That philosophy is not a mere mental exercise but can change lives is demonstrated by Judith Butler (Cleveland, 1956). The Berkeley philosopher revolutionized ideas about gender three decades ago with Gender in Dispute (Paidós/Angle). A book in which she pointed out that gender is something constructed, performative, opening the way to a more fluid and less binary world. Butler, whose latest books have been Fearless (Taurus) and What World Is This? (Arcadia), about the pandemic, she has participated in a seminar on Hannah Arendt at the CCCB and spoke with La Vanguardia about gender, capitalism and Israel, whose politics, despite being Jewish, she attacks.
To situate ourselves, what is gender performativity?
It is how we embody social norms and how we change those norms depending on how we embody them. We are all born into worlds, traditions, families or institutions that tell us or indirectly communicate to us what is expected of our gender and boys, girls and all kinds of people struggle with this. I am doing it right? Evil? What is expected of me? And we have the power to make gender more complex and less punitive so that people who live anywhere along the gender spectrum or outside of it can live and breathe more easily in the world.
How do you see that part of feminism questions trans laws, free gender change, and feels that women are erased?
Many feminists are allies of trans people and believe that we should be in alliance. In Brazil, Argentina or South Africa they work together because they have been subject to the same types of violence. Unfortunately, in Spain and the United Kingdom there is an internal conflict. Very sad. We need strong alliances at this time when Milei or Wilders is elected. Some feminists fear that feminism will be erased because they imagine that trans women are actually men and steal the category of women or erase their biological specificity.
But women are a broad category that includes those who are happy with their first sexual assignment, those who called girls and liked being girls. And those who didn't like that assignment or don't live by it. And there are trans people who really need the category of women or men to give them proper recognition for how they exist in the world. That doesn't take anything away from anyone. We have always had different types of women. When we were young, that excited us. We fight for that multiplicity and suddenly, do we put an end to it? You can't be a woman. You have to live like a man, even if it doesn't describe who you are and causes deep psychic damage. We don't do that as feminists.
Do you think your work has changed people's lives?
I receive very nice letters. People who thank me for helping them change their lives. But there are also those who say, “Oh, they've been indoctrinated by Butler ideology or gender ideology.” It is not indoctrination to open the possibility of living in one's own body in a more comfortable way or of pursuing love without shame and without hurting anyone. Change the internalized idea of what I am supposed to be and what I am supposed to want.
He says that hate is elevated to a political category today. What's going on?
Many people live in deep fear that their lives are in danger. Wars. Climate change. Hypercapitalism. The abandonment of workers, of social services. People are unprotected. It's easy to find a scapegoat. The right-wing demagogues come in and say, “Oh, we've decided what's destroying your life: gender.” They appeal to that fear of destruction, they give it a name, they incite and a hatred of trans people arises, who are among the most vulnerable communities in the world. The authoritarian right asks us to intensify hatred of the vulnerable. Anyone on the left should reject it.
In his book about the pandemic he asks what a livable life would be like. What is it like for you?
One in which the fear of poverty is eliminated. Where you feel like you belong to a community and have a government that provides basic social services so that no one becomes impoverished or without housing or healthcare. And where everyone can work without exploitation.
We have to fight for that. Whether it's a guaranteed national income, socialized medicine or increased spending on public housing. If we could dismantle the extraordinary military budgets that dominate this world... Joe Biden makes billions available to Israel. What could be done with them in education and health? Why give it to a state that shows its willingness to destroy large numbers of civilians, including several thousand children?
What do you think about Israel's response to the Hamas attack?
I am absolutely opposed to the atrocities of Hamas. And to the massive bombing and murder of civilians in Gaza. And I'm concerned that the news is framing the situation as something that happened on October 7th. Something has been going on since 1948. The bombing of Gaza and the killing of Palestinians, including the massacres carried out during the founding of Israel, have a long history. For the Palestinians, the bombing of Gaza is the continuation of a bombardment over a long time and in different forms. In 1948 there were 800,000 dispossessed Palestinians. It then grew to some six million refugees, forced to abandon their homes and lands. Even some of the people who live in Gaza used to live where the kibbutzim were.
I don't think we will be able to find any solution unless we understand the whole history and what the options were in the 1940s. There was a lot of debate about what form the Jewish State should take, whether it should be a Jewish-only state, a Jewish state with a minority Palestinian population or a binational state of Jews and Palestinians alike. We don't take that path.
Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt supported him. And many Jews. Arendt said that if Palestinians are forced to live in a state that defines itself as representing the Jewish people, they will always be a minority and expelled from their lands and homes. So there was a series of mass dispossessions in 1948, another in 1967 and in recent years we have seen Palestinian houses taken from their owners and given to Jewish families in East Jerusalem.
And then there is the prison system. Every Palestinian family has had someone enter and leave prison without knowing the charges, without being able to be tried, physically or mentally tortured. And the rest of the world has accepted this situation because we say that Israel is a democracy. I don't think Israel is a democracy. A democracy that depends on the constant expulsion of people and their radical subordination or death has lost the legitimizing foundations of its identity as a democratic State.
