Nook Book Club – Who's Afraid of Gender?

Name: Nook Book Club – Who's Afraid of Gender?
Start: 2025-09-15T19:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-11-03T21:00:00-04:00
Location: Nook

Schedule

Mon, 15 Sep, 2025 at 07:00 pm to Mon, 03 Nov, 2025 at 09:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Nook | Brooklyn, NY

Book Club at Nook!
About this Event

Neighbors reading and discussing books together!

**One drink minimum or food order required. Please tip your baristas & bartenders!**

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Reading schedule:

Week 1: Sept 15th –

No reading; Meet & greet, introduction to book, general discussion on theme

Week 2: Sept 22nd –

Introduction: Gender Ideology and the Fear of Destruction (pages 1 - 36)

Week 3: Sept 29th –

Chapter 1:The Global Scene (pages 37 - 72)

Week 4: October 6th –

Chapter 2: Vatican Views & Chapter 3: Contemporary Attacks on Gender in the United States: Censorship and Rights-Stripping (pages 73 - 111)

Week 5: October 13th –

Chapter 4: Trump, Sex, and the Supreme Court & Chapter 5: TERFs and British Matters of Sex: How Critical Is Gender-Critical Feminism? (pages 112 - 169)

Week 6: October 20th –

Chapter 6: What About Sex? & Chapter 7: What Gender Are You?(pages 170 - 203)

Week 7: October 27th –

Chapter 8: Nature/Culture: Toward Co- Construction & Chapter 9: Racial and Colonial Legacies of Gender (pages 204 - 228)

Week 8: November 3rd –

Chapter 10: Foreign Terms, or the Disturbance of Translation & Conclusion: The Fear of Destruction, the Struggle to Imagine (pages 229 - 264)

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Our next book is Who's Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler.

Description:

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 trans-exclusionary feminists. In their vital, courageous new book, 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—a book whose verve and rigor only they could deliver.
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