Butler’s overarching argument is that “gender” – the overdetermined concept to which “anti-gender ideologists” object – is really a nightmarish bogeyman, a “phantasm with destructive powers"...
Thank you for this summary. I’ve started reading Butler’s book but slowly as I’m not familiar with all the concepts she mentions. My daughter is trans so the question over sex and gender feel like important ones for me to get my head around to support and protect her. She’s 17 and studying philosophy so she’s all over this 😆
I loved Butler's work and the subsequent flowering of queer theory. As an academic, it was thrilling; personally, I felt vindicated in my lifelong contempt and dread of gender games. But transgender friends for whom gender feels real and is deadly serious made me worry a bit about whether this kind of theory works for everyone. I'm still kicking around thoughts about all that.
And despite years of reading-thinking-writing-teaching-discussing all this stuff, while I am very able to avoid the rookie error of mistaking performativity with performance, *I still don't know where or how to be confident about where the distinction falls*.
Meanwhile, the undergrads used to love this thing. Cats, my darlings, how can cats be wrong?
Thank you for this summary. I’ve started reading Butler’s book but slowly as I’m not familiar with all the concepts she mentions. My daughter is trans so the question over sex and gender feel like important ones for me to get my head around to support and protect her. She’s 17 and studying philosophy so she’s all over this 😆
that's great to hear! thank you
https://binarythis.com/2013/05/23/judith-butler-explained-with-cats/
I loved Butler's work and the subsequent flowering of queer theory. As an academic, it was thrilling; personally, I felt vindicated in my lifelong contempt and dread of gender games. But transgender friends for whom gender feels real and is deadly serious made me worry a bit about whether this kind of theory works for everyone. I'm still kicking around thoughts about all that.
And despite years of reading-thinking-writing-teaching-discussing all this stuff, while I am very able to avoid the rookie error of mistaking performativity with performance, *I still don't know where or how to be confident about where the distinction falls*.
Meanwhile, the undergrads used to love this thing. Cats, my darlings, how can cats be wrong?