queer theory
THE pioneering theorist Judith Butler’s latest takes aim at the anti-gender-ideology movement.
It is a minor tragedy in the life of a book reviewer when she realises that agreeing with a book’s conclusions (and even revering its author) is not always sufficient to make the book much good. Judith Butler, gender theorist extraordinaire, is a giant and a genius. Modern feminism and queer theory owe an incalculable debt to their epoch-making 1990 monograph, Gender Trouble, in which they argued that gender is not a static destiny but an activity, not something we are but something we do. If this idea now seems obvious, that is only because it has been so influential.
Sadly, Butler’s new book, Who’s Afraid
