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138-540: Judith Pamela Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American feminist philosopher and gender studies scholar whose work has influenced political philosophy , ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism , queer theory , and literary theory . In 1993, Butler began teaching at the University of California, Berkeley , where they have served, beginning in 1998, as the Maxine Elliot Professor in

276-490: A Fulbright Scholar in 1979. After receiving their PhD, Butler revised their doctoral dissertation to produce their first book, entitled Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth Century France (1987). Butler went on to teach at Wesleyan University , George Washington University , and Johns Hopkins University before joining University of California, Berkeley , in 1993. In 2002, they held

414-652: A liberal democratic framework, without radically altering the structure of society; liberal feminism "works within the structure of mainstream society to integrate women into that structure". During the 19th and early 20th centuries liberal feminism focused especially on women's suffrage and access to education . Former Norwegian supreme court justice and former president of the liberal Norwegian Association for Women's Rights , Karin Maria Bruzelius , has described liberal feminism as "a realistic, sober, practical feminism". Susan Wendell argues that "liberal feminism

552-417: A " matrix of domination ". Fourth-wave feminism is a proposed extension of third-wave feminism which corresponds to a resurgence in interest in feminism beginning around 2012 and associated with the use of social media. According to feminist scholar Prudence Chamberlain, the focus of the fourth wave is justice for women and opposition to sexual harassment and violence against women. Its essence, she writes,

690-421: A "materialized" entity, upon which cultural, collective ideals of gender can be built. From this angle, Butler interrogates value conscription upon various bodies as determined theories and practices of heterosexual predominance. If gender consists of the social meanings that sex assumes, then sex does not accrue social meanings as additive properties but, rather, is replaced by the social meanings it takes on; sex

828-643: A "post-feminist" society, where "gender equality has (already) been achieved". According to Chunn, "many feminists have voiced disquiet about the ways in which rights and equality discourses are now used against them". Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical or philosophical fields. It encompasses work in a variety of disciplines, including anthropology , sociology , economics , women's studies , literary criticism , art history , psychoanalysis , and philosophy . Feminist theory aims to understand gender inequality and focuses on gender politics, power relations, and sexuality. While providing

966-515: A Feminist is an interview series that seeks to create "conversation between and among feminist scholars, media activists, and community leaders," to bridge the divide between scholarship and activism. Recent features include " Angela P. Harris on Gender and Gun Violence" and " Cathy J. Cohen on Black Lives Matter , Feminism, and Contemporary Activism". Signs awards the Catharine R. Stimpson Prize for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship, named for

1104-503: A Feminist. Given the fragmentation of feminist activism and the persistent negative freighting of the term "feminist", the Feminist Public Intellectuals Project seeks to reimagine what role a journal can play in provoking activism. Short Takes features commentaries by feminist activists and public intellectuals on recent books that "have shaped popular conversations about feminist issues," alongside

1242-470: A Performative Theory of Assembly (2015), as well as on other contemporary thinkers. In this book, Butler deals with issues of precarity, vulnerability, grief and contemporary political violence in the face of the War on terror and the realities of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and similar detention centers. Drawing on Foucault, they characterize the form of power at work in these places of "indefinite detention" as

1380-497: A condition common to ours). Through a critical engagement with Levinas , they will explore how certain representations prevent lives from being considered worthy of being lived or taken into account, precluding the mourning of certain Others, and with that the recognition of them and their losses as equally human. This preoccupation with the dignifying or dehumanizing role of practices of framing and representations will constitute one of

1518-448: A convergence of sovereignty and governmentality . The " state of exception " deployed here is in fact more complex than the one pointed out by Agamben in his Homo Sacer , since the government is in a more ambiguous relation to law —it may comply with it or suspend it, depending on its interests, and this is itself a tool of the state to produce its own sovereignty. Butler also points towards problems in international law treatises like

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1656-414: A critique of capitalism and are focused on ideology's relationship to women. Marxist feminism argues that capitalism is the root cause of women's oppression, and that discrimination against women in domestic life and employment is an effect of capitalist ideologies. Socialist feminism distinguishes itself from Marxist feminism by arguing that women's liberation can only be achieved by working to end both

1794-480: A critique of these social and political relations, much of feminist theory also focuses on the promotion of women's rights and interests. Themes explored in feminist theory include discrimination, stereotyping , objectification (especially sexual objectification ), oppression , and patriarchy . In the field of literary criticism , Elaine Showalter describes the development of feminist theory as having three phases. The first she calls "feminist critique", in which

1932-493: A main force behind major historical societal changes for women's rights, particularly in the West , where they are near-universally credited with achieving women's suffrage , gender-neutral language , reproductive rights for women (including access to contraceptives and abortion ), and the right to enter into contracts and own property. Although feminist advocacy is, and has been, mainly focused on women's rights, some argue for

2070-520: A major influence on feminist and queer scholarship. Their work is often studied and debated in film studies courses emphasizing gender studies and performativity. Butler has spoken on many contemporary political questions, including Israeli politics and in support of LGBT rights . Judith Butler was born on February 24, 1956, in Cleveland, Ohio , to a family of Hungarian-Jewish and Russian-Jewish descent. Most of their maternal grandmother's family

2208-400: A medicine thesis about men suffering from tuberculosis and having developed, according to the author Ferdinand-Valère Faneau de la Cour, feminine traits. The word "féministe" ("feminist"), inspired by its medical use, was coined by Alexandre Dumas fils in a 1872 essay, referring to men who supported women rights. In both cases, the use of the word was very negative and reflected a criticism of

2346-483: A modern or party-political sense; she highlights "equality of opportunity" as a defining feature of liberal feminism. Liberal feminism is a very broad term that encompasses many, often diverging modern branches and a variety of feminist and general political perspectives; some historically liberal branches are equality feminism , social feminism , equity feminism , difference feminism , individualist/libertarian feminism and some forms of state feminism , particularly

2484-463: A mystical connection between women and nature. Sara Ahmed argues that Black and postcolonial feminisms pose a challenge "to some of the organizing premises of Western feminist thought". During much of its history , feminist movements and theoretical developments were led predominantly by middle-class white women from Western Europe and North America. However, women of other races have proposed alternative feminisms. This trend accelerated in

2622-452: A passive practice that emanates from a calm region of the soul, or as an individualist ethical relation to existing forms of power." Instead of this understanding, Butler argues that "nonviolence is an ethical position found in the midst of the political field." In Who's Afraid of Gender? , Butler explores the roots of current anti-trans rhetoric, which they define as a "phantasm" that aligns itself with emerging authoritarian movements. Butler

2760-563: A period of time, as the chair of the board of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission . Over the years, Butler has been particularly active in the gay and lesbian rights, feminist, and anti-war movements. They have also written and spoken out on issues ranging from affirmative action and gay marriage to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay. More recently, Butler has been active in

2898-425: A person will be accepted if their desires differ from normality. Butler states that one may feel the need of being recognized in order to live, but that at the same time, the conditions to be recognized make life "unlivable". The writer proposes an interrogation of such conditions so that people who resist them may have more possibilities of living. In Butler's discussion of intersex issues and people, Butler addresses

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3036-500: A range of other disciplines, such as psychoanalysis , literary, film, and performance studies as well as visual arts, has also been significant. Their theory of gender performativity as well as their conception of "critically queer" have heavily influenced understandings of gender and queer identity in the academic world, and have shaped and mobilized various kinds of political activism, particularly queer activism, internationally. Butler's work has also entered into contemporary debates on

3174-499: A response by the author. Featured books include Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist , Rebecca Traister's All the Single Ladies , and Andi Zeisler's We Were Feminists Once. Currents publishes essays that put forth "a nuanced and edgy take on a key issue circulating in the feminist definitional landscape." Issues addressed include "identity politics", "trigger warnings", "celebrity feminism", and "affirmative consent". Ask

3312-627: A ritual reiterated under and through constraint, under and through the force of prohibition and taboo, with the threat of ostracism and even death controlling and compelling the shape of the production, but not, I will insist, determining it fully in advance. Butler also explores how gender can be understood not only as a performance, but also as a "constitutive constraint," or constructed character. They ask how this conceptualization of an individual's gender contributes to notions of bodily intelligibility, or comprehension, by other individuals. Butler continues to discuss bodily intelligibility by means of sex as

3450-621: A so-called "confusion of the sexes" by women who refused to abide by the sexual division of society and challenged the inequalities between sexes. The concepts appeared in the Netherlands in 1872, Great Britain in the 1890s, and the United States in 1910. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first appearance in English in this meaning back to 1895. Depending on the historical moment, culture and country, feminists around

3588-533: A social and ideological change. In 1963, Betty Friedan 's book The Feminine Mystique helped voice the discontent that American women felt. The book is widely credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States. Within ten years, women made up over half the First World workforce. In 1970, Australian writer Germaine Greer published The Female Eunuch , which became

3726-436: A story about the prehistory of the subject, one that I have been arguing cannot be told. There are two responses to this objection. (1) That there is no final or adequate narrative reconstruction of the prehistory of the speaking "I" does not mean we cannot narrate it; it only means that at the moment when we narrate we become speculative philosophers or fiction writers. (2) This prehistory has never stopped happening and, as such,

3864-536: A view notably propounded in Butler's 1990 book, Gender Trouble . Consequently, Butler's work is passible of criticism by modernist and anti-relativist critics of postmodernism who deplore the idea that categories spoken about in the natural sciences (e.g., sex) are socially constructed. In 1998, Denis Dutton 's journal Philosophy and Literature awarded Butler first prize in its fourth annual "Bad Writing Competition", which set out to "celebrate bad writing from

4002-599: A woman; thus, by eliminating female and male identity Butler would have abolished the discourse about sexism in the queer community. Schwarzer also accuses Butler of remaining silent about the oppression of women and homosexuals in the Islamic world, while readily exercising their right to same-sex-marriage in the United States; instead, Butler would sweepingly defend Islam , including Islamism , from critics. EGS philosophy professor Geoffrey Bennington , translator for many of Derrida's books, criticised Butler's introduction to

4140-607: A worldwide bestseller, reportedly driving up divorce rates. Greer posits that men hate women , that women do not know this and direct the hatred upon themselves, as well as arguing that women are devitalised and repressed in their role as housewives and mothers. Third-wave feminism is traced to the emergence of the riot grrrl feminist punk subculture in Olympia, Washington , in the early 1990s, and to Anita Hill 's televised testimony in 1991—to an all-male, all-white Senate Judiciary Committee —that Clarence Thomas , nominated for

4278-484: Is "incredulity that certain attitudes can still exist". Fourth-wave feminism is "defined by technology", according to Kira Cochrane , and is characterized particularly by the use of Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , YouTube , Tumblr , and blogs such as Feministing to challenge misogyny and further gender equality . Issues that fourth-wave feminists focus on include street and workplace harassment , campus sexual assault and rape culture. Scandals involving

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4416-458: Is a collection of writings of gay and lesbian social theorists. Butler's contribution argues that no transparent revelation is afforded by using the terms "gay" or "lesbian" yet there is a political imperative to do so. Butler employs "the concepts of play/performance, drag, and imitation" to describe the formation of gender and sexuality as continually created subjectivities always at risk of dissolution from non-performance." Bodies That Matter: On

4554-400: Is a danger that Jews are seen as "presumptive victims", leading to widespread misuse of accusations of antisemitism , which may in fact trivialize the accusation's gravity and weight. Feminist Feminism is a range of socio- political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes . Feminism holds

4692-537: Is a feminist movement beginning in the early 1960s and continuing to the present; as such, it coexists with third-wave feminism. Second-wave feminism is largely concerned with issues of equality beyond suffrage, such as ending gender discrimination . Second-wave feminists see women's cultural and political inequalities as inextricably linked and encourage women to understand aspects of their personal lives as deeply politicized and as reflecting sexist power structures. The feminist activist and author Carol Hanisch coined

4830-412: Is a form of citationality : Performativity cannot be understood outside of a process of iterability, a regularized and constrained repetition of norms. And this repetition is not performed by a subject; this repetition is what enables a subject and constitutes the temporal condition for the subject. This iterability implies that 'performance' is not a singular 'act' or event, but a ritualized production,

4968-448: Is an historical tradition that grew out of liberalism, as can be seen very clearly in the work of such feminists as Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill , but feminists who took principles from that tradition have developed analyses and goals that go far beyond those of 18th and 19th century liberal feminists, and many feminists who have goals and strategies identified as liberal feminist ... reject major components of liberalism" in

5106-608: Is currently based at Northeastern University , with Suzanna Danuta Walters , Director of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Professor of Sociology, serving as editor-in-chief. In her inaugural editorial, Walters laid out five "core concerns" for Signs : (1) for the field of women's studies to "substantively reckon" with gender and sexuality studies and queer studies ; (2) to focus on "racial and ethnic difference"; (3) to re-emphasize "inter- or transdisciplinarity"; (4) to not lose sight of "the big questions about gender and sexuality" by getting too narrow in scope; and (5) to expand

5244-460: Is enabled is always already a relation between subjects who are variably opaque to themselves and to each other. The ethics that Butler envisions is therefore one in which the responsible self knows the limits of its knowing, recognizes the limits of its capacity to give an account of itself to others, and respects those limits as symptomatically human. To take seriously one's opacity to oneself in ethical deliberation means then to critically interrogate

5382-416: Is instituted through acts which are internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief. If the ground of gender identity is the stylized repetition of acts through time, and not a seemingly seamless identity, then

5520-516: Is not a prehistory in any chronological sense. It is not done with, over, relegated to a past, which then becomes part of a causal or narrative reconstruction of the self. On the contrary, that prehistory interrupts the story I have to give of myself, makes every account of myself partial and failed, and constitutes, in a way, my failure to be fully accountable for my actions, my final "irresponsibility," one for which I may be forgiven only because I could not do otherwise. This not being able to do otherwise

5658-421: Is our common predicament (page 78). Instead Butler argues for an ethics based precisely on the limits of self-knowledge as the limits of responsibility itself. Any concept of responsibility which demands the full transparency of the self to itself, an entirely accountable self, necessarily does violence to the opacity which marks the constitution of the self it addresses. The scene of address by which responsibility

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5796-412: Is particularly the case for libertarian feminism which conceives of people as self-owners and therefore as entitled to freedom from coercive interference. Radical feminism arose from the radical wing of second-wave feminism and calls for a radical reordering of society to eliminate male supremacy . It considers the male-controlled capitalist hierarchy as the defining feature of women's oppression and

5934-433: Is performed without one being conscious of it, but says that it does not mean this performativity is "automatic or mechanical". They argue that we have desires that do not originate from our personhood, but rather, from social norms. The writer also debates our notions of "human" and "less-than-human" and how these culturally imposed ideas can keep one from having a "viable life" as the biggest concerns are usually about whether

6072-563: Is relinquished in the course of that assumption, and gender emerges, not as a term in a continued relationship of opposition to sex, but as the term which absorbs and displaces "sex," the mark of its full substantiation into gender or what, from a materialist point of view, might constitute a full de-substantiation. While continuing to draw upon sources such as those of Plato , Irigaray , Lacan , and Freud (as they did for Gender Trouble ), Butler also draws upon pieces of documentary film and literature for Bodies That Matter . Such pieces include

6210-574: Is relinquished to expand the cultural field bodily through subversive performances of various kinds." Throughout this text, Butler derives influence from French philosophers such as Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty , particularly de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Merleau-Ponty's "The Body in its Sexual Being." Butler also cites works by Gayle Rubin , Mary Anne Warren , and their own piece "Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex " (1986), among others. Gender Trouble: Feminism and

6348-490: Is reluctant to embrace such labels, saying in 2013, "I prefer to [provide] a story rather than a category. I come from a strong zionist community in the [United States], and became critical of zionism starting in my early twenties.... I am now working for what can only be called a post-zionist vision at this point in history. Perhaps at another point in history, I would be called a zionist, or even call myself that." Butler argues that, although antisemitism has been rising, there

6486-501: Is that signs "represent" and "point": the original editors wanted the journal to "represent the originality and rigor" of women's studies and to "point" to new directions for feminist scholarship. Former editor-in-chief Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres said in an article in the Yale Journal of Criticism that Signs , from its inception, was meant to be "something different, even insurgent... an agent for change," because it emerged from

6624-457: Is used to describe a range of viewpoints reacting to feminism since the 1980s. While not being "anti-feminist", postfeminists believe that women have achieved second wave goals while being critical of third- and fourth-wave feminist goals. The term was first used to describe a backlash against second-wave feminism, but it is now a label for a wide range of theories that take critical approaches to previous feminist discourses and includes challenges to

6762-642: The Chinese Communist Party created projects aimed at integrating women into the workforce, and claimed that the revolution had successfully achieved women's liberation. According to Nawar al-Hassan Golley, Arab feminism was closely connected with Arab nationalism . In 1899, Qasim Amin , considered the "father" of Arab feminism, wrote The Liberation of Women , which argued for legal and social reforms for women. He drew links between women's position in Egyptian society and nationalism, leading to

6900-595: The Custody of Infants Act 1839 in the UK, which introduced the tender years doctrine for child custody and gave women the right of custody of their children for the first time. Other legislation, such as the Married Women's Property Act 1870 in the UK and extended in the 1882 Act , became models for similar legislation in other British territories. Victoria passed legislation in 1884 and New South Wales in 1889;

7038-605: The Everyday Sexism Project , No More Page 3 , Stop Bild Sexism , Mattress Performance , 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman , #YesAllWomen , Free the Nipple , One Billion Rising , the 2017 Women's March , the 2018 Women's March , and the #MeToo movement. In December 2017, Time magazine chose several prominent female activists involved in the #MeToo movement, dubbed "the silence breakers", as Person of

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7176-582: The Geneva Conventions . In practice, these only protect people who belong to (or act in the name of) a recognized state, and therefore are helpless in situations of abuse toward stateless people , people who do not enjoy a recognized citizenship or people who are labelled "terrorists", and therefore understood as acting on their own behalf as irrational "killing machines" that need to be held captive due to their "dangerousness". Butler also writes here on vulnerability and precariousness as intrinsic to

7314-828: The Iranian revolution of 1979, many of the rights that women had gained from the women's movement were systematically abolished, such as the Family Protection Law . By the mid-20th century, women still lacked significant rights. In France , women obtained the right to vote only with the Provisional Government of the French Republic of 21 April 1944. The Consultative Assembly of Algiers of 1944 proposed on 24 March 1944 to grant eligibility to women but following an amendment by Fernard Grenier , they were given full citizenship, including

7452-516: The Occupy movement and has publicly expressed support for a version of the 2005 BDS ( Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions ) campaign against Israel. They emphasize that Israel does not, and should not, be taken to represent all Jews or Jewish opinion. Butler is an outspoken critic of many aspects of contemporary Israel's actions and has criticized some forms of Zionism . Butler has been variously identified as " post-Zionist " and " anti-Zionist ", but

7590-640: The Supreme Court of the United States , had sexually harassed her. The term third wave is credited to Rebecca Walker , who responded to Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court with an article in Ms. magazine, "Becoming the Third Wave" (1992). She wrote: So I write this as a plea to all women, especially women of my generation: Let Thomas' confirmation serve to remind you, as it did me, that

7728-430: The raison d'être of classic liberal feminism was "to pose an immanent critique of liberalism, revealing the gendered exclusions within liberal democracy's proclamation of universal equality, particularly with respect to the law, institutional access, and the full incorporation of women into the public sphere." Rottenberg contrasts classic liberal feminism with modern neoliberal feminism which "seems perfectly in sync with

7866-418: The "grassroots" feminist movement. Joeres explored the "paradox" of how a journal can be both an "agent for change" and regarded as "respectable in the academy," and concluded with the hope that Signs could retain its activist roots and transform the academy. In the effort to avoid the tendency of the academy to "codify" and limit scholarship, Signs rotates institutional homes roughly every five years. It

8004-416: The "reification" of sexual difference within a heterosexual framework, and articulates their concern with how this framework affects the accurate presentation (or lack thereof) of "femaleness" across a diverse array of experiences, including those of women. "As a corporeal field of cultural play, gender is a basically innovative affair, although it is quite clear that there are strict punishments for contesting

8142-1072: The 1960s with the civil rights movement in the United States and the end of Western European colonialism in Africa, the Caribbean, parts of Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Since that time, women in developing nations and former colonies and who are of colour or various ethnicities or living in poverty have proposed additional feminisms. Womanism emerged after early feminist movements were largely white and middle-class. Postcolonial feminists argue that colonial oppression and Western feminism marginalized postcolonial women but did not turn them passive or voiceless. Third-world feminism and indigenous feminism are closely related to postcolonial feminism. These ideas also correspond with ideas in African feminism , motherism, Stiwanism, negofeminism, femalism, transnational feminism , and Africana womanism . In

8280-641: The 1960s, both of these traditions are also contrasted with the radical feminism that arose from the radical wing of second-wave feminism and that calls for a radical reordering of society to eliminate patriarchy. Liberal, socialist, and radical feminism are sometimes referred to as the "Big Three" schools of feminist thought. Since the late 20th century, many newer forms of feminism have emerged. Some forms, such as white feminism and gender-critical feminism , have been criticized as taking into account only white, middle class, college-educated, heterosexual , or cisgender perspectives. These criticisms have led to

8418-468: The 1980s, standpoint feminists have argued that the feminist movement should address global issues (such as rape, incest , and prostitution) and culturally specific issues (such as female genital mutilation in some parts of Africa and Arab societies , as well as glass ceiling practices that impede women's advancement in developed economies) in order to understand how gender inequality interacts with racism, homophobia , classism and colonization in

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8556-548: The 1997 translation of Derrida's 1967 Of Grammatology . Before a 2017 democracy conference in Brazil, Butler was burnt in effigy . Bruno Perreau has written that Butler was literally depicted as an " antichrist ", both because of their gender and their Jewish identity, the fear of minority politics and critical studies being expressed through fantasies of a corrupted body. Much of Butler's early political activism centered around queer and feminist issues, and they served, for

8694-863: The Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory . They are also the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School (EGS). Butler is best known for their books Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (1993), in which they challenge conventional, heteronormative notions of gender and develop their theory of gender performativity . This theory has had

8832-401: The Discursive Limits of Sex seeks to clear up readings and supposed misinterpretations of performativity that view the enactment of sex/gender as a daily choice. As such, Butler aims to answer questions of this vein that may have been raised from their previous work Gender Trouble . Butler emphasizes the role of repetition in performativity, making use of Derrida 's theory of iterability, which

8970-533: The People Act was passed granting the vote to women over the age of 30 who owned property. In 1928, this was extended to all women over 21. Emmeline Pankhurst was the most notable activist in England. Time named her one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century , stating: "she shaped an idea of women for our time; she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back." In

9108-535: The Rights of Woman in which she argues that class and private property are the basis of discrimination against women, and that women as much as men needed equal rights. Charles Fourier , a utopian socialist and French philosopher, is credited with having coined the word "féminisme" in 1837. but no trace of the word have been found in his works. The word "féminisme" ("feminism") first appeared in France in 1871 in

9246-754: The Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam . In addition, they joined the department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University as Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Visiting Professor of the Humanities in the spring semesters of 2012, 2013 and 2014 with the option of remaining as full-time faculty. Butler serves on the editorial or advisory board of several academic journals, including Janus Unbound: Journal of Critical Studies , JAC: A Journal of Rhetoric, Culture, and Politics and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society . In

9384-718: The Stimpson Prize were Cameron Awkward-Rich, for his essay "Trans, Feminism: Or , Reading like a Depressed Transsexual", and Meghan Healy-Clancy, for her essay "The Family Politics of the Federation of South African Women: A History of Public Motherhood in Women's Antiracist Activism". The journal is abstracted and indexed in: According to the Journal Citation Reports , the journal had a 2017 impact factor of 1.078, ranking it 16th out of 42 journals in

9522-401: The Subversion of Identity was first published in 1990, selling over 100,000 copies internationally, in multiple languages. Similar to "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution," Gender Trouble discusses the works of Sigmund Freud , Simone de Beauvoir , Julia Kristeva , Jacques Lacan , Luce Irigaray , Monique Wittig , Jacques Derrida , and Michel Foucault . Butler offers a critique of

9660-504: The US, notable leaders of this movement included Lucretia Mott , Elizabeth Cady Stanton , and Susan B. Anthony , who each campaigned for the abolition of slavery before championing women's right to vote. These women were influenced by the Quaker theology of spiritual equality, which asserts that men and women are equal under God. In the US, first-wave feminism is considered to have ended with

9798-549: The Year . Decolonial feminism reformulates the coloniality of gender by critiquing the very formation of gender and its subsequent formations of patriarchy and the gender binary , not as universal constants across cultures, but as structures that have been instituted by and for the benefit of European colonialism . Marìa Lugones proposes that decolonial feminism speaks to how "the colonial imposition of gender cuts across questions of ecology, economics, government, relations with

9936-482: The body is a major part of gender, in opposition to Butler's conception of gender as performative. A particularly vocal critic has been feminist Martha Nussbaum , who has argued that Butler misreads J. L. Austin 's idea of performative utterance , makes erroneous legal claims, forecloses an essential site of resistance by repudiating pre-cultural agency, and provides no "normative theory of social justice and human dignity." Finally, Nancy Fraser 's critique of Butler

10074-552: The body" as a subversive exercise. The work of Julia Kristeva , a feminist psychoanalyst and philosopher, and Bracha Ettinger , artist and psychoanalyst, has influenced feminist theory in general and feminist literary criticism in particular. However, as the scholar Elizabeth Wright points out, "none of these French feminists align themselves with the feminist movement as it appeared in the Anglophone world". Many overlapping feminist movements and ideologies have developed over

10212-626: The case of David Reimer , a person whose sex was medically reassigned from male to female after a botched circumcision at eight months of age. Reimer was "made" female by doctors, but later in life identified as "really" male, married and became a stepfather to his wife's three children, and went on to tell his story in As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl , which he wrote with John Colapinto . Reimer died by suicide in 2004. In Giving an Account of Oneself , Butler develops an ethics based on

10350-440: The central elements of Frames of War (2009). Undoing Gender collects Butler's reflections on gender, sex, sexuality, psychoanalysis and the medical treatment of intersex people for a more general readership than many of their other books. Butler revisits and refines their notion of performativity and focuses on the question of undoing "restrictively normative conceptions of sexual and gendered life". Butler discusses how gender

10488-455: The control of the subject it forms, as precisely the very condition of that subject's formation, the resources by which the subject becomes recognizably human, a grammatical "I", in the first place. Butler accepts the claim that if the subject is opaque to itself the limitations of its free ethical responsibility and obligations are due to the limits of narrative, presuppositions of language and projection. You may think that I am in fact telling

10626-427: The creation of ethnically specific or multicultural forms of feminism, such as black feminism and intersectional feminism. Some have argued that feminism often promotes misandry and the elevation of women's interests above men's, and criticize radical feminist positions as harmful to both men and women. Mary Wollstonecraft is seen by many as a founder of feminism due to her 1792 book titled A Vindication of

10764-596: The development of Cairo University and the National Movement. In 1923 Hoda Shaarawi founded the Egyptian Feminist Union , became its president and a symbol of the Arab women's rights movement. The Iranian Constitutional Revolution in 1905 triggered the Iranian women's movement , which aimed to achieve women's equality in education , marriage, careers, and legal rights . However, during

10902-410: The economic and cultural sources of women's oppression. Anarcha-feminists believe that class struggle and anarchy against the state require struggling against patriarchy, which comes from involuntary hierarchy. Ecofeminists see men's control of land as responsible for the oppression of women and destruction of the natural environment . Ecofeminism has been criticized for focusing too much on

11040-544: The end of the 19th century, with the self-governing colony of New Zealand granting women the right to vote in 1893; South Australia followed suit with the Constitutional Amendment (Adult Suffrage) Act 1894 in 1894. This was followed by Australia granting female suffrage in 1902. In Britain, the suffragettes and suffragists campaigned for the women's vote, and in 1918 the Representation of

11178-423: The environment. Liberal feminism , also known under other names such as reformist, mainstream, or historically as bourgeois feminism, arose from 19th-century first-wave feminism, and was historically linked to 19th-century liberalism and progressivism , while 19th-century conservatives tended to oppose feminism as such. Liberal feminism seeks equality of men and women through political and legal reform within

11316-511: The essay "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory," Judith Butler proposes that gender is performative – that is, gender is not so much a static identity or role, but rather comprises a set of acts which can evolve over time. Butler states that because gender identity is established through behavior, there is a possibility to construct different genders via different behaviors. "...if gender

11454-406: The ethics classes at the age of 14, and that they were created as a form of punishment by Butler's Hebrew school's rabbi because they were "too talkative in class". Butler said they were "thrilled" by the idea of these tutorials, and when asked what they wanted to study in these special sessions, they responded with three questions preoccupying them at the time: "Why was Spinoza excommunicated from

11592-490: The evolving neoliberal order." According to Zhang and Rios, "liberal feminism tends to be adopted by 'mainstream' (i.e., middle-class) women who do not disagree with the current social structure." They found that liberal feminism with its focus on equality is viewed as the dominant and "default" form of feminism. Some modern forms of feminism that historically grew out of the broader liberal tradition have more recently also been described as conservative in relative terms. This

11730-490: The existence of a fourth wave , starting around 2012, which has used social media to combat sexual harassment , violence against women and rape culture ; it is best known for the Me Too movement . First-wave feminism was a period of activity during the 19th and early-20th centuries. In the UK and US, it focused on the promotion of equal contract, marriage, parenting, and property rights for women. New legislation included

11868-636: The feminist reader examines the ideologies behind literary phenomena. The second Showalter calls " gynocriticism ", in which the "woman is producer of textual meaning". The last phase she calls "gender theory", in which the "ideological inscription and the literary effects of the sex/gender system are explored". This was paralleled in the 1970s by French feminists , who developed the concept of écriture féminine (which translates as "female or feminine writing"). Hélène Cixous argues that writing and philosophy are phallocentric and along with other French feminists such as Luce Irigaray emphasize "writing from

12006-453: The fight is far from over. Let this dismissal of a woman's experience move you to anger. Turn that outrage into political power. Do not vote for them unless they work for us. Do not have sex with them, do not break bread with them, do not nurture them if they don't prioritize our freedom to control our bodies and our lives. I am not a post-feminism feminist. I am the Third Wave. Third-wave feminism also sought to challenge or avoid what it deemed

12144-568: The film Paris is Burning , short stories by Willa Cather , and the novel Passing by Nella Larsen. In Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative , Butler surveys the problems of hate speech and censorship. They argue that censorship is difficult to evaluate, and that in some cases it may be useful or even necessary, while in others it may be worse than tolerance. Butler argues that hate speech exists retrospectively, only after being declared such by state authorities. In this way,

12282-514: The founding editor-in-chief of Signs, biennially to the best paper from an international competition of "emerging" feminist scholars (meaning "fewer than seven years since receipt of the terminal degree"). The submissions are judged by an international jury of prominent feminist academics. Winners of the award include Czech historian Anna Hájková . Winners receive a $ 1,000 honorarium and have their papers published in Signs . The 2017 co-winners of

12420-479: The harassment, abuse, and murder of women and girls have galvanized the movement. These have included the 2012 Delhi gang rape , 2012 Jimmy Savile allegations , the Bill Cosby allegations , 2014 Isla Vista killings , 2016 trial of Jian Ghomeshi , 2017 Harvey Weinstein allegations and subsequent Weinstein effect , and the 2017 Westminster sexual scandals . Examples of fourth-wave feminist campaigns include

12558-521: The human condition. This is due to our inevitable interdependency from other precarious subjects, who are never really "complete" or autonomous but instead always "dispossessed" on the Other. This is manifested in shared experiences like grief and loss, that can form the basis for a recognition of our shared human (vulnerable) condition. However, not every loss can be mourned in the same way, and in fact not every life can be conceived of as such (as situated in

12696-483: The inclusion of men's liberation within its aims, because they believe that men are also harmed by traditional gender roles . Feminist theory , which emerged from feminist movements, aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women's social roles and lived experiences. Feminist theorists have developed theories in a variety of disciplines in order to respond to issues concerning gender. Numerous feminist movements and ideologies have developed over

12834-652: The intersectional aspects of gender-based violence. For example, Timothy Laurie notes that Butler's use of phrases like "gender politics" and "gender violence" in relation to assaults on transgender individuals in the United States can "[scour] a landscape filled with class and labour relations, racialized urban stratification, and complex interactions between sexual identity, sexual practices and sex work", and produce instead "a clean surface on which struggles over 'the human' are imagined to play out". German feminist Alice Schwarzer speaks of Butler's "radical intellectual games" that would not change how society classifies and treats

12972-557: The journal's "digital presence." The history of Signs is explored extensively in Kelly Coogan-Gehr's 2011 book The Geopolitics of the Cold War and Narratives of Inclusion: Excavating a Feminist Archive . Coogan-Gehr uses Signs as a case study to complicate what she calls the "stock narrative of feminist field formation". She argues that dominant histories of the development of academic feminism , in focusing solely on

13110-401: The late 1960s and 1970s. The journal had two founding purposes, as stated in the inaugural editorial: (1) "to publish the new scholarship about women" in the U.S. and around the globe, and (2) "to be interdisciplinary ." The goal was for readers of the journal to "grasp a sense of the totality of women's lives and the realities of which they have been a part." The meaning behind the name Signs

13248-432: The late 20th century various feminists began to argue that gender roles are socially constructed , and that it is impossible to generalize women's experiences across cultures and histories. Post-structural feminism draws on the philosophies of post-structuralism and deconstruction in order to argue that the concept of gender is created socially and culturally through discourse . Postmodern feminists also emphasize

13386-467: The modern western feminist movement is divided into multiple "waves". The first comprised women's suffrage movements of the 19th and early-20th centuries, promoting women's right to vote. The second wave , the women's liberation movement , began in the 1960s and campaigned for legal and social equality for women. In or around 1992, a third wave was identified, characterized by a focus on individuality and diversity. Additionally, some have argued for

13524-448: The most stylistically lamentable passages found in scholarly books and articles", which Butler responded to . Some critics have accused Butler of elitism due to their difficult prose style, while others state that Butler reduces gender to "discourse" or promotes a form of gender voluntarism  – Doctrine prioritizing will over intellect. Susan Bordo , for example, has argued that Butler reduces gender to language and has contended that

13662-488: The new Islamist movement and growing conservatism. However, some activists proposed a new feminist movement, Islamic feminism , which argues for women's equality within an Islamic framework. In Latin America , revolutions brought changes in women's status in countries such as Nicaragua , where feminist ideology during the Sandinista Revolution aided women's quality of life but fell short of achieving

13800-405: The opacity of the subject to itself; in other words, the limits of self-knowledge. Primarily borrowing from Theodor Adorno , Michel Foucault , Friedrich Nietzsche , Jean Laplanche , Adriana Cavarero and Emmanuel Levinas , Butler develops a theory of the formation of the subject. Butler theorizes the subject in relation to the social – a community of others and their norms – which is beyond

13938-588: The passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1919), granting women the right to vote in all states. The term first wave was coined retroactively when the term second-wave feminism came into use. In Germany , feminists like Clara Zetkin was very interested in women's politics , including the fight for equal opportunities and women's suffrage , through socialism. She helped to develop

14076-451: The position that modern societies are patriarchal —they prioritize the male point of view—and that women are treated unjustly in these societies. Efforts to change this include fighting against gender stereotypes and improving educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women. Originating in late 18th-century Europe, feminist movements have campaigned and continue to campaign for women's rights , including

14214-423: The possibilities of gender transformation are to be found in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style." Butler concludes their essay with a personal reflection on the strengths and limitations of widespread feminist theories which function on a solely binary perception of gender. Butler critiques what they call

14352-509: The possibility of any genuinely oppositional discourse; "If speech depends upon censorship, then the principle that one might seek to oppose is at once the formative principle of oppositional speech". Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence opens a new line in Judith Butler's work that has had a great impact on their subsequent thought, especially on books like Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009) or Notes Toward

14490-473: The power and possibilities of protests, such as the Black Lives Matter protests regarding the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014. In The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind , Butler connects the ideologies of nonviolence and the political struggle for social equality. They review the traditional understanding of "nonviolence," stating that it "is often misunderstood as

14628-496: The provisional emancipation of some women, but post-war periods signalled the return to conservative roles. In Switzerland , women gained the right to vote in federal elections in 1971; but in the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden women obtained the right to vote on local issues only in 1991, when the canton was forced to do so by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland . In Liechtenstein , women were given

14766-511: The remaining Australian colonies passed similar legislation between 1890 and 1897. With the turn of the 19th century, activism focused primarily on gaining political power, particularly the right of women's suffrage , though some feminists were active in campaigning for women's sexual , reproductive , and economic rights too. Women's suffrage (the right to vote and stand for parliamentary office) began in Britain's Australasian colonies at

14904-575: The right to vote , run for public office , work , earn equal pay , own property , receive education , enter into contracts , have equal rights within marriage , and maternity leave . Feminists have also worked to ensure access to contraception , legal abortions , and social integration ; and to protect women and girls from sexual assault , sexual harassment , and domestic violence . Changes in female dress standards and acceptable physical activities for women have also been part of feminist movements. Many scholars consider feminist campaigns to be

15042-546: The right to vote by the women's suffrage referendum of 1984 . Three prior referendums held in 1968 , 1971 and 1973 had failed to secure women's right to vote. Feminists continued to campaign for the reform of family laws which gave husbands control over their wives. Although by the 20th century coverture had been abolished in the UK and US, in many continental European countries married women still had very few rights. For instance, in France, married women did not receive

15180-534: The right to vote. Grenier's proposition was adopted 51 to 16. In May 1947, following the November 1946 elections , the sociologist Robert Verdier minimized the " gender gap ", stating in Le Populaire that women had not voted in a consistent way, dividing themselves, as men, according to social classes. During the baby boom period, feminism waned in importance. Wars (both World War I and World War II) had seen

15318-422: The right to work without their husband's permission until 1965. Feminists have also worked to abolish the "marital exemption" in rape laws which precluded the prosecution of husbands for the rape of their wives. Earlier efforts by first-wave feminists such as Voltairine de Cleyre , Victoria Woodhull and Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme Elmy to criminalize marital rape in the late 19th century had failed; this

15456-414: The script by performing out of turn or through unwarranted improvisations. Gender is not passively scripted on the body, and neither is it determined by nature, language, the symbolic, or the overwhelming history of patriarchy. Gender is what is put on, invariably, under constraint, daily and incessantly, with anxiety and pleasure, but if this continuous act is mistaken for a natural or linguistic given, power

15594-418: The second wave's essentialist definitions of femininity , which, third-wave feminists argued, overemphasized the experiences of upper middle-class white women. Third-wave feminists often focused on " micro-politics " and challenged the second wave's paradigm as to what was, or was not, good for women, and tended to use a post-structuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality. Feminist leaders rooted in

15732-418: The second wave's ideas. Other postfeminists say that feminism is no longer relevant to today's society. Amelia Jones has written that the postfeminist texts which emerged in the 1980s and 1990s portrayed second-wave feminism as a monolithic entity. Dorothy Chunn describes a "blaming narrative" under the postfeminist moniker, where feminists are undermined for continuing to make demands for gender equality in

15870-428: The second wave, such as Gloria Anzaldúa , bell hooks , Chela Sandoval , Cherríe Moraga , Audre Lorde , Maxine Hong Kingston , and many other non-white feminists, sought to negotiate a space within feminist thought for consideration of race-related subjectivities. Third-wave feminism also contained internal debates between difference feminists , who believe that there are important psychological differences between

16008-459: The sexes, and those who believe that there are no inherent psychological differences between the sexes and contend that gender roles are due to social conditioning . Standpoint theory is a feminist theoretical point of view stating that a person's social position influences their knowledge. This perspective argues that research and theory treat women and the feminist movement as insignificant and refuses to see traditional science as unbiased. Since

16146-784: The slogan "The Personal is Political", which became synonymous with the second wave. Second- and third-wave feminism in China has been characterized by a reexamination of women's roles during the communist revolution and other reform movements, and new discussions about whether women's equality has actually been fully achieved. In 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt initiated " state feminism ", which outlawed discrimination based on gender and granted women's suffrage, but also blocked political activism by feminist leaders. During Sadat 's presidency, his wife, Jehan Sadat , publicly advocated further women's rights, though Egyptian policy and society began to move away from women's equality with

16284-418: The social construction of gender and the discursive nature of reality; however, as Pamela Abbott et al. write, a postmodern approach to feminism highlights "the existence of multiple truths (rather than simply men and women's standpoints)". Signs (journal) The founding of Signs in 1975 was part of the early development of the field of women's studies , born of the women's liberation movement of

16422-415: The social world in which one comes to be human in the first place and which remains precisely that which one cannot know about oneself. In this way, Butler locates social and political critique at the core of ethical practice. In Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly , Butler discusses the power of public gatherings, considering what they signify and how they work. They use this framework to analyze

16560-656: The social-democratic women's movement in Germany. From 1891 to 1917, she edited the SPD women's newspaper Die Gleichheit (Equality). In 1907 she became the leader of the newly founded "Women's Office" at the SPD. She also contributed to International Women's Day (IWD). During the late Qing period and reform movements such as the Hundred Days' Reform , Chinese feminists called for women's liberation from traditional roles and Neo-Confucian gender segregation . Later,

16698-434: The society at large but also within the feminist movement." Finally, Butler aims to break the supposed links between sex and gender so that gender and desire can be "flexible, free floating and not caused by other stable factors" (David Gauntlett). The idea of identity as free and flexible and gender as performative, not an essence, has become one of the foundations of queer theory . Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories

16836-409: The spirit world, and knowledge, as well as across everyday practices that either habituate us to take care of the world or to destroy it." Decolonial feminists like Karla Jessen Williamson and Rauna Kuokkanen have examined colonialism as a force that has imposed gender hierarchies on Indigenous women that have disempowered and fractured Indigenous communities and ways of life. The term postfeminism

16974-589: The state feminism of the Nordic countries . The broad field of liberal feminism is sometimes confused with the more recent and smaller branch known as libertarian feminism, which tends to diverge significantly from mainstream liberal feminism. For example, "libertarian feminism does not require social measures to reduce material inequality; in fact, it opposes such measures ... in contrast, liberal feminism may support such requirements and egalitarian versions of feminism insist on them." Catherine Rottenberg notes that

17112-471: The state reserves for itself the power to define hate speech and, conversely, the limits of acceptable discourse. In this connection, Butler criticizes feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon 's argument against pornography for its unquestioning acceptance of the state's power to censor. Deploying Foucault 's argument from the first volume of The History of Sexuality , Butler states that any attempt at censorship, legal or otherwise, necessarily propagates

17250-542: The synagogue? Could German Idealism be held accountable for Nazism ? And how was one to understand existential theology , including the work of Martin Buber ?" Butler attended Bennington College before transferring to Yale University , where they studied philosophy and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1978 and a PhD in 1984. Their studies fell primarily under the traditions of German Idealism and phenomenology , and they spent one academic year at Heidelberg University as

17388-616: The teaching of gender, gay parenting, and the depathologization of transgender people. Some academics and political activists see in Butler a departure from the sex/gender dichotomy and a non-essentialist conception of gender—along with an insistence that power helps form the subject —an idea whose introduction purportedly brought new insights to feminist and queer praxis, thought, and studies. Darin Barney of McGill University wrote that: Butler's work on gender, sex, sexuality, queerness, feminism, bodies, political speech and ethics has changed

17526-491: The terms gender and sex as they have been used by feminists. Butler argues that feminism made a mistake in trying to make "women" a discrete, ahistorical group with common characteristics. Butler writes that this approach reinforces the binary view of gender relations. Butler believes that feminists should not try to define "women" and they also believe that feminists should "focus on providing an account of how power functions and shapes our understandings of womanhood not only in

17664-449: The total uprooting and reconstruction of society as necessary. Separatist feminism does not support heterosexual relationships. Lesbian feminism is thus closely related. Other feminists criticize separatist feminism as sexist. Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham say that materialist forms of feminism grew out of Western Marxist thought and have inspired a number of different (but overlapping) movements, all of which are involved in

17802-409: The very language it seeks to forbid. As Foucault argues, for example, the strict sexual mores of 19th-century Western Europe did nothing but amplify the discourse of sexuality they sought to control. Extending this argument using Derrida and Lacan , Butler says that censorship is primitive to language, and that the linguistic "I" is a mere effect of a primitive censorship. In this way, Butler questions

17940-416: The way scholars all over the world think, talk and write about identity, subjectivity, power and politics. It has also changed the lives of countless people whose bodies, genders, sexualities and desires have made them subject to violence, exclusion and oppression. Postmodern feminism's major departure from other branches of feminism is perhaps the argument that sex is itself constructed through language ,

18078-536: The women's movement and other radical movements of the 1960s, fail to take into account the role of "changes the Cold War produced in higher education." In the book, she calls Signs a "premier academic feminist journal". In 2015, Signs launched the Feminist Public Intellectuals Project, which seeks to engage feminist theorizing with pressing political and social problems via three open-access, online-first initiatives: Short Takes: Provocations on Public Feminism, Currents: Feminist Key Concepts and Controversies, and Ask

18216-458: The world have had different causes and goals. Most western feminist historians contend that all movements working to obtain women's rights should be considered feminist movements, even when they did not (or do not) apply the term to themselves. Other historians assert that the term should be limited to the modern feminist movement and its descendants. Those historians use the label " protofeminist " to describe earlier movements. The history of

18354-410: The years, representing different viewpoints and political aims. Traditionally, since the 19th century, first-wave liberal feminism , which sought political and legal equality through reforms within a liberal democratic framework, was contrasted with labour -based proletarian women's movements that over time developed into socialist and Marxist feminism based on class struggle theory. Since

18492-402: The years. Feminism is often divided into three main traditions called liberal, radical and socialist/Marxist feminism, sometimes known as the "Big Three" schools of feminist thought. Since the late 20th century, newer forms of feminisms have also emerged. Some branches of feminism track the political leanings of the larger society to a greater or lesser degree, or focus on specific topics, such as

18630-549: Was inspired to write this book after being attacked in 2017 in Brazil while speaking, at least one of whom shouted at Butler, saying "Take your ideology to hell!" Butler is interested in the literal demonization of gender by analyzing the historical context of the anti-gender movement . The book has been described as "the most accessible of their books so far, an intervention meant for a wide audience". Butler's work has been influential in feminist and queer theory, cultural studies , and continental philosophy . Their contribution to

18768-480: Was murdered in the Shoah . Butler's parents were practicing Reform Jews . Their mother was raised Orthodox , eventually becoming Conservative and then Reform, while their father was raised Reform. As a child and teenager, Butler attended both Hebrew school and special classes on Jewish ethics , where they received their "first training in philosophy". Butler stated in a 2010 interview with Haaretz that they began

18906-404: Was only achieved a century later in most Western countries, but is still not achieved in many other parts of the world. French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir provided a Marxist solution and an existentialist view on many of the questions of feminism with the publication of Le Deuxième Sexe ( The Second Sex ) in 1949. The book expressed feminists' sense of injustice. Second-wave feminism

19044-587: Was part of a famous exchange between the two theorists. Fraser has suggested that Butler's focus on performativity distances them from "everyday ways of talking and thinking about ourselves. ... Why should we use such a self-distancing idiom?" Butler responded to criticisms in the preface to the 1999-edition Gender Trouble by asking suggestively whether there is "a value to be derived from...experiences of linguistic difficulty." More recently, several critics — such as semiotician Viviane Namaste — have criticised Judith Butler's Undoing Gender for under-emphasizing

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