After teaching Who’s Afraid of Gender I think the account is too broad to capture anti-trans politics (that’s fine, more for me to write about) but it makes significant progress from Butler’s earlier writings on trans people. Butler really listened and grew in this area.
The final part of my course is something like gender critical philosophy vs. Judith Butler and I do agree with critiques of Butler that they are too generous at points. But I think they effectively draw out how gender critical feminism is a nihilistic uncritical movement in the service of reaction.
I was in a reading group for it with cis colleagues this past summer and they all kept insisting Butler wasn't saying anything new in this book and I kept trying to point out how they do deal with trans critiques of their earlier work fairly productively but none of them wanted to hear it
I think Butler is probably the thinker I have spent most of my sustained study on and around the second half this book is such a moment of growth for them as a scholar! I think many of these chapters would be essential readings in a course specifically on their work and its development over time.
I completely agree! It was a really confusing discussion for me, especially because there are moments where Butler explicitly acknowledges they're responding to critiques of their earlier work, so I don't know why the cis couldn't see it
We get Butler emphasizing the mutability of sex, then framing it in relation to nature/culture understood in interaction; as a way of also refusing to reduce nature in the context of climate destruction; & a discussion of the contingency of language and its meaning for transnational alliances!
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