Who's Afraid of Gender?

Huzzah. Really good. SO timely, I felt a FRISSON of timeliness. I used to be all into postmodernism and philosophy and 3rd wave feminism in the mid-00s. I forgot about that VIBE, man. Judith Butler IS that vibe, they EMBODY it. So... okay, I'll be honest, I zoned out at the thousandth time they called “gender ideology” a “phantasm”, overloaded with the anxieties of our climate change-crumbling, authoritarian age. But when I was locked in, mwah, chef's kiss.

I actually think one of the most powerful - and relatively brief - sections of this book was when they discussed climate change anxiety. I've never heard anyone write about that anxiety with such powerful lyricism (!).

powerful and incisive critique of meta gender politics of the 21st century. i buy phantasm as a framework for understanding reactionary anti feminist positions, with two qualifications: (1) to me it's indicative of how all of us do our thinking more via images, metaphors, genres and thus phantasms, rather than words, sentences and syllogisms - so some analysis of our phantasms on the left would be nice, (2) it's true that the anti-feminists don't engage with the work of the left, but how much do we on the left, beyond our best representatives like butler, truly understand the discontent of our counterparts?

and what about everyone standing nervously in the middle? this book ends with a passionate call to action but it's preaching to the choir using its own songsheets. butler is right, we're not operating in a world of discrete propositions and fair discourse. maybe we must hence more explicitly commit to the politics of collaboration at a time when the left is yet again splintering through purity tests.