Berkeley professor explains gender theory | Judith Butler

Sex, gender, and the debate over identity explained by Berkeley professor Judith Butler.

What if gender wasn't a predetermined reality, but a fluid construct formed by culture, history, and individual identity? This is a question that drives the work of Judith Butler, a gender theorist and distinguished professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

While acknowledging the biological realities of sex, Butler promotes the concept of gender as performative — something that is enacted and shaped through our actions and interactions. This view, although challenging to traditional perspectives, is instrumental in the discourse on queer, trans, and women's rights. Butler encourages a shift in societal conversation to include diverse gender identities.

This transformation, they believe, allows us to work toward a society where equality, freedom, and justice are at the forefront, reinforcing the foundations of our democratic society.

0:00 What is gender theory?
1:34 Sex and gender: What’s the difference?
2:29 Learning from genocide
3:34 Queer theory in the 1970s & ’80s
4:56 Big ideas in gender theory’s evolution
7:06 Gender is “performative”: What that means
9:04 The resistance to trans rights
10:37 Countering the attack on gender

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About Judith Butler:
Judith Butler is a post-structuralist philosopher and queer theorist. They are most famous for the notion of gender performativity, but their work ranges from literary theory, modern philosophical fiction, feminist and sexuality studies, to 19th- and 20th-century European literature and philosophy, Kafka and loss, mourning and war.

They have received countless awards for their teaching and scholarship, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a Rockefeller fellowship, Yale's Brudner Prize, and an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award.

Their books include "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity," "Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex," "Undoing Gender," and "Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?"

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[bigthink]

Answers to frequently asked questions in the comments:

(Note: As Butler says, there are many perspectives on gender. This is not intended to be an authoritative answer. There is room to argue, to learn, to disagree. Hopefully this answers some general questions we often see in the comments and helps the conversation move forward.)

Aren't men and women physically different? What's the difference between biological sex and gender? What does 'assigned at birth' mean?

As Butler acknowledges at 1:41, there are biological differences in sex.

To clarify: Most people are born with the sex of either male (with XY chromosomes and male anatomy) or female (with XX chromosome and female anatomy). A small proportion of people are born with different chromosomal or anatomical makeups (e.g. Klinefelter syndrome).

Gender is the role people of a specific sex play in different cultures. For example: In 15th century Italy, men wore tights and skirts, while in 21st century America that would be considered feminine. In 1950s America, most women would not have careers, while in 2023 Haredi culture, most men do not work and most women do. All of these people have similar biology, but the norms around how they live: their dress, their occupation, their manners and customs, etc. can be very different based on their sex and the society.

The phrase 'assigned at birth' refers to how most of us are raised from birth with the gender role most typical of the sex you are born. (This is often true even of people who are neither biologically male or female).

Transgender people are those who intuitively identify with a different gender from their sex or assigned gender, and decide to live as it. Nonbinary people are those who identify with neither gender, and decide to stop publicly identifying with them.

Why don't we just expand the definitions of gender to include more behaviors, rather than people having to switch genders?

It's possible to do both. People frequently identify as their assigned gender despite having some unconventional behaviors for it. Others simply feel a deeper connection to the gender they weren't raised as, and feel happier living as it. Butler argues that we should simply allow people to define themselves how they like and respect that choice.

Why wasn't anyone doing this until recently?


There are also many examples of people redefining gender over the course of history; indeed, that may be how we got from 15th century gender roles to today's. In recent memory, artists like David Bowie, Prince, Eddie Izzard--as well as movies like Boys Don't Cry, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and Tootsie--are all famous examples of exploring different gender identities.

It seems reasonable to acknowledge humans have had a wide variety of feelings and behavior around gender. It's also worth noting that in many societies defying gender roles could--and can--come with severe social or even criminal consequences, and that likely reduced the amount of behaviors people expressed. As greater knowledge and acceptance of nonconventional identities emerges, it's possible that more people simply feel comfortable identifying and expressing feelings that might have been repressed in the past.

[patmaurer]

As a feminist in the early 1970s, I was harshly criticized for wanting to be a wife and mother. I was called a traitor to the cause for not disparaging that 'toxic' role. I was shocked! Because to me, the point was to have a society where everyone is valued and free to pursue WHATEVER vocation you feel called to! The idea that women could ONLY be 'equal' if they do what men do is giving up on feminism.

[erikfldt]

In a nutshell: Maybe we should just be chill if someone wants to go against the norm.

[DMXRUSER]

If i had a dollar for every gender, i would have two dollars and a credit card

[thepoleontheroad]

That title on the thumbnail is enough for a crowd of people to start hollering at each other like savages

[davescott]

Gender, I have. Sex, I'm lacking.

[BD-ylmh]

What I always find interesting is for a lot of binary trans people (let’s take a transwoman for my example) they’ll often experience some of their life before they fully work themselves out in which they’ll constantly be told “you’re not a real man, ” for all their feminine habits and features and interests etc. and then the moment that person goes “no actually, you’re right, I’m not a man, I’m a woman” suddenly the attack switches to “you’re not a real woman”

[FQR]

When I was a grad student 20 years ago I worshipped at the altar of social constructionism and Judith Butler. Being able to quote Butler was such an achievement! Now, 20 years later, it’s such a load of crap. Only grad students and Butler care about Butler. The realities of life has made me realise all of this is just intellectual masturbation.

[x]

I have just read the following critique about her last book "Who’s Afraid of Gender?" in The Economist. Here an extract. This is exactly what you can expect of her:

"The problem is that pretty soon, the author leaves the path of gay-rights advocacy and disappears down an ideological rabbit hole. Soon after critiques of “the so-called facts of sex”, the tq+ overwhelms the lgb. The result is a stir-fry of disingenuous provocations, served up with a large portion of post-modern word salad. The reader is left wondering how Butler ever became so influential. Butler smears the growing army of liberal-minded women who oppose these views on sex and gender, including J.K. Rowling, as hysterical right-wingers allied with the pope, Mr Trump and Vladimir Putin. Soon the author descends into the quicksand of intersectionality, where all oppressions overlap, accusing people who criticise the Butler perspective of buttressing “white supremacy”. By the end, all opponents are extremists. The words “fascism” and “fascist” appear nearly 70 times.

The book is a lesson in how well-meaning activism can overreach. The author has lent intellectual credibility to a theory that has, as recently revealed in the Cass Review commissioned about England’s youth-gender services, caused harm to many young people, some of whom are autistic, depressed or simply gay. Channelling Butler’s theories, some activists are labelling those who oppose giving minors cross-sex hormones as “bigots”.

[gertvandenberghe]

What I love even more about Butler's performativity theory is that it cannot only be applied to gender, but also to basically every other subject position. Every group you're part of, be it an ethnicity or even a fandom of some random movie, brings its own stereotypical set of behaviours that is repeated and reinforced all the time. Makes it a very interesting tool for analysis in anthropological research

[RadicalTrivia]

"My whole life I've been trying to take a break from gender." I feel this so hard, but with race.

[Hvelcar]

its amazing that the cambridge dictionary uses the word woman to define woman... thats themoment where you realize that we are fked up

[MajaSmiley]

Butler keeps saying that sex is "assigned" at birth, BUT IT IS NOT.

Sex is RECOGNISED at birth. And that is the main difference.

Terminology, when not used properly, can sell any idea, agenda, philosophy or dogma, and people buy it.

[Vicky-flpv]

The whole point of these existentialists (in terms of gender and sexuality) was that your sex and gender does not limit your potential as a human being. That you are capable of anything you wish. You can be a feminine dude or you can be a masculine chick. It really doesn't matter. You are legit. That was the whole point but now it has taken a 180 degree turn. Now the scene is, if I feel feminine, I must become a woman, they just further go on to concrete the original traditional views expected from a particular gender. This creates a paradox. A woman is not just big boobs, nice dresses and beautiful makeup. She's more than that. Similarly a man is not just some, emotionless, hardcore, athletic, outgoing person, he is more than that.

[ajellyfishstealingidentities]

"my whole life I've been wanting to take a break from gender" same judith. same.

[Mel-wngb]

I was reading a children's book recently which is designed to 'educate' children on this topic. The very first page was an exercise in mental gymnastics and utter stupidity. The answer to "what is gender"? conflated sex with 'gender'. On the very next page we get the actual definition of 'gender', ie. that it's an oppressive, sexist social construct, but whoever wrote this mumbo jumbo obviously can't string two thoughts together and missed their ligtbulb moment. The book should be in the fiction shelves of the bookstore under 'comedy', not presented as fact to developing minds. Our kids have a right to a quality, factual education, not indoctrination into ideological dogma that not even the ideologues themselves understand.

[AA-wctw]

I'm sorry that so many humans are treated like sh!t by other humans, simply because they want to live the way they want to live, in peace.

[AnitaAdamski]

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken" - Oscar Wilde

[alarh]

Sex has to do with a set of biological attributes, such as our chromosomes, reproductive and sexual anatomy, hormone functions, etc.

[thescoon]

My question about gender really boils down to this: is gender even necessary? To me, gender is a frankly useless category. Perhaps it's worse than useless; perhaps it's actually damaging. Sex differences are sex differences due to immutable characteristics, like physical form and the functions of certain hormones in the body of which we have no control, but then taking those characteristics and creating an *expectation* of a person from them seems silly to me. The words 'masculine' and 'feminine' derive from these immutable differences, and that is also fine to recognise, but it becomes not fine the second it is expected of you to fulfil them like some kind of performative role. Remove the performance from it, be the person you want to be, and gender will have absolutely no use or value to anyone at all.