Judith Butler on Why Gender Is in Trump’s Crosshairs

On with Kara Swisher

New York Magazine

News Commentary, News, Society & Culture

4.2 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Philosopher and critical theorist Judith Butler, Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School at UC Berkeley, has been at the forefront of gender theory for 35 years. But while their work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, which helped establish the idea of gender as a social construct in the 1990s, was lauded by the LGBTQIA+ community for opening the doors to queer theory, they’ve been vilified by those on the right for whom gender theory is a threat to “tradition.” Kara and Judith talk about their latest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender, which analyses the growing attacks on gender and gender theory around the world; how Trump’s executive order redefining sex as binary impacts everything from personal rights to medical research; and why recent attacks on the independence of universities could have a chilling effect on academic freedom in the long term. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Are you working on your Kafka work?
0:02.5	Yes, I am.
0:04.2	Oh, I'm so happy.
0:05.3	I'm so excited to read that.
0:06.8	My favorite book of all things of so many books is the trial.
0:10.8	I love the trial.
0:11.6	Like a dog.
0:12.5	That's the line.
0:13.9	Like a dog.
0:15.4	Like a dog.
0:16.6	Dog should be treated better, of course.
0:19.4	It's on. Dogs should be treated better, of course.
0:33.9	Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:36.4	This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.
0:56.1	I've been talking on this show with guests about the various ways the Trump administration is flooding the zone and eroding democracy in the process. We just spoke on Monday about how the attacks on immigration are becoming a showdown with the courts. Today, we're going to talk about how they're attempting to eradicate gender identity in favor of what they believe is good, old-fashioned biology with, quote, men on one side and women on the other. It's complex. That's not how it works.
1:03.8	Even scientists have told the administration that. But nonetheless, they are using that paradigm to force
1:09.5	society into a binary that doesn't exist in real life.
1:13.9	There's no better person to try to explain why that is happening and why it's not just about transgender people than our guest today, Judith Butler.
1:22.9	Butler is a philosopher and critical theorist, a distinguished professor at the graduate school at
1:27.6	UC Berkeley. They didn't create gender theory, but they are probably its most famous face.
1:33.5	Back in 1990, they wrote a book, Gender Trouble, Feminism, and the Subversion of Identity,
1:39.4	that opened the door to what is known as queer theory today. For a generation of transgender, non-binary,
	...

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