and the science proved that sex wasn’t binary (I was wondering when we were going to get a mention of biological sex and she stuffed it in right at the end, coward) and no one wanted their identity to be ‘effaced’ by mean old terfs.
Butler was treated to a very big round of applause and foot stamping at the conclusion of the event. After that the kids were able to get her new book signed by the woman herself and they were instructed on how they should form an orderly queue.
Reflection
I get why Judith Butler has found popularity amongst her peers, she’s a charismatic orator and humorous, her timing is impeccable. She talks just enough sense for you to find what she is saying worth listening to and just esoteric enough to convince that what she is saying might be essential. If you’re a stupid idiot that is. So that’s one enigma solved.
Thank you for reading! Sign up to my blog by going to the bottom of the page.
Please share on other forums if you liked it, as I only do Twitter.
The Lies They Tell 