Who S Afraid Of Gender

A highly accessible and essential look at how anxiety around gender is fueling reactionary politics worldwide, from legendary thinker Judith Butler. Judith Butler, the pioneering theorist whose iconic book Gender Trouble redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts one of the most pressing issues of our time. So-called "gender ideology"—and its supposed dangers—has provoked reactionary backlash across the world. Global networks spread the idea that “gender” is a dangerous, if not diabolical, ideology threatening to destroy families, local cultures, civilizations—and even "man" himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of religious leaders, politicians, and public figures, this movement has taken aim at the rights of queer and trans people and sought to restrict the freedoms of women, pushing anti-gender legislation and at times perpetuating violence. But what, exactly, is so scary about gender? In their monumental first trade book, Butler examines, with characteristic rigour and verve, how “gender” became a convenient catch-all boogeyman—a phantasm—for myriad overlapping, and often contradicting, anxieties. From former colonial states in Africa and Asia classifying “gender” as a Western imposition to the Vatican’s warnings that “gender” erodes traditional values, Butler powerfully demonstrates how the fears surrounding “gender” are not only misguided and uninformed, but also sow the seeds for authoritarian control and the erosion of public discourse. An urgent intervention, a bold call for a freer and more allied world, Who's Afraid of Gender? is a landmark work of social and political analysis both timely and timeless—a book only Judith Butler could write.

A highly accessible and essential look at how anxiety around gender is fueling reactionary politics worldwide, from legendary thinker Judith Butler. Judith Butler, the pioneering theorist whose iconic book Gender Trouble redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts one of the most pressing issues of our time. So-called "gender ideology"—and its supposed dangers—has provoked reactionary backlash across the world. Global networks spread the idea that “gender” is a dangerous, if not diabolical, ideology threatening to destroy families, local cultures, civilizations—and even "man" himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of religious leaders, politicians, and public figures, this movement has taken aim at the rights of queer and trans people and sought to restrict the freedoms of women, pushing anti-gender legislation and at times perpetuating violence. But what, exactly, is so scary about gender? In their monumental first trade book, Butler examines, with characteristic rigour and verve, how “gender” became a convenient catch-all boogeyman—a phantasm—for myriad overlapping, and often contradicting, anxieties. From former colonial states in Africa and Asia classifying “gender” as a Western imposition to the Vatican’s warnings that “gender” erodes traditional values, Butler powerfully demonstrates how the fears surrounding “gender” are not only misguided and uninformed, but also sow the seeds for authoritarian control and the erosion of public discourse. An urgent intervention, a bold call for a freer and more allied world, Who's Afraid of Gender? is a landmark work of social and political analysis both timely and timeless—a book only Judith Butler could write.

Named a Best Book by: The Globe and Mail, Indigo, Out Magazine, Audible, CBC, Apple, Quill & Quire, Kirkus Reviews, Brooklyn Public Library, Writers’ Trust of Canada, Autostraddle, Bitch, and BookRiot. Finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award, Transgender Nonfiction Nominated for the 2019 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award Winner of the 2018 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design – Prose Non-Fiction "Cultural rocket fuel." --Vanity Fair "Emotional and painful but also layered with humour, I'm Afraid of Men will widen your lens on gender and challenge you to do better. This challenge is a necessary one--one we must all take up. It is a gift to dive into Vivek's heart and mind." --Rupi Kaur, bestselling author of The Sun and Her Flowers and Milk and Honey A trans artist explores how masculinity was imposed on her as a boy and continues to haunt her as a girl--and how we might reimagine gender for the twenty-first century. Vivek Shraya has reason to be afraid. Throughout her life she's endured acts of cruelty and aggression for being too feminine as a boy and not feminine enough as a girl. In order to survive childhood, she had to learn to convincingly perform masculinity. As an adult, she makes daily compromises to steel herself against everything from verbal attacks to heartbreak. Now, with raw honesty, Shraya delivers an important record of the cumulative damage caused by misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, releasing trauma from a body that has always refused to assimilate. I'm Afraid of Men is a journey from camouflage to a riot of colour and a blueprint for how we might cherish all that makes us different and conquer all that makes us afraid.

Undoing Gender constitutes Judith Butler's recent reflections on gender and sexuality, focusing on new kinship, psychoanalysis and the incest taboo, transgender, intersex, diagnostic categories, social violence, and the tasks of social transformation. In terms that draw from feminist and queer theory, Butler considers the norms that govern--and fail to govern--gender and sexuality as they relate to the constraints on recognizable personhood. The book constitutes a reconsideration of her earlier view on gender performativity from Gender Trouble. In this work, the critique of gender norms is clearly situated within the framework of human persistence and survival. And to "do" one's gender in certain ways sometimes implies "undoing" dominant notions of personhood. She writes about the "New Gender Politics" that has emerged in recent years, a combination of movements concerned with transgender, transsexuality, intersex, and their complex relations to feminist and queer theory.

Five plays are intertwined in one in this story of fringe dwellers, living in an age of social, economic and moral deprivation. Mostly without work, and politically disengaged, they work at survival. 'With intelligence, well-judged humour and the searching qualities of truly memorable theatre, the play peels away political propaganda and notions of correctness to present a candid, difficult, searing portrait of the poor and marginalised.' SMH Who' Afraid of the Working Class? was adapted into the film, Blessed. (9 male, 10 female).

The author of "Gender Trouble" further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most material dimensions of sex and sexuality. Butler examines how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the matter of bodies, sex, and gender.