Who's Afraid of Gender?
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- € 14,99
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- € 14,99
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An Instant Sunday Times Bestseller
One of the most anticipated books of 2024 according to The Times, Guardian, Financial Times, New Statesman, The Independent, The Scotsman, Time and more
Shouldn't we know what we're arguing about?
From one of the most influential thinkers of our time, an enlightening, essential 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 transexclusionary feminists, and the concrete ways in which this phantasm works. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of critical race theory and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality 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 galvanizing call to make a broad coalition with all those who struggle for equality and fight injustice. Imagining new possibilities for freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us an essentially hopeful work that is both timely and timeless.
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Gender studies pioneer Butler (Gender Trouble) argues in this trenchant polemic that in recent years the "phantasm of gender" has been "scapegoated" by "anti-gender" ideologues who seek to stoke fears based on misinformation and falsehood. In Butler's telling, the political right uses gender to "deflect from... forces that are, in fact, destroying the world," such as "climate destruction, war, capitalist exploitation." Analyzing how various groups—including political leaders in the U.S., the U.K., the Global South, and the Vatican—use gender to achieve their aims, Butler is particularly biting about anti-transgender feminists ("Anti-trans feminists seek to still the category of women, lock it down, erect the gates, and patrol the borders"). Urging a view of gender as co-constructed—meaning it is not purely the result of nature, nurture, or culture, but a combination of all three—Butler puts forth a philosophy of gender expression as a basic human right and astutely observes that members of the anti-gender movement "are not opposed to gender—they have a precise gender order in mind that they want to impose upon the world." An illuminating final section discusses the historical uses of gender by colonial regimes, leading to an impassioned plea to the left not to dismiss gender as a sideshow bugbear of the far right, but as fundamental to all political struggle. Thoughtful and powerfully assured, this is an essential take on an ongoing political battle.
