The Vatican says gender theory threatens human dignity – but Judith Butler believes the ‘threat’ is social change

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It has become an “overdetermined” concept, “absorbing wildly different ideas of what threatens the world”, writes American feminist philospher Judith Butler.

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The Conversation

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https://theconversation.com/the-vatican-says-gender-theory-threatens-human-dignity-but-judith-butler-believes-the-threat-is-social-change-227147

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Tuesday, April 9, 2024

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Gender Trouble, Freedom, Intersex, Desire, Vertigo, Philosophy, Prison, Risk, Toxic masculinity, Climate, Child, Nature, Misplaced, Woman, Male, Butler, Rape, Colonialism, Capitalism, Penis, Anxiety, Family, Movement, Accident, Violence, Toy

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Summary

Key Points:

It has become an “overdetermined” concept, “absorbing wildly different ideas of what threatens the world”, writes American feminist philospher Judith Butler.
For the Vatican, the traditional family will be ruined and children are now vulnerable to “ideological colonization”.
And for right-wing politicians and heads of state, (from Liberal senator Alex Antic, who believes gender dysphoria is a “trend”, to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Vladimir Putin), gender is a weapon of social destruction.

Butler’s overarching argument is that “gender” – the overdetermined concept to which “anti-gender ideologists” object – is really a nightmarish bogeyman, a “phantasm with destructive powers, one way of collecting and escalating multitudes of modern panics”.
Read more:
Judith Butler: their philosophy of gender explained

Misplaced fears and misunderstandings

The first, to which much of the book is dedicated, is to expose the absurdity of arguments against gender ideology.
Butler demonstrates the ways “gender ideology” critics invert, externalise and project the very harms they claim “gender ideologists” pose.
Then there’s the supposed threat of sexual violence to cisgender women if transgender women are allowed into single-sex spaces like prisons.
Read more:
'Toxic masculinity': what does it mean, where did it come from – and is the term useful or harmful?

More than two sexes

Feminists like Butler reject “sexual dimorphism”: the belief there are two, and only two, sexes.
But we expect to find two sexes because that is how many sexes we have learned to see.
And we look for two sexes because we only recognise two genders.
And because we expect to find two sexes in humanity, we automatically start to explain away any evidence (like intersex diversity) that would contradict this received truth.

Fighting back

These rules, we think, apply both to ourselves and others.
To critics, “gender ideologues” are breaking all the organisational rules of gender, inverting all sense and order.
When we question gender as an organising principle, it introduces further questions about the right way to live.

Ultimately, Butler’s point is that while gender seems scary to many, the reality is: it’s not.
Take a pause and ask, they suggest: what are the agendas of those who may try to convince you otherwise?
But in imagining a shared future together, we can “emerge into a world committed to cohabitation and equality across difference”.

Louise Richardson-Self receives funding from the Australian Research Council for two projects: DE190100719: Hate Speech Against Women Online: Concepts and Countermeasures; and DP200100395: Religious Freedom, LGBT+ Employees, and the Right to Discriminate.