Who's Afraid of Gender? Judith Butler and Jack Halberstam in Conversation

In 1990, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity helped revolutionize how we understand sexuality, gender, and the performative dimensions of identity. In the decades since, Butler has become one of our most trenchant and iconic public intellectuals—a thinker who has made countless timely and urgent interventions on questions of violence and peace, language and war, and precarity and cohabitation. Now, in Who’s Afraid of Gender? (2024), Butler returns to the topic that made their name, to illuminate how “anti-gender ideology movements” have become central to reactionary politics and rising authoritarianism worldwide.

In a special launch event, co-presented by Pioneer Works and Dia Art Foundation, Jack Halberstam joined Judith Butler on stage at Dia Chelsea to discuss their new book, what it’s like to be burned in effigy, and so much more.

This program is part of PW Broadcast's Author Talks, a series highlighting authors and thinkers across disciplines.

Video by Max Tannone © 2024 Pioneer Works, Footage courtesy of Dia Art Foundation

This project is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, bridging the two cultures of science and the arts.

[samcox]

I love Judith Butler!!!! They are the best!!!

[xSaecredChaotixx]

Anyone watch the video or did they come here with a script from their favorite pundits and talking heads?

[clairecolebrook]

This was fabulous - thanks Jack and Judy!!

[g.t.]

Some people don't understand how butler is using her basic terms. This is not our common understanding from every day language

[gautammehta]

butler talking about girling at 32:00 is amazing - im reminded of the le sserafim song "crazy". 
thank you professors Jack and Judith for this entire conversation, you are our captains.

[jasontarantino]

After reading all these comments, a few things become clear. It is clear that many of these arguments disregard Butler’s use of Austin’s work on utterances, specifically performative utterances. This is foundational and if you can’t challenge this aspect of the thinking, you are not challenging the thinking. It’s clear that people don’t understand that this thesis is not about social construction per se, as Butler’s work is not sociological. Sociology is peripherally relevant but not directly. In addition, regarding sex one could argue that biology is a social construct. They would be correct. Every bit of categorization is named and organized within a mutable social framework. That includes the scientific method, which privileges the repeatable and critiques of methodology. It hasn’t always been that way and to be honest there is no way to suggest whether that method or a previous method that is not a predicate. So to suggest there’s two sexes according to science is fallacious. Why organize humans into genital categories based on procreative duties? Why not finger length? Or fingerprint shape? Or skull density? It’s purely arbitrary, in a sense. It is also clear, that people conflate biological sex and gender and use that to dismiss Butler’s point. There is a big difference in being and becoming. The performative has little to do with categories of human existence. I’d go further and ask, why care about biology/sex at all when it comes to identity, or anything else. It’s also clear and somewhat interesting how many claim trans-ness is misogynistic or homophobic. I’m not clear on how one could erect such an argument in a way that the structure is not a house of cards, but good one for trying. Finally, it’s also clear that their are a lot of people who seem smart but say dumb things purely based on bias or uniformed opinion or ignorance.

[GammelfleischGmbH]

Not in agreement what Butler is saying, but thank you for uploading this and leaving the comments open!

[wegder]

It is wonderful to hear from our progressive masters talking about their religion.

[tmlavenz]

From my observation, a lot of the worry centers around:

1a) Children and adolescents making life-altering decisions about hormone therapy and major surgeries—say, to sterilize themselves before they have reached sexual maturity, or without fully understanding what kind of life-long choice they're making. The book argues that regret is infrequent, but the voices of detransitioners are loud and growing (though from what I understand the trans community is loath to show them any support). Their experiences with gender-affirming care are also worth hearing and reckoning with, aren't they? (I noticed that the word "detransition" was not used in the book, which I found an odd omission.) What is the author's position on access of minors to life-altering medical intervention? (Assuming we agree that legal protection for minors (tattoos, etc.) is a good feature of our society.)

1b) Connected to this is the fact of adolescents being forcibly removed from their parents by the state if the parent raises objections to the gender-affirming intervention. Does the author ratify the state's role to confiscate children from parents in such a case? (I don't think one can understand the fear that gender ideology wants to break apart the family unless one faces cases like this head-on.)

2) Rights regarding women's gyms and sports, for the biological facts of difference in size, strength, endurance, bone-density, etc., to be honored in terms of bathroom privacy, playfield safety, and fair competition. Of course there is great natural variance of physique and aptitude among bodies, but Title IX laws acknowledge the physical differences between men and women for a reason. Does the author believe that trans women should participate in women's sport? With some level of hormone therapy that modifies testosterone levels, or also without any medical transitioning? This issue is also one that will increasingly galvanize the 'common folk', as they see their daughter's opportunities taken by trans women.

I submit these questions as a cultural observer. The speaker's cause would be much helped along if they took these specific worries more seriously.

[mrmatt]

I don't understand why it is so difficult to accept that males and females can behave in all sorts of ways and have all sorts of characteristics. But that doesn't mean your sex is just a guess or a social construct.

[conancat]

All these "biology is destiny" people in the comments section baffles me. Literally everything on a birth certificate can change throughout your life but somehow the sex assigned at birth is not allowed to change. Such a ridiculous hill to die on when people just want to live their lives in their own terms.

[ambientjohnny]

"Am I capable of entertaining real doubt about my beliefs, or am I operating from a place of certainty?
Can I articulate the evidence I would need to see in order to change my position, or is my perspective unfalsifiable?
Can I articulate my opponent’s position in a way they’d recognize, or am I straw-manning?
Am I attacking ideas or attacking the people who hold them?
Am I willing to cut off close relationships with people who disagree with me, particularly over relatively small points of contention?
Am I willing to use extraordinary means against people who disagree with me (e.g., forcing people out of their jobs or homes, violence/threats of violence, celebrating misfortune and tragedy)?"

"Trans" advocates fail at every single one of these questions.

[ambientjohnny]

No one can be "born in the wrong body", our brains ARE our body just as much as any other part of it. We are the sex we are, regardless of what our personal relationship is with the sexist stereotypes in society. "Trans" ideology, is regressive and sexist, as there is no "correct way" of being a boy or girl, man or woman, all those terms do is indicate sex and stage of maturity - decoupling sex and gender and trying to make gender into this ludicrous concoction of personality and sexist stereotypes is beyond regressive - it actively harms people who buy into it - the idea that there is something wrong with a kid's body that needs to be chemically altered because they believe living up to sexist stereotypes is some real measure of whether they are a boy or a girl (and man or woman for adults obviously), is insanity.

I have asked hundreds of "activists" and "allies" to explain what they are, or what they perceive “trans” people are, measuring themselves against to determine that they have a need to transition - NOT ONE person has been able to articulate what that is - not one person is able to distance themselves sufficiently to realise that THEY are the ones with a regressively sexist idea of what it means to be a boy/girl or man/woman and that that is the issue causing all the problems - their own misunderstanding and severely limited perspective/sexist misunderstanding of what sexist stereotypes/"gender norms" actually entail - they are not rules, they are not real boundaries, they are regressive ideas and generalisations - no one needs to live up to any such utter nonsense or feel comfortable with those stereotypes to be a boy/girl/man/woman - all those terms represent, and all they should represent, is sex and stage of maturity - by creating this whole "gender identity" nonsense, THAT IS WHAT CAUSES ALL THE DISTRESS, THIS FABRICATION OF A FRAMEWORK WHICH DISTORTS REALITY.

No one in the movement has been able to explain or articulate what this supposed "womanly essence" or "manly essence" is that they feel/know/need to transition in order to represent etc. actually is - yet you all actively believe in it and push for it to be accepted. Sometimes activists try to slither out of this fact, by claiming they don’t believe in any “essence”. This is pure semantics and sophistry, they will always fall back on claiming there is indeed “something” that can “make a male a woman” that they then can’t even define when pressed… How exactly that is nothing like an essence is anyone’s guess.

[thomasmurphy]

Judith’s brilliance is matched only by her moral and civic integrity. They’re a national treasure.

[ambientjohnny]

NO ONE shares some exact "experience" of being a man or a woman, that is why we define a woman as an adult FEMALE, they are all of the same sex, that is what defines them. "Man" or "woman" are not some moral judgement or evaluation of how masculine or feminine they feel or present, it's simply about having a term to describe any adult human male and any adult human female.

This obsession that the "trans" community has with redefining the terms to reflect how they feel etc. is totally pointless. There are no people who truly feel 100% comfortable all of the time, the idea of labelling people "cis" or "trans" is completely unnecessary, there is no "cis" experience and there is no "trans" experience, people are individuals, and as a whole the community fails to come up with any coherent explanation to define their redefinition of "woman" because you cannot come up with a definition that caters to every possibility. That is why the terms "man" and "woman" being rooted in physical reality is the only thing that makes sense, if there are no clear parameters for a definition then it cannot function as a definition. If anyone can identify as a grablar, and the only definition of being a grablar, is feeling like identifying as one, then you haven't defined grablar as anything at all. This is why it is also an obsession with creating more and more boxes.

The terms "man" and "woman" encompass every possible personality, within physical boundaries, any man or woman is free to act, think, look, behave however they want, that they as individuals are labelled as men or women is purely about the physical - saying a man is an adult human male, and a woman an adult human female does not restrict anyone's self-expression, not wanting to acknowledge one's physical reality is a fool's errand, the sex someone is doesn't change based on how anyone feels or dresses - so it is the "trans" side that 100% is creating this false narrative that acknowledging a person's sex is somehow restrictive, they are the side saying men or women behave like this or that. I mean if they weren't doing that, then they would agree that the umbrella terms based on sex, man and woman, were perfectly fine - but they don't! They say no no, if someone doesn't FEEL like the sex they are, they can't be it, though they cannot explain what "feeling cis" even really means, because NO ONE shares the exact same experiences emotionally. What "they" are trying to do is swap a definition that has a physical basis, for a definition that is entirely rooted in feelings and often in validating sexist stereotypes associated with either sex.

This "woman is a social construct" thing IS the part that validates and perpetuates sexist stereotypes - woman isn't a social construct in that sense, it is a word society has chosen yes, but to describe a PHYSICAL state of being, not anyone's emotional states or where they fall on some spectrum of masculinity or femininity. There is a fundamental misunderstanding here of what the definition of man and woman means. The notion that people need to live up to sexist stereotypes of what "real men" or "real women" are, is complete fantasy. The fact that many people act as if sexist stereotypes were valid ways of measuring "real men" or real women" is a problem with the individual and their sexist bias, not with the terms themselves, as the terms themselves have none of the expectational baggage that people who internalise sexist stereotypes associate with them.

[ambientjohnny]

"A new long-term study from Germany suggests that the majority of young people diagnosed with gender identity disorders do not continue to identify as such over time. The study examined insurance data over five years, revealing that more than half of young people aged 5-24 across every age subgroup diagnosed with "gender identity disorder" no longer had the diagnosis after five years. Specifically, the desistance rate was 72.7% in 15- to 19-year-old females and 50.3% in 20- to 24-year-old males. Among the whole group of 5- to 24-year-olds, only about 36.4% of those diagnosed in 2017 still had the diagnosis five years later, indicating that more than 63% desisted.

One of the strengths of this study is its comprehensive collection of outpatient billing data for all legally insured persons in Germany, providing a large and representative sample. Additionally, the long observation period from 2013 to 2022 offers valuable insights into long-term trends and changes in diagnosis rates."

[katerynakuzmuk]

thank you for this interview. judith is my icon

[ambientjohnny]

Claiming to be "trans" really has nothing at all in common with homosexuality. A person's sexuality is not a "gender identity", it is a physical fact, same-sex attraction, and the rights gay people fought for were nothing like what "trans" people are demanding - gay people were never demanding to be recognised by law as another sex than they were, they were not demanding access to spaces reserved for the opposite sex, nor were they demanding others to change a single thing about their behaviour for them, neither sex had to give up any rights or protections in the name of gay rights.

Claiming to be "trans" is not a sexuality. Being gay is a sexuality.

Further, "trans" ideology is at times extremely homophobic, as evidenced by a significant amount of people trying to redefine same-sex attraction as "gender attraction", and the phenomenon of males denying their own homosexuality under the "trans" banner, by claiming to "transition gender" into "women" and thus reframe their same-sex attraction to other males as "not gay" because they are now claiming to be "women attracted to men" - AND, the attempted erasure of lesbian reality by males claiming to be "lesbian" by "transitioning to a woman" and being attracted to females - they are not gay, they are males attracted to females, they are straight, yet trying to redefine same-sex attraction as "same-gender" attraction, which tons of lesbians are appalled by, yet their concerns get shouted down as "transphobic"

[kj]

I finally understand what I have been hearing. This is obviously akin to a religious movement and not a scientific movement.,

[jasperdrak]

You are making the world that I want to be in. Thank you both. x