Who's Afraid of Gender?

Praise for Who's Afraid of Gender?

"A cogent and deeply thoughtful case against the right’s attempts to limit ideas of gender to male and female, offering philosophical and historical evidence to support a fluid system in which all people might present authentically." —Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times

" In their first trade-press book, Butler makes a concerted effort to keep Who’s Afraid of Gender? accessible and jargon-free. It is, without question, a demanding read, but not because the author is obfuscating or showing off. Rather, the difficulty derives from the rigor of the thought itself, and the work of accompanying the movement of that thought brings its own kind of pleasure." —Dana Stevens, Slate

"This is the most accessible of their books so far, an intervention meant for a wide audience . . . Because Butler is a human rights activist, as well as a theorist, the urgent point conveyed by this book is the same as it is in all their work: why are so many people seemingly happy to give away their power to increasingly authoritarian forces? And why are they so confident that this power will never be used against them?" —Finn McKay, The Guardian

"A clarifying exploration of how we got here and a clarion call for different, less fearful, less cramped ways of thinking about the world. With their signature critical focus on what we think of as ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’, Butler pins down the history behind the contemporary cultural battle over gender, exploring how gender fear markets itself as protection, crusade, and panacea – and why it won’t cure anything." —Eli Cugini, Dazed

"The urgency of Butler’s subject is evident at the level of tone and form. Largely free of specialized language or complicated syn­tax, it is the most accessible book they have published . . . Butler foregoes conventions of schol­arly engagement and avoids detours into specialized debates for the sake of a clear, consistent appeal: to create a world in which everyone can live, breathe, move, and love without fear of discrim­ination and violence." —Paisley Currah, The Yale Review

“A brilliant writer and thinker, Butler . . . offers a long-needed text clarifying confusion by design . . . Their newest offering is urgent, returning breathable air into a toxic cloud . . . The result is exhilarating and life-changing.” —Booklist (starred review)

"[A] trenchant polemic . . . Thoughtful and powerfully assured, this is an essential take on an ongoing political battle." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy. A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Only Judith Butler’s dazzling intellect and moral confidence could orient us inside the maze of projections, confessions, displacements, and co-optations that make up today’s wars over gender. It is the dream of a bygone, authoritarian masculinist power that unites the various fronts of this battle—and only solidarity between all who are in fascism’s crosshairs has a chance of saving us. A profoundly urgent intervention.” —Naomi Klein, author of Doppelgänger

“Judith Butler is the most important philosopher working in the United States today, and the one whose legacy is most likely to survive the test of time. Here, in clear, precise prose, and with devastatingly analytical precision, they dismantle the global attack on ‘Gender Ideology’, revealing it for what it is—an attack on democracy’s freedoms. ”—Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works

“Judith Butler has been brilliantly troubling the landscape of gender construction for over three decades. At a time when anti-Trans and anti-LGBTQIA rhetoric and ideology is creeping into every facet of our lives—from school boards and libraries to legislation and political campaigns—Who’s Afraid of Gender gives its reader a roadmap away from surprising oppositions within the progressive left. Their work calls for solidarity in the face of the weaponization of anti-gender ideology wielded by the political right. Butler makes us aware that there will be no freedom without gender freedom. A timely must-read for anyone actively invested in re-imagining collective futurity.” —Claudia Rankine, author of Just Us

“Judith Butler’s Who’s Afraid of Gender is more than a corrective and antidote to this corrosive time and to the terrible conjoining of the far right, conservatives, and liberals over meaning and mattering made manifest in the phantasms of ‘gender.’ It is also—and urgently—a call and an invitation to ‘new coalitions and new imaginaries’ and ‘to help produce a world in which we can move and breathe and love without fear of violence.’ It is a call to reject ‘righteous sadism,’ to know the risk of making another world, and to act, anyway, collectively toward it.” —Christina Sharpe, author of Ordinary Notes

“The global war against so-called ‘gender ideology’ is one of the most politically consequential and psychically intriguing phenomena of our present moment. Underneath it lies, Judith Butler argues in this powerful new book, a yearning for the restoration of a mythic patriarchal order in the face of mounting existential despair. As ever, Butler offers us a compelling diagnosis of the anxieties, fears and fantasies that structure our political present, pointing us towards both its darkest dimensions and its possible undoing.”—Amia Srinivasan, author of The Right to Sex

“Taking you by the hand and leading you through the phantasms, projections, inversions, and fascist passions of a world in economic and political turmoil, this book is remarkably empathetic towards those whose gruesome rights-stripping endeavors and moral panics it exhibits. Who’s Afraid of Gender? combines authority and humility, humor and horror, psychosocial inquiry and active political commitment, while also serving as an accessible primer on key debates in queer theory and gender studies around “nature/culture,” performativity, blackness, and decolonial approaches, for example. Bravo. I am grateful and heartened that Judith Butler has so comprehensively assessed the scene and thrown down this antifascist gauntlet. Few could approach the task of an agnotology of present-day anti-genderism with such patient grace.” —Sophie Lewis, author of Abolish the Family

“Judith Butler’s big brain and big heart have consistently made other people’s lives more possible by grappling with and exposing how authoritarian ideas work. Here they show how anti-trans and anti-queer rhetoric are on rapid rise from global and domestic Nationalists, the Catholic Church and TERFS. And that these divergent groups all root their attacks in false accusations of harm, when they are the ones holding the power. By answering the question “Who is out to destroy whom?” Butler dissects the distorted claim that expanding gender systems, “hurts” people who identify with the status quo. Butler turns these manipulative arguments on their heads, revealing the trope of perpetrators claiming victimhood as central to anti-trans politics. A useful, helpful, and hopeful book.” —Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show