For the purposes of this review, I read a work by Judith Butler. That might seem like a banal statement, but it already sets me apart from almost everyone who has an opinion on the US philosopher.
It’s not quite a joke to say their latest book could have been called Who’s Afraid of Judith Butler, because many people are; all the fears and fantasies poured into the idea of “gender”, which this new work explores, are also poured into its author. Butler’s work has been defined as diabolical, and the professor as some sort of she-devil – or rather they-devil – a convenient vessel for current anxieties about the stability of sex.
When I was in my 20s doing women’s studies as an undergraduate, Butler’s 1990 book, Gender Trouble, was relatively new and already hugely successful. In it, they brought classic radical feminism, psychology and poststructuralist philosophy to bear in the analysis of gender and sexuality. But though they were a rock star in academic circles, Butler was hardly mainstream. Known for expounding the theory of gender performativity, they were also infamous for deploying exceedingly long sentences, dense prose, and the postmodern style that people either really love, or really hate. Their ideas are now much more widely discussed, at least partly because of a backlash against the increased rights and visibility of trans and gender-diverse people.
This seems like the kind of impact and level of public engagement that most academics can only dream about, but when theory travels into popular discourse it is often damaged on the journey. It arrives late, very much changed, sapped of nuance, simplified, misapplied and misunderstood. This is particularly the case with gender performativity, continually misrepresented as “performance” in order to accuse Butler of declaring that sex doesn’t matter, and that gender is just some drag costume we choose to take on and off. Rather, they argue that it is performative insofar as it comprises the stylised repetition of acts, the doing of which brings gender into being. And it isn’t exactly voluntary, but required – and policed by society. More than 30 years after Gender Trouble, Butler is still having to explain that they never said sex doesn’t matter, as they do again here: “What if, in fact, no one has said that sex is not real, even as some people have asked what its reality consists of?” Butler is frustrated and angry; or as frustrated and angry as famous philosophy professors get. I know because this is the most accessible of their books so far, an intervention meant for a wide audience.
Unless you have been avoiding coverage of social issues for the last decade or so, you may have a working knowledge of the so-called “gender wars”, which are particularly vicious here in the UK (and seen globally as an embarrassing exemplar of sex and gender conservativism). Butler explains that “gender” has become a phantasm, representing multiple human fears and anxieties about sexuality, bodily attributes, sex and relationships. These anxieties have been stoked and manipulated by rightwingers in positions of religious and secular power to more effectively project the harms they are complicit in on to women and minorities.
Butler offers various examples. In 2015, Pope Francis compared gender theory to nuclear weapons, claiming it was an annihilating force that refused to recognise the order of creation. Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni has warned that gender ideology will strip everyone of their sexed identity. Vladimir Putin refers to Europe as “Gayropa”, saying that gender is a western construct that will destroy the concepts of mother and father.
This should rightly sound bizarre; affirming trans rights is not comparable to nuclear annihilation. LGBTQ+ history month is not about erasing mothers and fathers. Anti-gender movements are, however, erasing my rights; and they are erasing lesbian, gay and trans parents, quite literally in some cases. In Italy right now, lesbian mothers are being removed from their children’s birth certificates and denied legal responsibility for their children. Who is going to stand up for these women? Butler points out that what is happening is an inversion. Rightwing forces take rights from, and harm, some women, children and families, justifying their actions by saying they are preventing harm to others. And there is a horrific irony, of course, in the Catholic church contributing to the rights-stripping of LGBTQ+ people and their families under the guise of protecting children, while the Catholic church itself has been responsible for decades of child sexual abuse.
This is a “moralising sadism”, and the only answer, Butler says, is to form an axis of resistance; to “gather the targeted movements more effectively than we are targeted”. People who may not be friends, who disagree, need to work together, because they’re all in line for the same persecution, sooner or later – all women, all minorities, all those minoritised. Solidarity is not home, Butler reminds us, using a well-known phrase coined by feminist Bernice Johnson Reagon. It doesn’t have to be cosy.
Because Butler is a human rights activist, as well as a theorist, the urgent point conveyed by this book is the same as it is in all their work: why are so many people seemingly happy to give away their power to increasingly authoritarian forces? And why are they so confident that this power will never be used against them?
• Finn McKay is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of the West of England. Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler is published by Allen Lane (£25). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
