Judith Butler + Roxane Gay: Who’s Afraid of Gender?

Join us for an in-person event with acclaimed author Judith Butler for a discussion of their new paperback release Who’s Afraid of Gender? Joining Judith in conversation is award-winning author Roxane Gay. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.

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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 trans-exclusionary 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. Butler offers us a hopeful work of social and political analysis that is both timely and timeless.

Photo credit: Stefan Gutermuth

Judith Butler is the author of several books, including Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity; Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”; The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection; and The Force of Nonviolence. In addition to their numerous academic honors and publications, Butler has published editorials and reviews in a wide range of journals and newspapers, including The New York Times, Time, and the London Review of Books, and has been featured on radio programs and podcasts throughout the world. They live in Berkeley, California.

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is also at work on television and film projects. She also has a newsletter, The Audacity and once had a podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda.

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