IN-PERSON: Judith Butler “Who’s Afraid of Gender?” Book Discussion Group
CEW+, 330 E. Liberty Street, Ann Arbor
Registration is currently full, but the waitlist is open.
Join us for a guided in-person group discussion of Judith Butler’s book Who’s Afraid of Gender?
In Who’s Afraid of Gender?, Butler aims to address the following question: “What kind of phantasm has gender become, and what anxieties, fears, and hatreds does it collect and mobilize?” (36). While doing so, Butler examines how this phantasm relates to today’s “myriad acts of cancellation, pathologization, criminalization, and delegitimation . . . seeking to destroy freedoms and powers that social movements on the Left have struggled for decades to establish” (24). The book is a timely and necessary investigation into the weaponization of “gender” as a phantasm invoked by those calling “for the elimination of gender education, the censorship of texts concerned with gender, and the disenfranchisement or criminalization of transgender or genderqueer people” (36).
National Bestseller. Named a Best Book of 2024 (so far) by NPR, Harper’s Bazaar, W, and Esquire, and a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Los Angeles Times, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Kirkus, Literary Hub, Autostraddle, The Millions, Electric Literature, and them.
“A profoundly urgent intervention.” —Naomi Klein
“A timely must-read for anyone actively invested in reimagining collective futurity.” —Claudia Rankine
From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fueling reactionary politics around the world.
Judith Butler, the groundbreaking thinker whose iconic book Gender Trouble 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” that are dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous, perhaps diabolical, threat to families, local cultures, civilization—and even “man” himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual and gender violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights to pursue a life without fear of violence.
The aim of Who’s Afraid of Gender? is not to offer a new theory of gender but to examine how “gender” has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and trans-exclusionary feminists. In their vital, courageous new book, Butler illuminates the concrete ways that this phantasm of “gender” collects and displaces anxieties and fears of destruction. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of “critical race theory” and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality, fuels aggressive nationalism, 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 bold call to refuse the alliance with authoritarian movements and to make a broad coalition with all those whose struggle for equality is linked with fighting injustice. Imagining new possibilities for both freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us a hopeful work of social and political analysis that is both timely and timeless—a book whose verve and rigor only they could deliver.