Not their best ... If only Butler had said less about the piddling quibbles of their small opponents and more about the soaring possibilities of gender itself.
If you begin Who’s Afraid of Gender? hoping the gender-neutral mother of queer theory has written a rousing polemic that rescues gender and sexuality from the culture wars...you might be disappointed ... Who’s Afraid of Gender? is unexpectedly tepid, and — for a subject that is obviously quite personal for Butler, their fans, their foes, and really all of us — written at a strange remove from the ways both the left and the right think and talk about gender and queerness on an everyday basis, online and off ... Ultimately does little to either advance our understanding of what we’re up against or give us the tools to combat it ... Prime real estate in the book, and much of Butler’s indignation, is reserved instead for the war in Ukraine and police violence and economic precarity and neoliberalism and, and, and… well, pretty much every other leftist concern. Again and again, Butler avoids taking hard stances on the specifics, and instead broadens out into a parodic level of existential worrying.
An analysis of contemporary political and cultural battles over the very topics that Butler’s early work brought into wider public discussion ... Butler’s methodical examination of this group’s self-contradicting claims sheds welcome light on the way fantasy, paranoia, and scapegoating can supplant rational argument when it comes to the particular issue of trans rights ... Butler makes a concerted effort to keep Who’s Afraid of Gender? accessible and jargon-free. It is, without question, a demanding read, but not because the author is obfuscating or showing off. Rather, the difficulty derives from the rigor of the thought itself, and the work of accompanying the movement of that thought brings its own kind of pleasure.
Butler is obviously correct that the authoritarian right sets itself against feminism and modern sexual rights and freedom. This is nothing new, although being reminded of it is good. But is the gender phantasm as crucial to the global far right as Butler claims? ... It does seem odd that Butler, for whom everything about the body is socially produced, would be so uninterested in exploring the ways that trans identity is itself socially produced, at least in part ... Butler seems to suggest that being trans is being your authentic self, but what is authenticity?
Butler makes ample use of...rhetorical questions ... Perhaps there’s a vacuum left by this book precisely because Butler, in a bid to bring people together, generally steers clear of some of the most inflammatory nodes of the debate ... I appreciated Butler’s commitment to holding open a space for thinking.
They’re taking a victory lap for unleashing the gender forces that now trouble America. But I wonder if the credit is overblown ... The marketing campaign for their book is just the start of Butler’s failures ... On occasion the book descends into camp. I burst into laughter reading.
Butler’s argument...is a compelling one for those already inclined towards those views ... I was hoping Butler might further interrogate the gender critical movement, as well as debunking its inconsistencies ... At times, Butler’s writing is frustratingly opaque ... So I do wonder at whom the book is aimed. But it is refreshing to see such a tribal issue interrogated with thoughtful research, as opposed to vicious fearmongering.
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 ... 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?
While these debates often play out chaotically on Twitter/X, animated by anguish and anger, Butler tries to meet them with reason and research ... Butler’s work has offered over and over again the basic kindness of recognizing that our painful failures to conform are what we have in common.
Deeply informed ... This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy. A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
