I write to praise Judith Butler: their extraordinary mind, courage, persistence, moral and ethical seriousness, and underestimated wit. Indeed, the first time I saw them, we were visiting the same campus. I went to hear their paper. Young, non-tenured, they read their work — and clowned — with zestful aplomb. “Who is this?” I thought, “Who is this?” I was soon to find out. In 1990, Gender Trouble appeared.

Now, Butler is, unfairly, one of the most maligned philosophers alive. The insults started early in their career. For example, in 1998, they won “First Prize” in an attention-seeking journal’s annual Bad Writing Contest. They are also, fairly, one of the most read. Wikipedia notes that the journal that conducted the “Bad Writing” contest has a circulation of 823. In contrast, a few years ago, I was in a big German city and by coincidence, Butler was lecturing there. I have disagreed with them over the years, but admired the long lines of people, circling around the block, waiting to hear them. Their books, in several languages, were stacked on tables in front of the big auditorium— and selling.

Butler’s fame has provoked even more insults. Their effigy has been burned. A bystander had to rescue them, with their partner Wendy Brown, from an assault in a Brazilian airport. In Spring 2024, they published their latest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender? In it, they report, “I have been figured as a devil, a witch, a trans person, a Jew with exorbitant features… I have found my name circulating in ways I can barely understand.” (p. 237)

In brief, Butler has become a far-reaching symbol of “gender.”  From this unwanted position, they are soberly asking what the concept of “gender” means globally. Conscientiously aware of the gaps in their coverage, they are nevertheless mapping two overlapping patterns. The first is “sex” and “gender” as a co-constructed experience. Why must my passport say “F” on the same line as my place of birth? 

The second pattern is the use of the terms “gender” and “gender ideology” as a dangerous stimulant for fear, scorn, and hatred. These emotions then fuel authoritarians and their ambitions. Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been similarly abused. Part, but only part, of Butler’s “motivation” for Who’s Afraid of Gender?  is personal, the demanding effort “to fathom how one’s arguments become distorted phantasms, how one’s name can become transfigured into a nearly unrecognizable phantasm.” (p. 237-8) Phantasm is the psychoanalytic theory that Butler suggests can explain the mind-boggling contradictions that the hostility to “gender” and “gender ideology” summons up. 

In part, Who’s Afraid of Gender? is asking how we can displace fear in order to live and breathe freely. One tool at our disposal is a mind-freeing “critique,” an activity not limited to the academy. Butler writes, “A critique of something is not simply a way of opposing something and being done with it or calling for its abolition. A critique of masculine domination, for instance, shows that life does not have to be organized by this social form. With critique comes a new way of understanding the world, one that can be essential to struggles for social change and the opening up of new possible ways of living… The critique of the gender binary turned out to give rise to a proliferation of genders beyond the established binary system…” (p. 141)

It is summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Is Who’s Afraid of Gender? lite beach fare? Of course not. Its strength is for all the seasons of these critical, difficult years.

By the by: Butler once remarked playfully that the prize money from that “Bad Writing” award had not yet arrived.