Judith Butler, philosopher: ‘If you sacrifice a minority like trans people, you are operating within a fascist logic’

Judith Butler, 68, isn’t particularly “interested in lists,” even when they top them. “I am in illustrious male company,” they remark upon hearing the names of Thomas Piketty, Noam Chomsky, and Jürgen Habermas — the next most influential thinkers, according to experts questioned by EL PAÍS. “Does that make me a man?” they quip.

Butler — a pioneering voice in feminism, gender studies, critical theory, and contemporary philosophy — registered as non-binary in California years ago. While their pronouns changed to they/them, they chose to keep their name, a decision, they say, surprised the courthouse clerk at the time.

Butler has been teaching and researching at Berkeley since the 1990s, where they live with their partner, the political scientist Wendy Brown. Butler met us at the university clock tower on a stormy day in San Francisco Bay. They spoke of the enduring impact of their most famous book, Gender Trouble — especially on young people — as well as the seismic reaction those theories provoked in society, politics, and even pop culture, a shockwave explored in their latest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender? (2024).

The conversation took place the same day House Speaker Mike Johnson announced he would ban Sarah McBride — the first trans congresswoman in history — from using the women’s bathrooms in the Capitol, and just two weeks had passed since Donald Trump’s election victory. The conversation turned to analyzing how these events came to pass and what might lie ahead, with Butler approaching the topics with a characteristic blend of generosity, patience, and wit.

Days later, in a follow-up email, Butler reflected on their position in the EL PAÍS ranking, expressing hope that their influence stems from their intellectual work rather than the public controversies they often navigate: from debates on the Gaza conflict to the feminist disputes about the inclusion of trans women. Butler’s contributions extend far beyond these flashpoints or the queer theory they helped establish in the late 1980s. Butler has written brilliantly about censorship, non-violence, and the insurgency of Antigone. Their reflections, often crafted in dialogue with other thinkers — a format they find “inspiring” — have tackled themes like secularism and the erosion of the nation-state. Currently, Butler is working on a long-awaited essay on Kafka.

Question. Who would you have voted for as the most influential thinker?

Answer. [Indian writer] Arundhati Roy. Her words about the pandemic, oppression or about struggles for justice are very powerful. At least in my world, when she speaks, people listen.

Q. And who are the three intellectuals who have inspired you the most?

A. Probably Hegel and Freud, and either [Michel] Foucault or Simone de Beauvoir. I don’t want to have to choose now...

Q. This month marks the 35th anniversary of Gender Trouble. Has your view of gender changed over time?

A. As a person who is still alive, which means my thought is living, of course, I’ve gone through some important changes. I moved away from gender after the book Undoing Gender, and spent 20 years working on other topics. Returning to the topic [in their latest book] was awkward because I had to learn the field as it has emerged in the last few decades. When I wrote Gender Trouble, I was getting to know post-structuralist and French feminist theory, which is hastily called “French theory” in the United States. That influence was one of the reasons that made the text difficult. And yet, even as a dense book, it is strangely popular. What I make of that is that the reading public is more curious and intelligent than we generally assume.

Q. Would you say that the public is more interested in ideas than it was then?

A. Maybe in Europe or in Spain, where you have regular festivals of books and long articles in EL PAÍS on philosophers [laughs]. In the United States, there’s a stronger division between who’s an academic and who’s a public writer. Sometimes I cross that divide, sometimes I don’t. I don’t like the category of the public intellectual, because it focuses on the individual. When somebody’s work becomes publicly interesting, it’s because something is already happening in the world: changes in the way young people think about the future and themselves; alterations in the family form; openness about sexuality; curiosity about gender... These public issues, often vexing, are what bring certain intellectuals into prominence because they’re reflecting on what turns out to be really important to people at the time. Piketty is important because he helps us think about social and economic inequality in new ways. And we appreciate the fact that someone like Dipesh Chakrabarty thinks long and hard about climate catastrophe, a pressing and urgent issue of our time. Most of our work is collaborative, even when only a single author is named. I couldn’t have written Gender Trouble without a history of feminist theory, gay and lesbian activism, certain academic culture and even a bar scene in New Haven [where Butler was living at the time]. That work comes out of several legacies. I then sign my name.

Q. Is there any aspect of Gender Trouble that you regret?

A. I don’t regret it exactly, but what was most exciting to readers was the concept of performativity. Many people understood it to be a radical free choice that effectively said “you can be whatever you want, and decide to change who you are.” It emerges only in the last part of the book, where — drawing from Simone de Beauvoir’s idea of a situation — I say clearly that we always exercise freedom within scenes of constraint and histories of subject formation.

Butler pauses to listen to the rumble of a protest coming from the street, which appears to be about the Gaza war. “It looks like a manif,” says Butler, using a chic French colloquialism. “Unless they have permission, they’ll be dealing with security.”

Q. It was predicted that this would be a heated autumn of protests on campuses, but that hasn’t quite happened, has it?

A. When you see people being beaten at other universities, you realize that administrators are not always honoring freedom of expression. They are more willing to take draconian measures. Under Trump, that is more likely to become intensified. I think the protesters are rethinking their strategies.

Q. Last year, these protests were presented as a collision between freedom of expression and antisemitism…

A. I love that the manif has changed our conversation. We live in a world in which conversations have to adapt to those changes. It is imperative to oppose antisemitism as one would oppose any racism. The problem is the definition of antisemitism. It cannot be the case that if you criticize Israel, you’re attacking the Jewish people. Within Israel itself, you see some pretty strong criticism, including of Zionism. If Ha’Aretz can accommodate debates like that, why do we imagine that open debate [in the United States] can only be a form of antisemitism? Censorship and baseless allegation takes the place of difficult conversations. But it is the latter that we need, especially now that so many democracies are on the verge of succumbing to authoritarian powers.

Q. You recently defined Hamas as a “resistance movement”…

A. It’s unfortunate: people take a phrase and then that comes to stand for my full position. There’s such a rush to censorship and condemnation that it is very difficult to be part of an open discussion. If I say that Hamas is a resistance movement, I am describing it, but I am not supporting it. And yet there are these litmus tests: you must utter some words, and not others, and if you fail the test, your reputation will be damaged. And then there’s the fact that if you say “resistance” in France, you’re using a word reserved for the most important liberation movement in the history of the modern France. For them, resistance is an ultimate value, and “terrorism” is the name you are obligated to give to groups like Hamas without saying anything more.

Q. I was born in Spain’s Basque Country, and I remember how delicate language can be. For example, when the BBC kept calling ETA a “separatist group.” Isn’t Hamas a terrorist group?

A. Hamas uses terrorist tactics, for sure, but I know that within the United Nations it is not always classified as a terrorist group: it has a non-military wing which provides social services and distributes humanitarian aid, and this is one reason the Israeli state is bombing those convoys. And why is it that Israeli state violence, which is much more destructive and commits crimes against humanity on a regular basis, is not called “state terrorism”? In the United States, even [Palestinian thinker] Edward Said was called a terrorist. It is a word that puts an end to a conversation. But if we want to know why Palestinians had such an uprising, then you have to tell a longer history. To make an issue like that discussable doesn’t mean you’re exonerating them. I wrote an entire book, The Force of Nonviolence, that makes clear what my commitments are to nonviolent practices. I think it’s bad faith, if not intellectual irresponsible, to argue that, because I can acknowledge that this is the armed faction of the Palestinian movement for liberation, I therefore support that movement, betraying all my principles.

Q. That connects with one of the most interesting points of your work, the idea of “grievability,” the notion that there are people who deserve to be mourned more than others.

A. Those who wage war often conceive of those they annihilate as lives that were not worth living anyway. They don’t grieve the loss of those lives when they are killed because they are not considered to be valuable lives. Palestinians are being regarded as threats to Israeli life, not as living beings. Once a group of people has been so dehumanized that they no longer count among the community of humans, then the pathway is cleared toward genocidal action. And what we’re seeing in Gaza are genocidal actions.

Q. Not quite a genocide…

A. A genocidal action is one that not only targets a very specific ethnic or racial group, but also the infrastructures of life. Raphael Lemkin, who devised the doctrine of genocide in 1944, was very clear about that. Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on Palestine for the U.N., accepts his definition for the current condition in Gaza. So I think what we are seeing is genocidal conduct. What’s harder for people to fathom is that these kinds of tactics and this form of killing, of forcible dispossession, did not start in retaliation for the killings of October 7 [2023] but have been component parts of Israeli state violence since 1948 [when the state of Israel was created].

Q. Let’s go back to the point before we were interrupted by reality. We were talking about performativity in Gender Trouble…

A. That book was important for many people because it allowed them to see that they were born into a world where there were very strong expectations about what it means to be a man or a woman. Some people fail to meet those expectations, but that failure is actually very promising if considered through lens of an autonomous spirit that deviates from the path, not agreeing to abide by norms, finding another way.

Q. Where do you draw the line for considering a minor ready to break these rules?

A. That’s a very practical question. Young people should be able to take time to find their own way. If you teach gender in school that doesn’t mean you’re telling them that they should become homosexual or trans. Not providing support to gender non-conforming youth strikes me as an act of cruelty. I don’t think every time a kid says, oh, I want hormones, you rush to the doctor. But you also don’t refuse the idea.

Q. In your latest book, you speak of a “phantasm” created to stoke fears about gender. Do you sympathize with parents who are worried about their children making mistakes?

A. Yes. Those parents have a fear, but I can’t understand why they don’t want to know about certain things. I had a man say to me in Chile that he didn’t want a gay or lesbian family living next door to him. “I’m heterosexual, married, I enjoy reproductive sexuality, my way of life is the way that God has mandated, and it is the only correct and moral one.” His fear was that if there were different kinds of legitimate families, then his form would become less natural and less necessary.

Q. One of the main criticisms of gender ideology is that the pharmaceutical industry has interests in it…

A. Pharma has interests in hormone replacement, but my understanding is that hormone replacement therapy for women who are postmenopausal is a much bigger industry. Of course, Big Pharma is an issue for many health issues, including depression, but that is not the main reason why kids are questioning gender norms, including the version of masculinity that Trump represents. They need spaces where they can exercise their autonomy. Where can they assert themselves? Sometimes it’s in choosing a pronoun.

Q. Do you understand the concerns of feminists who think that gender could result in the erasure of women?

A. Some feminists, I think unwittingly, have allied themselves in places like the U.K. and Spain with the far right when it comes to instigating this phantasm about gender. I understand those fears, but that doesn’t mean that I think they’re based on knowledge. Perhaps those feminists need a better understanding of who trans people are. Womanhood won’t be erased just because we open the category and invite some more people in. This is a moment for expanding alliances, not to have sectarian struggles about bathrooms. Women know what it’s like to be denied health care. They are currently being deprived of access to reproductive health in several parts of the world, including the U.S. Women know how difficult and necessary it is to struggle for autonomy. So why would they not support trans struggles for health care and to live free of the fear of violence?

Q. The phantasm seemed to work for Trump’s campaign. One of his slogans was: “Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you.” The issue was whether or not to give gender treatment to the migrant inmate population, which is a tiny portion of the society. But that, and Harris’ failure to refute it, was a powerful reason for the Republican victory.

A. I doubt that that was the reason for his victory. People were already living with many fears about the economy, war, climate catastrophe, and Trump knew how to exploit and repackage those fears to scapegoat minorities. That message appealed to anxiety. Trump put his anti-migrant discourse together with his anti-trans and anti-feminist discourse: Harris, the woke, the Marxist, the feminist, Black and brown, who presumably supports trans surgery (terrifying) on migrants who flooded over the border (also terrifying). On the left, we don’t know how to appeal to people’s deep passions. We think we’re very smart and very critical. But where’s the radical imaginary by which people will be passionately absorbed? I did not like the blame game that started after the defeat. I did not like the pundits who said: “Oh, we didn’t realize how anti-trans and anti-migrant people are.”

Q. It wasn’t just Trumpism. Some Democratic voices say it’s time to move beyond the issue of trans rights in areas like sports, which affect very few people.

A. You could say that about the Jews, Black people or Haitians, or any very vulnerable minority. Once you decide that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed, you’re operating within a fascist logic, because that means there might be a second one you’re willing to sacrifice, and a third, a fourth, and then what happens?

Q. J. K. Rowling has sarcastically predicted that in order to take on Trump, The Guardian newspaper will spend four years publishing “emotive longform pieces from [left-wing British writer] Owen Jones complaining that American taxi drivers aren’t reading enough Judith Butler.” Is the rift between the elites and so-called “normal people” insurmountable?

A. Taxi drivers were Democrats until about 20 years ago. Bernie Sanders had the taxi drivers. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They’re both progressives on social, economic, and gender politics. If opposing the increasing disparity between rich and poor becomes the main task of a Democratic or liberal-left coalition, and not just as an add-on, then we will perhaps have a Bernie effect again. By the way, I have great discussions on gender with taxi drivers. I find that many of them are excellent theorists of the everyday.

Q. This has been a gendered election, but not in the sense that one of your readers would have imagined. It was the election of men versus women. Of the triumph of the misogynistic manosphere. Do you interpret this as a reaction to what you represent and have defended for decades?

A. It’s part of the picture. But the important thing is how we think about the gender division in relation to increasingly virulent forms of racism. Who is to say that gender and race in the person of Harris was not a fundamental issue in a country that is becoming increasingly misogynist and racist.

Q. Did it prove once again that the United States is not ready to elect a woman, or was it that particular woman?

A. I don’t agree with a lot of what she stands for — fracking, migration, Palestine — and I did not actively support her candidacy. But I did vote for her. We have a pernicious history of misogyny, which is being celebrated in the person of Trump. Guilty of sexual crimes, he has done more than any other American person to demean and degrade women as a class. The people who say, “Oh, I don’t like that part of his behavior, but I’m going to vote for him anyway because of the economy,” they’re admitting that they are willing to live with that misogyny and look away from his sexual violence. The more people who say that they can “live with” racism and misogyny in a candidate, even if they’re not enthusiastic racists, the more the enthusiastic racists and the fascists become stronger. I see a kind of restoration fantasy at play in many right-wing movements in the U.S. People want to go back to the idea of being a white country or the idea of the patriarchal family, the principle that marriages are for heterosexuals. I call it a nostalgic fury for an impossible past. Those in the grip of that fury are effectively saying: “I don’t like the complexity of this world, and all these people speaking all these languages. I’m fearful that my family will become destroyed by gender ideology.” As a consequence of that, they’re furiously turning against some of the most vulnerable people in this country, stripping of them of rights as they fear that the same will be done to them.

Q. Does the election result mean that woke is broke?

A. I don’t even know what the woke is. It’s just a slur that the right wing uses.

Q. I’ll rephrase the question. Does Trump’s victory mark some kind of end to identity politics?

A. Identity is, for me, a point of departure for alliances, which need to include all kinds of people, from trans to working people to those taxi drivers that J. K. Rowling is worried about. Identity is a great start for making connections and becoming part of larger communities. But you can’t have a politics of identity that is only about identity. If you do that, you draw sectarian lines, and you abandoned our interdependent ties.

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