Who's Afraid of Gender?

By: Judith Butler

Narrated by: Judith Butler

Long-listed, NPR Best Book of the Year, 2024

This program is read by the author.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Time, Elle, Kirkus, Literary Hub, The Millions, Electric Literature, and them.

"A profoundly urgent intervention.”—Naomi Klein

"A timely must-read for anyone actively invested in re-imagining collective futurity.”—Claudia Rankine

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 iconic 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 are dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous, perhaps diabolical, threat to families, local cultures, civilization—and even “man” himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual and gender violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights to pursue a life without fear of violence.

The aim of Who’s Afraid of Gender? is not to offer a new theory of gender but to examine how “gender” has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and transexclusionary feminists. In their vital, courageous new audiobook, Butler illuminates the concrete ways that this phantasm of “gender” collects and displaces anxieties and fears of destruction. Operating in tandem with 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 to refuse the alliance with authoritarian movements and to make a broad coalition with all those whose struggle for equality is linked with fighting 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—an audiobook whose verve and rigor only they could deliver.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2024 Judith Butler (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“A brilliant writer and thinker, Butler . . . offers a long-needed text clarifying confusion by design . . . Their newest offering is urgent, returning breathable air into a toxic cloud . . . The result is exhilarating and life-changing.”—Booklist (starred review)

"[A] trenchant polemic . . . Thoughtful and powerfully assured, this is an essential take on an ongoing political battle."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy. A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.”—Kirkus Reviews

A gripping and thorough analysis of anti-gender ideology in the 21st century

I found this work by Judith Butler to be an indispensable tool in understanding the various frameworks of the global anti-gender movement. A must-read for anyone seeking to gain a better understanding of this issue!

Accessible book about one of the divisive issues of this century

Easy to comprehend and follow, well-structured and cleverly written collection of arguments against the anti-gender movement. It provides a roadmap for thinking gender that reaffirms its critical and analytical edge by linking previous research and Butler’s own thoughts.

The answer is clear.

Butler’s perspective on the centrality of gender for the global far right is spot on. As a family scholar myself, I emphatically nodded along as they presented their argument.

I am in love.

I want to live in such a way that if I meet Judith while they are still with us in this life, they will think I'm cool.

I wasn’t afraid of gender; I’m even more solid now

I wrote an email to Judith Butler. I realized it can serve as a review (below). Whereever you may have started on the questions of sex, gender, gender identity—that set of topics, I think this book will expand your horizons and give you things to think about, even (maybe especially) if you don’t agree with every word. I’d like to be clear, there is much I disagree with; but I love it that Butler (they/them) invites people who disagree to talk together, to join each other against common enemies. To be honest, it’s not always clear that Butler would listen to disagreements by reasonable people, but I’ll take them at their word.
If you have read “Gender Trouble” you will find this clearer and with a positive message about what we might be able to do together. I needed a guiding light in these difficult times. That light is coalition: “If you’re in a coalition and you’re comfortable, you know it’s not a broad enough coalition.” (Bernice Johnson Reagon quoted in “Who’s Afraid of Gender” by Judith Butler)

Here’s what I wrote to Judith Butler:
Dear Dr. Butler,

A few minutes ago,  I finished with your voice reading me Who’s Afraid of Gender? You have influenced me (for the better). Understanding gender has been an important part of my life since the days I watched my parents fitting and misfitting their roles. I am one who has kept his first sex assignment and have spent 70-odd years “[establishing my] relationship to that assignment.”(p. 185)

You will perhaps want to know that you and I agree more now that I have finished your book than we did before. I’m pretty sure you didn’t change while I was reading, so it must be me. I have read a lot in this area (many sides) and struggle mightily to understand and to be better able to influence those with whom I interact (a full range of the spectrum of ideas and opinions). You have helped me be clearer, you have invited me to rethink some things I was somewhat settled with. You seem intent on having that kind of influence and it worked on me (Gender Trouble was helpful; I like how you’ve evolved).

In particular, I want to be part of that coalition (endorsed by Bernice Johnson Reagon, p. 245) that I’m not fully comfortable in. I am deeply saddened and distressed by the contentiousness among people who ought to be making cause against a common power. I so much value that thread running through the book: that we dampen our strength through internal divisions and invective. I wish you were here drinking coffee with me; we would have some things to disagree about and we would see we are on the same side.

I mentioned an amendment in my Subject line. In the paragraph starting at the bottom of Page 214, you are discussing the size-of-gametes argument. The last sentence of that paragraph reads, “In these cases [species of algae, fungi, and protozoans with the same size gametes], the species is divided into genetic groups known as ‘mating types,’ but sex falls out of the picture” (my emphasis). I suggest you revise it in later printings to read, “…mating types, but ‘male’ and ‘female’ fall out of the picture.” Surely whatever disagreements there may be about what sex is and how many there are and the rest, there is agreement that two haploid cells joining is sexual reproduction. The notion of something being sex but not having anything to do with male and female is a pretty fun concept, in my mind. I hope you won’t think this is nitpicking—when I am going to have a serious conversation about sex and all the topics you discuss in your book, I start with sexual versus asexual reproduction which, in some versions, has no relevance to male and female.

I don’t want to end without noting the warmth I feel in the book—not many pages go by without your inviting us to remember our humanity, our ability to work together and all of the forms of love we can have for each other.

Thank you for your book. It has served me well in my own growth and will contribute greatly to my conversations, left, center and right.

Dan Matthews
Albuquerque

Should be required reading

Excellent analysis; insightful and packed with receipts, Butler exposes the nonsense passing for science and the hypocrisy underpinning the miscreants, misinformed, and outright neo fascist right-wing ers
attempting to erase transgender rights and selves

You afraid?

Great and relevant information. Judith gives a great performance for their own work. Consice and greatly fascinating.

Butler's take on 2020s gender struggle

easily Butler's more accessible work. their take on current global politics of gender and an interesting lenses to understand why people easily succumb to reactionary fear narrativea

Butler’s reading of Butler was stunning

The breadth of her analysis of how our human worlds are made, remade, critiqued, opposed and defended made the listen compelling. Given what I have read of her prior work, this is both evidence of her notable intellect and her commitment to the freedom of humanity. The political critique is at its heart. I would not call it a “mass market book,” as some have, but it is challenging and exciting.

Kind, uncompromising and relevant

I was very moved by this book. It paints a painfully clear picture of the anti-woke mob and where their magical thinking and how incoherent ramblings spawn from.