Judith Butler on the Global Backlash to L.G.B.T.Q. Rights
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Long before gender theory became a principal target of the right, it existed principally in academic circles. And one of the leading thinkers in the field was the philosopher Judith Butler. In “Gender Trouble” (from 1990) and in other works, Butler popularized ideas about gender as a social construct, a “performance,” a matter of learned behavior. Those ideas proved highly influential for a younger generation, and Butler became the target of traditionalists who abhorred them. A protest at which Butler was burned in effigy, depicted as a witch, inspired their new book, “Who’s Afraid of Gender?” It covers the backlash to trans rights in which conservatives from the Vatican to Vladimir Putin create a “phantasm” of gender as a destructive force. “Obviously, nobody who is thinking about gender . . . is saying you can’t be a mother, that you can’t be a father, or we’re not using those words anymore,” they tell David Remnick. “Or we’re going to take your sex away.” They also discuss Butler’s identification as nonbinary after many years of identifying as a woman. “The young people gave me the ‘they,’ ” as Butler puts it. “At the end of ‘Gender Trouble,’ in 1990, I said, ‘Why do we restrict ourselves to thinking there are only men and women?’ . . . This generation has come along with the idea of being nonbinary. [It] never occurred to me! Then I thought, Of course I am. What else would I be? . . . I just feel gratitude to the younger generation, they gave me something wonderful. That also takes humility of a certain kind.”
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choicesTranscript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi there, I'm Lalei Arikoglu, and this podcast is brought to you by Wilderness, a conservation-driven |
| 0:06.5 | hospitality company that offers intimate wildlife encounters in extraordinary remote landscapes. |
| 0:12.5 | Last year, I embarked on two separate solo adventures with Wilderness, one to Botswana and the other |
| 0:18.3 | to Namibia, where the expert guides delivered a truly once-in-a-lifetime |
| 0:23.6 | experience. I promise you, whatever you watch and see before you go won't prepare you for the thrill |
| 0:29.5 | of a wilderness adventure. eBay, it's a place to fall in love with new pre-loved vintage and rare |
| 0:36.7 | fashion over and over again. |
| 0:39.1 | Your favorite designers, expertly authenticated. |
| 0:42.5 | Yeah, eBay. |
| 0:44.1 | Things people love. |
| 0:49.4 | This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick. |
| 1:03.6 | Now, long before gender theory became a real focus, a real target for conservative lawmakers, |
| 1:06.1 | it existed largely within academia. |
| 1:11.6 | And if you were interested in gender, one of the people you were definitely reading was Judith Butler. Butler is a philosopher. And in 1990, they published gender trouble, feminism, and the |
| 1:18.3 | subversion of identity. This is a crucial book. It began popularizing the idea that gender is a social |
| 1:24.5 | construct or a performance to use Butler's terms. |
| 1:30.7 | In that view, gender is not just a matter of biology, |
| 1:35.6 | but is determined by a set of behaviors that are learned as part of culture. |
| 1:39.6 | Those ideas of Butler's proved extremely influential and are now widely held by a younger generation of Americans, |
| 1:42.7 | whether they've read Butler or not. |
| 1:45.0 | Those ideas are also furiously contested by major conservative political forces around the |
| 1:49.7 | world, from the Vatican to Vladimir Putin. Judith Butler addresses that backlash in a new |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.