Finding Freedom in the Gender Phantasmagoria

The dialogue around gender has become polluted with an irrational nightmare that haunts our political life. Judith Butler has termed this nightmare a phantasm, a word chosen for its associations both with fantasies and hauntings. A powerful network has crystallized around this phantasm, an international coalition with diverse approaches and values but the same end game of marshaling the state against individual freedom. To them, gender is of the devil, as dangerous as nuclear weapons, will destroy the family and society, will destroy people’s sexed identities, is child abuse, and is imperialism, among other vivid fears. 

As Butler puts it, “Depending on the anxieties circulating in a particular region, gender can be figured as Marxist or capitalist, tyranny or libertarianism, fascism or totalitarianism, a colonizing force or an unwanted migrant.” Therefore, to protect our sexed identities, we must empower the state to take away others’ sexed identities; to defend children, the state must restrict their healthcare; to save the family, the state must refuse to recognize queer families. The proliferation of odds-and-ends horrors attributed to gender has the effect of uniting disparate groups under the same banner of increasing state power. It is this network and its phantasm which Butler dissects.

Butler has a deep personal and professional interest in this matter. Butler’s work on gender goes back to 1988, with their article “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” followed in the next few years by the further studies Gender Trouble, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” and Bodies That Matter. In these works, Butler developed the performative theory of gender, which argued that gender is actualized through gender acts, similar to how a wedding is traditionally actualized through the ceremony, vows, and I dos, or how a play is actualized through its performance. In these famous works Butler uses critical theory, an approach which assumes that our values influence the questions we ask of science and the problems we expect science to solve. This approach has particular salience when applied to gender, which already touches so closely on religious and ideological values.

Butler’s personal and professional interest is palpable. They give a sense of being under siege, an academic attempting to justify their life’s work to the world. This combines with the personal attacks Butler has faced: Attempted assaults, vile language, and symbolic attacks, such as people burning effigies of them. While anyone would be motivated to defend themselves when faced with such vitriol, at times it draws into question Butler’s own objectivity – or, at a minimum, if they are in an appropriate place to give a trustworthy account of the value of critical theory and gender studies. They can certainly give the perspective from the inside, but most of us are on the outside; the impact those fields have on us is distinctly different than the impact that it has on Butler and their colleagues, including their wife, Wendy Brown, faculty at the prestigious Institute for Advanced Studies and premier scholar of critical theory. Academics certainly should attempt to justify their work to the rest of the world; it’s good when they do. But Butler’s attempts to do so come off as blind to how those not in academia perceive it all.

Because of this, the parts where Butler does what they do best – academic analysis of gender and culture – are excellent, but they sit uneasily alongside an awkward and insistent self-defense. They would have been better served to let the arguments presented in the book show how much value can come out of gender and critical studies, instead of repeatedly insisting so.

Butler’s academic background adds a second twist: a tendency towards esoteric theory and chic radicalism that obscures an otherwise remarkably palatable message of liberal decency. Once you look past the odd terminology and style, what you find is the belief that we ought to create a liveable and peaceful world where all people are given respect and autonomy. It’s unclear why we need the concept of the phantasm to make this argument.

In the first half of the book, Butler points to examples of “gender-mainstreaming,” attempts by international organizations to enforce feminist and pro-LGBT policies. These, they say, are inherently neoliberal as they take on an economic form: The World Bank stopped providing loans to Uganda over its new law which threatened lifetime incarceration for anyone convicted of homosexual acts, and the European Union only allows new members if they comply with its anti-discrimination laws.

Butler’s analysis of the anti-gender ideology movement finds neoliberalism not just in the current attempts to mainstream gender-progressivism, but also in the origins of the movement. (Butler also spends a chapter establishing that the Vatican bears significant responsibility for the current moment, but this turns out to be more academic and historical than pragmatic or novel.) They point to a study suggesting that the withdrawal of social welfare in favor of market-oriented policies in the late 20th century—in other words, neoliberalism—caused in most countries a conservative and collectivist turn. As the state refused to support individuals, families and the community became increasingly integral to society. 

This argument supports two moves made by Butler. First, it explains why the United States has taken relatively long to become hospitable to the anti-gender ideology movement: It paired its neoliberal turn with a focus on individualism by promoting it as freeing the individual from state control, thereby inoculating the populace somewhat against socially authoritarian sentiments. Second, it allows Butler to suggest that the way out involves what they term “socialist ideals absent totalitarian state structures.” Whether that is a plausible goal is left as an exercise to the reader.

This socialist orientation morally rules out attempts at using economic coercion to enforce gender-progressivism. But not only that, it seems that doing so doesn’t even work strategically. These attempts at gender-mainstreaming have produced backlash as they are received as a new attempt at colonialism, where outside norms are impressed upon the nation regardless of how the populace actually feels. This sense of colonialism remains valid even accounting for how, historically, many nations across the world had less restrictive policies until they were colonized by western powers such as France, the UK, and Spain. They enforced their own particular sense of what a well-ordered society looks like, and a lot of it stuck around. Now, with the boot of military occupation by faraway states off their necks, that national trauma is again aggravated by attempts at economic coercion: Adopt our morals and our language, or continue to languish in underdeveloped economies – economies which are underdeveloped in part because of past colonialism.

Elsewhere, in nations with histories absent such colonization, gender-mainstreaming is received differently. In Hungary, Orbán linked the dangers of gender ideology with the dangers of migration in that both threatened “natural reproduction on the continent.” Similarly, Italian conservatives have decided that Goldman Sachs (an anti-semitic dog whistle if there ever was one) and gender ideology are clearly in league with each other, suggesting that Jews, capitalism, and gender freedom are all part of the same evil international coalition.

In the second half of the book, Butler begins to make their case against the anti-gender movement and for gender’s place in a free and livable world.

Butler establishes throughout the book that there is little consistency within the anti-gender movement. You will find associates of the anti-gender movement among feminists and among people who think domestic abuse is okay; from former colonial powers such as the United Kingdom and from formerly colonized nations claiming they are resisting colonization; from Marxists who claim that gender is a bourgeoisie delusion and from capitalists who claim that gender is merely Marxism by another name. The claims that empower the anti-gender movement are isometric to its cultural disparity: that gender is destroying womanhood and that gender is giving too much power to women; that contemporary thought refutes gender and that rejecting gender is a rejection of the ills of modernity; that gender is only conceivable in overdeveloped capitalist countries and that gender comes out of left-wing grievance theory. 

This maelstrom of dialogue is not necessarily intentional, but it is constitutive of the movement. It allows people to easily displace their fears of assault, disempowerment, irrationality, colonization, and authoritarianism with the relatively approachable boogeyman of gender, and when internal consistency is not taken as a virtue it frees people from having to think particularly hard. It feels much less daunting to attack women and trans people than it does to take on international corporations and misogyny. It is tempting to succumb to the phantasm of gender.

The only way to fight back against such an imagination-driven movement, Butler argues, is to counter with an imaginary of our own. Butler repeatedly refers to “the task,” put variously as “to produce another imaginary in which the targets of the anti-gender movement ally with one another,” “to affirm life with others in ways that give value and support to all those who seek to breathe, love, and move without fear of violence,” “to become attuned to the various vocabularies that make life more livable.” One might notice how this is primarily thought-work. “Produce another imaginary,” “affirm life,” “give value,” “become attuned to the various vocabularies.” The only part that seems even vaguely concrete is in providing “support to all those who seek to breathe, love, and move without fear of violence,” but Butler is light on the details of what that looks like and heavy on the psychoanalysis and theory.

This is Butler’s Achilles’ heel throughout all their works, including this one: they are an academic from beginning to end. When the only tool you have is academia, every problem looks like a theoretical dispute. Indeed, that is where they place the origin of the problem: the anti-gender movement is anti-academia, which makes it anti-public debate, which makes it anti-democracy. As Butler puts it: “What is dismissed as “academic” procedure is actually required for informed public deliberations in democracies.” Butler persistently seems to think the rest of the world ought to function more like academia. Indeed, near the end of the book, Butler suggests that we may need a general public understanding of psychoanalysis in order to counteract the contemporary resurgence of fascism. If this is true, then the future looks bleak.

Nevertheless, when Butler does academia, they do it well. The last two main chapters of the book analyze international, intercultural, and cross-linguistic issues with gender. Butler brings to light how those opposing gender as a Western, or perhaps even just American, export aren’t entirely wrong. In some languages, trying to express gender is a whole challenge in itself. Butler shines the brightest here in refocusing our attention on the crux of the matter: bodily freedom and the ability to experience a free and livable life. “Gender,” in all its forms, exemplifies this. Whether it is expressed as the absence of misogyny, or the ability to move across genders, or to control one’s own reproductive system, we return to a social sort of freedom, freedom with others. This is about as universal as it gets; after all, there aren’t many people who think that their life would be better if they weren’t able to do what they wanted. (And if those people find a life where they can do so without enforcing that kind of life on others, more—or I suppose less—power to them.) It is far easier to communicate across languages and cultures that nobody ought to live in fear for their safety just because they love someone, or they do things with their body that harms no one else, than it is to communicate the nuances of sex and gender. After all, we haven’t even been able to come to a complete consensus on what sex and gender are in English, so it does seem presumptuous to think that we can competently translate that difference into Chinese.

Gender liberalism

Despite Butler’s near-complete silence on it, their focus on a free and livable life absent fear smacks of liberalism. Indeed, Butler directly mentions “neoliberalism” nearly two dozen times throughout the book, but really only discusses liberalism in the conclusion, and then only briefly, to handwave away the supposed liberal obsession with individual rights. To Butler, liberalism cannot address any rights to basic needs, such as a right to food and shelter and nontoxic environments, and therefore is not up to the task of political action. This complaint is half-baked, given the work that shows that liberalism can handle social groups (such as that by Ann Cudd and Charles W. Mills), and the presence of liberals in groups advocating for universal access to food and shelter and in environmental advocacy. 

Nothing Butler says at any point refutes liberalism, and much of what they say actually resonates with liberal thought. Butler’s focus on fear sits perfectly with the liberalism of fear articulated by Judith Shklar, while the emphasis on freedom fits quite well with all but the most negative freedom-inclined liberals. Butler argues that liberalism has trouble specifically with the “livable” portion of “a free and livable life,” but again there is no strong reason to think that liberalism, or at least one of its sub-branches, is incapable of providing the necessities of life. Butler repeatedly emphasizes the value of academic freedom and freedom of speech, key liberal doctrines, and directs the entirety of the theory towards democracy, an indispensable tenet of liberalism. To try to divide the ideas espoused in Who’s Afraid of Gender? from any contact with liberalism is not only wholly unnecessary but also a short-sighted and dangerous distraction. The only reason I could find that Butler would want to separate these ideas away from liberalism is to appeal to others in academia who treat liberalism as a dirty word.

Who’s Afraid of Gender? is a feat of research and offers an interesting way forward in dealing with the anti-gender backlash. However, it is unclear how much it succeeds at its ultimate goal: seeding a positive gender imaginary strong enough to counteract the anti-gender imaginary. The “task”—as Butler is so fond of putting it—involves convincing traditional families that they are one form of kinship among many, and that all forms of kinship are good. How do we get there? It’s hard to say. For those who actively see even the most basic equality for women as a threat, it’s unclear how to make “women will be happier if they aren’t abused” appealing to them, since they have determined already that women’s misery is irrelevant against men’s supremacy. If someone feels visceral disgust at gay people to the point of throwing slurs and even physical violence, it’s difficult to see how patiently explaining Laplanche’s psychoanalytic theories will help. People do change, to be sure, and there are ways to convert even the most strident bigot, but it’s difficult to imagine how a more sophisticated and contemporary version of John Lennon’s Imagine could be up to the task. It may require cold, hard politics in a way that Butler is keen to avoid.

Another major challenge is the definition of livable, a key word for Butler. They never explain what makes a life livable. This seems like an oversight, especially given the importance accorded to it and the fact that it does not track with the common language use of the term—Butler rejects the idea that if someone doesn’t die, then the situation is livable—as it is presented on a spectrum, with worlds of “more” and “less” livability for individuals. In one of the few moments of insight into what livability entails, Butler mentions that access to and use of language that allows someone to articulate their relation to the gender binary, their pronouns, and other relevant concepts are constitutive elements of livable conditions. They don’t explain why. This lack of explanation is a gaping hole in the rhetorical foundation of the book. Why should anyone who is already skeptical of gender freedom accept this framing? They can easily handwave it away and insist that it is just as livable to be misgendered, and Butler completely fails to show why this would not be the case.

One final challenge may be found in the portion of the book which attempts to lay a scientific foundation for sexual ambiguity and pluralism. While there has been very interesting research on, for example, the sexed differences in the brain, embryonic sexual development, and differences in sexual development, taking these to the point of rejecting the primacy of a sex binary is both difficult and unpopular. In doing so, Butler plays the scientist, but only just plays; they remain the critical and gender theorist the entire time. Certainly, presuppositions about gender and sex influence research in these fields. Science is not immune to bias. But to present the research as unambiguously rejecting the idea of sexual difference is a mistake, both because Butler is unconvincing, and because this lets the debate exist on the grounds of scientists who may hold very different presuppositions about sex and gender. A more thoughtful interplay between the two is called for.

Despite all this, the final conclusion is almost anodyne, if academic. A lot of bigots are irrational to the point where trying to give them reading materials doesn’t work. Trans people should be allowed to transition because it makes them happy and doesn’t hurt people. Control over one’s reproductive system is just as fundamental as control over the rest of one’s body. Women should not be abused. We should make sure we aren’t poisoning each other and destroying the planet. We should show people how much happier and healthier it is to love than it is to hate. Cultural differences should be respected even as the above principles hold strongly across cultures. The bottom line of Butler’s arguments resemble more the left half of the Democratic Party than any radical socialist manifesto or iconoclastic takedown of a corrupt society. The arguments are unique at points, but the conclusions remain unremarkable.

In this, Butler succeeds primarily at being a scholar and academic, but fails at providing a work that is suitable for general audiences. If someone enters in with a distaste for leftism, gender freedom, and academics, they will exit with the same. If someone generally supports these things, they will also exit with unchanged positions, but are unlikely to internalize Butler’s novel arguments about psychoanalysis and translation. Who’s Afraid of Gender? attempts to straddle the line between academic and public theorizing, and it ought to come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Judith Butler that it ultimately slips and falls on the side of academia.