In the latest saga of the ever-confusing relationship between Judith Butler and The Guardian, the renowned gender theorist published an op-ed in the famously transphobic publication’s U.S. edition this weekend. And just like clockwork, TERFs and “gender critical” feminists are mad at Butler for correctly assessing that such movements are, indeed, fascist.
In their op-ed, Butler questions why the idea of “gender” (quotes theirs) is provoking backlash around the world, noting a sharp increase in retaliation in recent years from all across the ideological spectrum. That includes a Hungarian law passed in June that banned “propaganda” related to “homosexuality and gender change,” Poland’s “LGBT-free zones,” and a Danish parliamentary motion that condemned “excessive activism” in academic research, which naturally includes the entire field of gender studies.
While Butler concedes that the anti-”gender ideology” movement is largely incoherent, one of its few intelligible goals across coalitions is to roll back the legislative progress that LGBTQ+ activists and feminists have won in recent decades. And of course, there’s also the contradiction at the heart of gender-critical and gender-exclusionary rhetoric: that it purports to be concerned about the safety of cis women and girls, even though these movements harm them, too. Transphobic fundamentalists also tend to “oppose reproductive freedom for women and the rights of single parents” and “oppose protections for women against rape and domestic violence” while pushing legislation like the dozens of iterations of the so-called “Save Women’s Sports Act.”
But rather than being a limitation, Butler argues that the incoherence of anti-gender ideology is actually one of its core strengths. Because the movement’s arguments are so malleable, transphobes are able to mobilize the right, the left, and everyone in between.
To that end, Butler does a good job of laying out that the anti-trans movement ultimately is about strengthening government oversight — restricting access to medical care and generally seeking to ban LGBTQ+ people from the public sphere, which fits pretty neatly into just about every standard definition of fascism. That includes gender critical feminists, the self-professed “leftist” equivalent of the more extreme right-wing fundamentalists.
Naturally, this led to the gender critical feminists getting really mad at Butler for being correct, as they usually are. Jesse Singal, a writer with a famously creepy preoccupation with trans children, referred to Butler’s piece as “confused” in a since-deleted tweet. He even asserted that the piece read “as though Butler has just started looking into these issues and is mostly relying on Twitter and Tumblr.” Self-described “old lady feminist” Victoria Smith, meanwhile, said that it would “help everyone if someone sat down with Judith Butler and patiently explained what gender is.”
It’s worth noting that Gender Trouble, Butler’s most seminal work, was in fact published in March 1990, and that they’ve been patiently explaining what gender is to the public for over three decades at this point. For better or for worse, it’s Butler who has shaped the dominant gender discourses on Tumblr and Twitter, not vice versa — without Butler, we wouldn’t have people constantly misusing the word “performativity,” and what would the 2010s internet have been without that?
But like Butler wrote themself, TERFs, gender criticals, and transphobes of all stripes aren’t interested in consistent or rational arguments. If you’ve ever made the mistake of trying to convince one of them over social media, you know that this is true. And while Butler’s attempt to reach across the aisle is admirable, the rest of us are probably better off just pointing and laughing.
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