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Who's afraid of gender?

Hosted by the Department of Gender Studies

In-person and online public event (Sheikh Zayed Theatre, CKK Building)

Speaker

Professor Judith Butler

Professor Judith Butler

Chair

Professor Sumi Madhok

Professor Sumi Madhok

Join us for this event at which Judith Butler will talk about their new book, Who's Afraid of Gender?

From a global icon, Judith's book is an account of how a fear of gender is fuelling reactionary politics around the world. Judith Butler, the ground-breaking philosopher whose work has 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’ dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous threat to families, local cultures, civilization – and even ‘man’ himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to abolish reproductive justice, undermine protections against violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights. But what, exactly, is so disturbing about gender? In this vital, courageous book, Butler carefully examines how ‘gender’ has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations and trans-exclusionary feminists, and the concrete ways in which this phantasm works. It is an intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who's Afraid of Gender? is a call to make a broad coalition with all those who struggle for equality and fight injustice.

Meet our speaker and chair

Judith Butler is Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School and former Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. They were the Founding Director of the Critical Theory Program and International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs at UC Berkeley. Butler is active in gender and sexual politics, human rights, anti-war politics, and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Sumi Madhok (@sumi_madhok) is Professor of Political Theory and Gender Studies at LSE and faculty associate at LSE International Inequalities Institute. Quite unusually, she is a feminist political theorist with an ethnographic sensibility. Her most recent book Vernacular Rights Cultures: The Politics of Origins, Human Rights and Gendered Struggles for Justice was awarded the Susan Strange Prize Best Book Prize and The Sussex International Theory Prize, 2022.

More about this event

This event will be available to watch on LSE Live. LSE Live is the new home for our live streams, allowing you to tune in and join the global debate at LSE, wherever you are in the world. If you can't attend live, a video will be made available shortly afterwards on LSE's YouTube channel.

The Department of Gender Studies (@LSEGenderTweet) pioneers intersectional, interdisciplinary and transnational teaching and research, addressing the tenacity of gendered power relations and gendered inequalities in times of global transformations. Established in 1993, LSE Gender is the largest Department of Gender Studies in Europe.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEGender

Podcast & Video

A podcast of this event is available to download from Who's afraid of gender?

A video of this event is available to watch at Who's afraid of gender?

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