In 2017, a major protest was organized at the gates of a Brazilian research institute where philosopher Judith Butler was holding a conference on democracy. The protesters, convinced that the researcher was going to offer a seminar on the gender theories that made her famous, called her a witch and the devil’s messenger, before setting fire to a doll bearing her image.
The famous academic is no stranger to controversy. However, for several years, it has not been able to travel to several regions of the world without an imposing security system. “I noticed, without being able to understand it, that anger was growing, both in Eastern Europe and in South America, as much in Russia as in Central Africa,” she said, joined in Paris by Duty by videoconference. Increasingly, gender was associated with a threat to society, the family, even the idea of man and woman. I began discussions with my colleagues who had encountered opposition from gender movements, and I began to be able to better explain the global nature of the movement, its connections and variations from place to place. ‘other. »
An authoritarian drift
From his research was born the essay Who’s afraid of gender?a first foray by Judith Butler into a literature circulating outside the university corridors, in which she tracks the different manifestations of gender ideology across continents. From the populist right to evangelical churches, including transphobic feminists and authoritarian regimes, she dissects and deconstructs the discourses which have established gender as an “obsessive fantasy”, and which have thus instilled various fears diverting the common gaze from issues much more terrifying and externalized these fears on vulnerable populations.
“We are all currently dealing with great fears about the future,” explains the researcher. Many people have lost their job security, fearing they will not have enough money to repay their debts, feed their children or keep a roof over their heads. Horrible wars are raging in Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine. The state of the planet doesn’t bode well either. However, right-wing ideologues use this fear to their advantage. They will blame this insecurity on migrants, on universities that teach the history of slavery, colonialism or gender theory, on homosexuals, trans people, feminist movements, which would literally threaten humanity. There is therefore an exploitation of this fear and a failure to name what really causes it: capitalism, which makes debt a permanent condition of life. »
Judith Butler believes that contemporary gender ideology and policies consolidate the global movement toward autocracy that we currently observe. “Gender is a very intimate concept. Some right-wing ideologues, like Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, claim that gender theorists want to strip people of their sexual identity, that they want to eliminate the terms “man” and “woman,” “father” and “mother.” ”. This is ridiculous, of course. Sowing this visceral fear serves the right because the population more willingly offers them the power to manage education and health care, and gives them the right to attack higher education, intellectualism and, eventually, democracy . »
Discourse hijacking
The philosopher therefore sets out to dissect several ideas conveyed by supporters of gender ideology, analyzing both religious arguments and the major legislative debates currently shaking the globe. She also explores the state’s investment in the fantasy of restoring patriarchal powers, the rise of transphobic feminists, particularly in Britain, and the causes and consequences of the Trump era.
She also examines the paradoxical way in which colonization takes place in the movement, refuting an allegation – emanating from the Vatican – according to which the genre serves colonial projects and the supremacy of the North over the South by imposing an ideology which would aim at the destruction of cultures. non-dominant.
Judith Butler acknowledges that some human rights standards are seen as imperialist when they impose language and constraints on regions that do not want to conform to those standards, on gay and trans activists who want to use their own language and their own networks to generate political mobilization. “I remember an activist in North Africa who told me that he would not be able to obtain funding from major international bodies unless he opposed very targeted problems, such as clitoridectomy. If he wanted to work on women’s health, poverty or literacy, he received no support, even though he was in a much better position to know what Africans need. »
Sowing this visceral fear serves the right, because the population more willingly offers it the power to manage education and health care.
However, the Vatican is wrong to say that the fights of queer people for sexual freedom, against violence and repression in families, workplaces and the public sphere are imposed by the North. These movements are indeed well underway in the countries of the Global South, and have been for a long time.
According to the theorist, this diversion of discourse serves rather to silence the own colonial enterprise of the Vatican and the evangelical Church, which is greatly linked to the binary framework of society. “These institutions act out of great self-interest by hammering home what the family should look like: heteronormative, made up of a father and a mother who conceive children within marriage. However, we must remember that it is the Church which induced a very normative idea of gender in Africa, East Asia, Latin America and in indigenous communities, destroying in the process vernaculars, modes of filiation and intimacy which did not correspond to the model recommended by the Bible. »
A new imagination
To offer an alternative option to the fantasy and fears conveyed by the gender movement, which threatens the safety, health and lives of trans, non-binary and queer people, Judith Butler judges that we must make the collective choice to aim for impossible and to forge a solidarity and an imagination capable of counteracting “the cruel norms and sadistic tendencies” that it conveys.
“If we were realistic, we would abandon any form of struggle for equality, non-violence, justice, the environment. These are ideals, and ideals are always impossible before they are concrete. Those who are afraid must be reminded that these different people they fear so much are just like them, that they live in the house across the street, take their children to school, worry about their bills and their health. . It is possible to share existence together without our ways of living threatening those of others. If we abandoned this fear of destruction, we could build a world that embraces the diversity and complexity of human life, and which would allow everyone to walk down the street without fear for their life, with the same equality of opportunity. . It is imperative to educate young people, to have these conversations to eliminate discomfort and ignorance and, ultimately, to be able to live freely. »
