Who's Afraid of Gender?

By Judith Butler

From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fueling reactionary politics around the world.

Judith Butler, the groundbreaking thinker whose book Gender Trouble redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on “gender” that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed “anti-gender ideology" movements that depict gender as a threat to families, cultures, and even “man” himself. Inflamed by public figures, this movement has sought to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual and gender violence, and strip trans and queer people of safety.

The aim of Who’s Afraid of Gender? is to examine how “gender” has become a phantasm for authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and transexclusionary feminists. In their courageous new book, Butler illuminates the concrete ways that this phantasm of “gender” collects and displaces fears of destruction. Operating alongside deceptive accounts of “critical race theory” and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality, fuels aggressive nationalism, and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation.

An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who’s Afraid of Gender? is a bold call for coalition building between all of those struggling against injustice. Imagining new possibilities for both freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us a hopeful work of social and political analysis that is both timely and timeless—a book whose verve and rigor only they could deliver.