Loading summary
Transcript112 lines
- [00:01]
Kara Swisher
Are you working on your Kafka work?
- [00:03]
Judith Butler
Yes, I am. I am.
- [00:04]
Kara Swisher
Oh, I'm so happy. I'm so excited to read that. My favorite book, of all things, of so many books, is the Trial. I love the Trial. Like a dog. Like the best line.
- [00:14]
Judith Butler
Like a dog. Yeah, like a dog. Dogs should be treated better. Of course.
- [00:19]
Randy Rainbow
It's on.
- [00:27]
Judith Butler
It is on.
- [00:31]
Kara Swisher
Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media podcast network. This is on with Kara Swisher. And I'm Kara Swisher. I've been talking on this show with guests about the various ways the Trump administration is flooding the zone and eroding democracy in the process. We just spoke on Monday about how the attacks on immigration are becoming a showdown with the courts. Today we're going to talk about how they're attempting to eradicate gender identity in favor of what they believe is good old fashioned biology, with, quote, men on one side and women on the other. It's complex. That's not how it works. Even scientists have told the administration that. But nonetheless, they are using that paradigm to force society into a binary that doesn't exist in real life. There's no better person to try to explain why that is happening and why it's not just about transgender people than our guest today, Judith Butler. Butler is a philosopher and critical theorist, a distinguished professor at the graduate school at UC Berkeley. They didn't create gender theory, but they are probably its most famous face. Back in 1990, they wrote a book, Gender Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, that opened the door to what is known as queer theory today for a generation of transgender, non binary, genderqueer people. You name the letter. Judith Butler is an absolute icon. I think they are amazing. But to others, Butler was basically the devil incarnate, the one who opened Pandora's binary box on gender identity and then blew up the box. They have been vilified, attacked, burned in effigy. I am serious. Burned in effigy. Last year, before the election, they published the book who's Afraid of Gender? Laying out where all of the attacks on gender theory were coming from and why. Today I'm gonna talk to Butler about those forces, especially within the Trump administration and how reducing people to a sex binary of XX and XY ends up undermining everyone's democracy. They are linked people. Our question comes from political satirist and musical comedian Randy Rainbow, who breaking his own kind of boundaries. This is a heavy one, but an important one. And it might actually be funnier than you think. And it will help explain a lot so buckle up. By the way, if you want to catch one of our episodes in person, I'll be interviewing Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD live on stage at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg center in Washington, D.C. this coming Monday, April 28th. It's going to be a smart conversation about semiconductor chips, industrial policy and the future of AI. To rsvp, just Google Kara Swisher and Lisa, I hope to see you there.
- [03:14]
Randy Rainbow
Support for this show comes from Nordstrom. Nordstrom brings you the season's most wanted brands, Skims, Mango Free People and Princess polly, all under $100. From trending Sneakers to beauty must haves.
- [03:27]
Kara Swisher
They'Ve curated the styles you'll wear on repeat this spring.
- [03:30]
Randy Rainbow
Free shipping, free returns and in store pickup make it easier than ever. Shop now in stores and@nordstrom.
- [03:44]
Judith Butler
Season one of Andor had critics calling.
- [03:47]
Randy Rainbow
It the best Star wars series yet.
- [03:50]
Kara Swisher
Season two of the Emmy nominated series.
- [03:52]
Randy Rainbow
Is now streaming on Disney. Follow Cassian Andor as he embarks on a path from a rebel to a hero, starring Diego Luna and from creator Tony Gilroy, writer of Michael Clayton and the Bourne Identity. Season two of Andor is now streaming only on Disney.
- [04:13]
Kara Swisher
Support for this show comes from Smartsheet. Your team is innovative. Your team is ready to achieve the impossible. Innovative teams use smartsheet to defy expectations, spur growth, and make the impossible possible. Smartsheet is the work management platform that allows teams to automate workflows and seamlessly adapt as their work evolves. Whether you're managing projects or scaling operations, smartsheet gives you the tools to cut through chaos and reach your team's full potential. With Smartsheet, the extraordinary is just another day at work. Smartsheet Work with flow see how Smartsheet can transform the way you work at smartsheet.com that's smartsheet.com it is on Judith, welcome. Thanks for being on on.
- [04:56]
Judith Butler
It's my pleasure to be here, so let's start.
- [04:59]
Kara Swisher
One of the things I'm going to do is we have a sort of a broader audience, but I want to go into a little bit of what you have been doing and you've been a leading voice on gender and gender theory for 35. It's fair to say for much of that time, people outside of academia or queer circles weren't paying a lot of attention to that field. But now it's in the center of national politics. So with that in mind, I want to start by asking you about the foundational idea you wrote in Gender Trouble, your 1990 book, which is that gender is performance, meaning not just gender of a drag queen, but everyone's gender. I know you've moved away from that in a way, but the idea remains provocative to people who think their own way of inhabiting gender is normal or natural one. So could you explain this theory of gender performance for those who might not be familiar with it and why it remains so subversive?
- [05:50]
Judith Butler
Well, I think at the time, I had seen actually some drag shows where I saw some performers performing femininity in a way that my mother always wished that I would.
- [06:06]
Kara Swisher
Me too.
- [06:07]
Judith Butler
And I wondered how it was welcome to the club, how it was, like, so easy for them and so kind of smooth and compelling and believable. And I felt that I couldn't even take the first steps in trying to get to whatever this ideal was. So, you know, I was impressed by those performances. But then I guess I was led to a different idea, which is that the social reality of gender is changing all the time. What it means to be man or woman, even if we just stay within those two categories, changes all the time. What's acceptable, it's not acceptable. We know this. And some of those changes are obviously very disturbing to people. But the fact that there are changes, and they can be disturbing or they can be exciting or pleasurable, means that gender is not fixed in time. It's. It changes depending on historical circumstances and cultural settings. Different countries, different languages. We see different ways of doing gender to speak in a way that I have been trying to speak for some time. It doesn't mean it's fake or false. It doesn't mean, oh, this is just a performance, and the true reality is underneath. It's like, no, the historical reality of what we mean by gender does change, and sometimes it changes for the better and sometimes for the worse. And I think we just have to accept that there are certain ways of repeating and reproducing gender in the world that sometimes create something new and sometimes validate something quite, quite old.
- [07:55]
Kara Swisher
So the battle over what normal or authentic gender is may seem esoteric, but it's obviously become a big deal. During the 2024 election, President Trump and his team stoked fear against the transgender community with those ads. Kamala Harris is for they them. Trump is for you. On his first day in office, he doubled down. He signed the executive order 14168. The title, I will read it, unfortunately, is Defending Women from Gender Ideology, Extremism, and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. I know you've given a whole speech on, but briefly explain what this order does and the role this term, gender ideology plays here.
- [08:34]
Judith Butler
Yeah, well, I think that the Trump administration uses the word ideology when it says gender ideology as a false way of knowing or as a mode of indoctrination or as a set of preposterous beliefs that should simply be corrected so that common sense can reign again. The odd thing about that particular executive order is that the biological truth that it names the difference between the sexes, it doesn't refer to the biological sciences, which actually see more complexity at the level of biology than Trump would have it. It refers to the federal government having power to define it. So biological truth is restored to the federal government, not to science, you know, not to biology, not to people who do research in sex determination in biology, but to the government. So it can stipulate as it wants, and indeed, the way it has stipulated using the term immutable. Right? Immutable difference. There's an immutable, unchangeable difference between the two sexes that comes straight from the Vatican. And so the federal government is citing the Vatican actually against science in the name of biological truth. And that's worrisome.
- [09:50]
Kara Swisher
So we'll get to the Vatican in a second. There's been news there, but scientists have said exactly what you're saying. And so the word they're using is common sense. And since this is a term created by the right, I know he would hate to see it put in these terms. What kind of gender ideology do you think Trump is depending on? And why is it so important to him, more importantly, or why do you think his team believes it is motivating his supporters? Because there is political elements here, but it seems very ingrained in this particular person.
- [10:19]
Judith Butler
Well, it is, but the term gender ideology was circulating in Eastern Europe and Latin America and throughout conservative Christian communities for a very long time.
- [10:30]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [10:31]
Judith Butler
And some other religious communities and secular communities. So it just recently came to the US and when Trump uses it, he's using a certain kind of caricature, right? He knows, maybe he knows, maybe he doesn't know, that he's actually producing a kind of straw man, as it were. But it doesn't matter whether he's right about what gender studies is or what gender research is or how gender is used in social policy. What he knows, clearly, is that the term gender produces a certain kind of anxiety in people. What my sex isn't natural, what my kid can change sex, what these people are transitioning. They're experimenting with new ways of identifying themselves and living their lives, and that that is Very frightening to a group of people. So for that group of people to be told, oh, you represent common sense, and all these changes need to be stopped and rolled back in the name of common sense is, of course, deeply reassuring to them. So I think he's using a caricature to appeal to people's anxieties and fears and ignorance, but also stoking that anxiety and fear in order to get more support for his own expanding state authority.
- [11:47]
Kara Swisher
Obviously, Trump is taking a page from playbooks of authoritarian dictators like Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban or Russian President Vladimir Putin. And just for people who don't know, last week the Hungarian parliament passed a constitutional amendment banning LGBTQ public events ahead of Pride there. It's not just against gay people, it's a lot. The loss of freedom of assembly. It's okay, as someone noted, to be out of the closet, but not in public.
- [12:12]
Judith Butler
Well, that's been true in Eastern Europe, in parts of Eastern Europe for a long time. That assembling and showing yourself is the true danger. Because, you know, what if you do become common sense? What if it becomes normal to see people who are queer, gender non conforming or lesbian, gay, see gay and lesbian families, or what if that just becomes part of the ordinary landscape? I think there's a resistance to that. Right. And I think as well that Trump is trying very hard to link with other authoritarians in order to expand the executive power in this country. So if he can proclaim what sex is, then that executive order is going to nullify all kinds of health care. It's going to nullify the legal status of trans people. It's going to undermine policies and laws opposed to gender based violence. He's able to shut down a number of progressive movements and legal accomplishments with the stroke of a pen, or so he imagines. Of course, there are numerous court cases that are making it less easy than he may have imagined.
- [13:25]
Kara Swisher
So you said that the term gender ideology was first coined by the Vatican in the 1990s, and attacks on gender theory have continued under every pope, including now the late Pope Francis, and he just died after meeting with Catholic convert J.D. vance. We'll leave it there. There's a lot of good memes on the Internet about it, though, which is interesting because Franc, often derided by the right for being too progressive for supportive LGBTQ community. Talk a little bit about the religious institutions, including the Catholic Church, in pushing that fear. Cause there is a real connection to the current administration with Vance and others.
- [13:59]
Judith Butler
Yes, of course there is. I think that the Vatican and Even Pope Francis was certainly opposed to the exercise of freedom or of personal autonomy that would lead you to change your status. Say you've decided that you're born with one sex assignment and you want to have another. They want to say, look, that's not a human choice. That's a choice that goes beyond what humans are entitled to do. God gave us these bodies. There's a God given natural order, male and female, and here come these gender people who think you actually get to choose, or you can, you can change the order of society so that people who are gay parents who can lay claim legally to their children, which is becoming increasingly difficult in a place like Italy, informed by the Vatican, or trans people who are seeking to get legal recognition or appropriate health care, this too becomes more difficult. So I think that there's a consolidation of the family in a traditional sense, where there's heterosexual marriage and children who are the offspring of that marriage. And sexuality itself is constrained by its reproductive role within the heterosexual framework. I mean, that idea of the family is really, really important. And it was the family council that first developed the idea of gender ideology. So we have to remember that the preservation of the family is really important for the preservation of the church and for people like Orban as well. The preservation of the family is really important for the preservation of the nation and its unity, its nationalism. But also there, if you look at Orban, he also wanted to outlaw miscegenation, so he wants to keep his nation white. He's afraid of these migrants coming in. So he's anti migrant and he's anti trans and he's anti gay and anti lesbian, anti bisexual, et cetera. And these things are linked because there's a certain idea of the family and sexuality, reproductive sexuality, that has to be preserved for the purposes of not just procreation, but preserving the nation state.
- [16:30]
Kara Swisher
We'll be back in a minute.
- [16:44]
Randy Rainbow
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of identity theft every five seconds in the U.S. fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast terms apply this Mother's Day. Give mom more than a gift. Give her lasting comfort. I'm Tyler, founder at Cozy Earth. Our bamboo sheets and ultra soft pajamas are crafted with breathable temperature regulating fabric to keep her cozy year round. It's comfort that feels like home because home feels like mom. With a 100 night sleep trial and a 10 year warranty, you know she'll be in good hands. Go to cozyearth.com Spotify and use code Spotify to save up to 40%. That's cozyearth.com Spotify cabs are here. How does someone go from reality TV fame to prison to multimillionaire business owner? This week on Net Worth and chill. I'm talking to Mike the Situation Sorrentino who skyrocketed to fame on Jersey Shore, earning millions before it all came crashing down. Tax evasion, prison time, addiction battles. Mike is rebuilding his wealth with purpose and helping the people and communities that lifted him up during his darkest days.
- [18:09]
Judith Butler
I believe that you are the writer, director and producer of your life and if you want a better outcome then you need to make it.
- [18:17]
Randy Rainbow
So listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com YourRichBFF.
- [18:24]
Kara Swisher
So in your most recent book, who's Afraid of Gender? You write about why the very notion of gender is so upsetting to the social order for conservation conservatives, as we just noted. But in practice, a lot of the pushback right now is around trans people. In that executive order, for example, the White House says it's correcting a supposed misapplication of the 2019 Supreme Court case Bostock vs Clayton county, in which the justices ruled 6 to 3 that discrimination against trans people was sex discrimination. Why are trans people the flashpoint?
- [18:54]
Judith Butler
Well, I think trans people are the flashpoint in part because of great ignorance of what it means. But I think trans women in particular have been maligned by the allegation that they're really men and that they have nefarious designs on women and that they're hiding in order to execute those designs, which include rape or sexual violence or other forms of domination or appropriation. And once that fantasy gets going, and it is a fantasy, it can be very compelling. And a lot of women who are born female at birth are frightened. Many, not many feminists, but I would say a minority of feminists who believe that your biology actually determines who you are, which I thought was a anti feminist view. They do get worked up and they have fears that something that is theirs will be taken away. I think as well that there's a big fear about children being seduced or infused with a doctrine. And of course, the irony is that the church has done that. The church has molested children. The church has imposed its doctrines and molested Children at the same time.
- [20:17]
Kara Swisher
Yes, that would be the irony.
- [20:18]
Judith Butler
And so what have they done? You know, in many ways they have relocated their own crimes outside of themselves.
- [20:24]
Kara Swisher
I always say every accusation is a confession.
- [20:27]
Judith Butler
I think in this case it is true.
- [20:29]
Kara Swisher
You talked about the fact that some feminists have been pushing against transgender women. Specifically, last week's Britain's Supreme Court ruled that the legal defamation of a woman is based on biological sex. This has been pushed by so called terf movement, trans exclusionary radical feminists supported by people like the ever loathsome Harry Potter author, J.K. rowling. And now we know where the inspiration for Voldemort came from. Obviously, they're using the same idea of defending women that was in Trump's executive order. Attorney General Pam Bondi has used. Talk about this case and this argument and where you imagine this going from here and this group?
- [21:06]
Judith Butler
Well, I think in the case of J.K. rowling and many of the British feminists who are part of Sex Matters, which is one of their organizations, they do think that to be a woman you have to have certain biological characteristics and that the category should be tied to biology. So that's what I would call a biologically reductionist view. Right. Like what you are can be reduced to your biology. At the same time, they don't actually think about biology. And, you know, the complexity of chromosome structure, the complexity of hormonal structure, why it's been so hard for sports organizations to decide who's a woman and who's not a woman, because it turns out there's like huge range of testosterone among women and men and actually the two categories overlap at a certain point. So they can't even answer that question. They can only say who's able to compete or who should be able to compete in women's sports, which is to kind of keep the question of identity to the side. And I think that was probably smart. But it tells us something about the fact that just referring to a biological fact is not enough. Most biologists, most people in science don't believe biology is just a fact. It's a complex process. The process of sexual development involving chromosomes, hormones, but also environmental factors, without which chromosomal activation isn't even possible. So we are complex creatures and our biological systems are interactive. At base, we're always interacting with the environment.
- [22:50]
Kara Swisher
So they want to keep a word in a stasis.
- [22:52]
Judith Butler
Well, they're going back to this idea of a simple fact. Now, if biological difference were just a simple fact and we could be done with it, then we wouldn't even have the field of developmental biology or research into sexual development or any of those things. In fact, it's complex and intersex people who indeed have complex anatomical and chromosomal features wouldn't even be allowed to exist in that framework. So. So once again, I think that it's deeply simplifying. But those folks who are trans exclusionary, they do understand their sex as a kind of property, that they own it, that someone's trying to come and take it away. But sex isn't like that. You know, we're named by others, we're given assignments by people we generally don't know. I mean, maybe we get to know that person according to standards that are accepted in health institutions or legal institutions. And it doesn't make sense to say that I own the sex that I'm assigned. It's other people who've given me my sex and it's me who decides how I'm gonna live that and what it means to me and how I struggle with the various forces that have formed me.
- [24:06]
Kara Swisher
So you have said it's an assault on gender is really an assault on democracy. You wrote that assault on gender is also assault on democracy. What do you mean?
- [24:15]
Judith Butler
In a broader sense, I think that gender is a framework for understanding society. According to feminists, there's differences in power, there's different distribution of goods, there's different ways of assuming positions of power, there are different wages, there's discrimination. We need a gender framework to even name discrimination and to understand how power works in society. And when we talk about gender identity, we're also talking about how people are living their bodies, like how they understand themselves, how they thrive in the world. Now either we want open inquiry where we accept that there's something called gender studies or feminist and gender sexuality studies, where we get to ask questions about the kinds of bodies we end up living in and how they are socially formed and how we can also be part of their formation and how it's lived and how it's understood. How are we construed historically? How can we construe ourselves? These are really basic questions that, that we ask in university settings, but in any intellectual inquiry, but to say, oh, we're not asking any of those questions anymore. We don't want to know about gender differentials of power. We don't want to know about gender identity or how it's created or lived. We don't want to know about gender based violence. We're going to call it, like they do in Turkey, family violence. Right. Even though 95% of the violence within families as men inflicting violence on women and children. So what is it that we are saying? We're saying we don't want to know these aspects when they censor like this, when they censor gender, or when they censor race studies, for that matter. They are saying we don't want to know about these realities. We're going to set them aside, we're even going to defund them and in some cases, criminalize them.
- [26:11]
Kara Swisher
So if Jenner is one of the things performative, as you had written before, let's talk a little bit more about what Trump himself seems to be performing. There's a lot written about Trump's vision of manhood, as opposed to, say, Tim Waltz's in an article about at the Guardian, you wrote about Trump. The accelerations of shameless sadism incite others to celebrate this version of manhood, one that is not only willing to defy the rules and principles that govern democratic life, freedom, equality, justice, but enact these informs of liberation from false ideologies and the constraints of legal obligation. What is this concept of masculinity? And as an appeal to voters or to his audience more broadly, talk a little bit about what you're trying to say. What is happening here from his perspective?
- [26:57]
Judith Butler
Well, who knows what the world looks like from his perspective? One could get bogged down with a psychological reading of Donald Trump. And I know many people have. But. But at least what I see happening, the effects of his action is that he's showing that he's willing to defy not just the woke left right, defy feminism, defy LGBTQIA peoples and their movements and their policies, but he's actually willing to defy the Constitution, and he's willing to defy internationally accepted human rights. And he's showing this in his policies on deportation, the deportation of migrants, but also the deportation of students on international visas and other more vulnerable members of academic communities who are not yet citizens. So I think that the real question is, what restriction will he not defy? And what does that appeal to in people, and especially not just young men, possibly the incel world, but men more broadly who have felt like they've lost their supremacy and hence their place in society, who never liked equality as a principle, who've never liked the fact that women should and do make the same amount of money as they do, or have never liked the breakdown of the traditional family, where women are either leaving marriages or not getting married or living to the side of men's power altogether. And I think there's a great deal of resentment against that. It's not that they're oppressed or suffering in some way, but rather that they have lost their supremacy, and that supremacy gave them a place in society. But they also see a guy who is willing to do whatever he wants. And, you know, a lot of them hate having to pay taxes, and they hate having to change their language, and they hate having to adjust to some of the new realities in the world, whether it's a multiracial world or a multi gendered world. They have great resentment, feeling that they're displaced or replaced. And here's a guy who's just saying, no, we're going back. I'm giving you a fantasy of restoration of patriarchal order. And in that world that I'm going to restore.
- [29:21]
Kara Swisher
The Trumpist says you call it furious nostalgia.
- [29:24]
Judith Butler
I do call it a furious nostalgia because it's willing to strip people of their rights. It's also willing to defy the Constitution and very possibly destroy the Constitution in its effort to assert a form of masculine power that knows no limits at.
- [29:41]
Kara Swisher
All and had been dying for a while now. Speaking of angry, furious people, some of the people around Trump seem very troubled by gender as well, including those in Silicon Valley. I've written and spoken a lot about Elon Musk. For instance, the Wall Street Journal just wrote an extensive story about his harem of women and his attempt to seed the world with his bab. Disturbing. I've been trying to get them to write that story for years. So he has obviously been very passionately anti trans, especially since his daughter Vivian is transgender. I have to tell you, just for you to know, a lot of the radicalization I can trace to him and many others in Silicon Valley. Many of them have transgender kids, which is really interesting to me.
- [30:19]
Judith Butler
It's interesting.
- [30:20]
Kara Swisher
And that was where the flip happened. This is my way of explanation, not excuse. Do you see any connection between these gender attitudes of someone like Musk and tech billionaires, or where they're trying to take. Because these are the richest people on Earth who are cosplaying victims here in some fashion?
- [30:37]
Judith Butler
Yeah. Well, I mean, for Musk to have a trans kid probably is a sign that he doesn't have control over the way things are going culturally, how they're going historically. That in fact, to be a father is not to own the child. To be a father who represents one set of values does not mean that the young person is going to reflect or continue those values. I mean, that's been true for eternity. But it's a truth that I'm sure people like him don't like very much. And of course, Musk also has at his disposal one of the largest social media platforms in the history of the world. So for him to launch the memes that helped to advance Trump, especially the one in which it was said that Kamala Harris, if elected, would authorize trans service on illegal migrants.
- [31:36]
Kara Swisher
Right, right. Linking the two together.
- [31:38]
Judith Butler
Yeah. What has he done at that moment? He's like, just gathered up a bunch of fears into a single kind of caricature phantasm that stokes people's fears and did get out the vote.
- [31:51]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, it left out zombies, but yes, yes, indeed. So this shift is coming on the heels of decades in which younger generations have been pushing the envelope on gender, on race, on political activism. And every week we get a question from an outside expert. Our Question Day. You said one of the things about you that people realize is that you are goofier and funnier than you get credit for, given the seriousness of a lot of things you write about. So we had comedian and singer Randy Rainbow, a satirist who does great parody interviews with political figures on social media, with your question. Here it is.
- [32:23]
Randy Rainbow
Hello, it's Randy Rainbow, and my question is the following. It's kind of a two parter, so go with it. Part one. This new wave of gender nonconformity and expressive freedom that we're seeing among young people feels like a real cultural awakening. I wonder where you think it comes from. Is it the result of many years of activism and theory finally coming to fruition? Or is there something unique about this particular generation and how they use community and identity and especially social media to shape themselves and the world around them? Part 2. The backlash to this, of course, is increasingly more and more well funded and widespread and annoying. So what advice would you give to young people, young activists stepping in to fight the good fight?
- [33:25]
Judith Butler
Right.
- [33:26]
Kara Swisher
Thank you. Serious question.
- [33:28]
Judith Butler
It's a great question and I'm a big Randy Rainbow fan, so super happy to address it. First of all, I mean, so many young people are living with a very deep fear of the future. What kind of future will they have? And they're very attuned to climate catastrophe. They're very attuned to the ravages of capitalism, the deep inequalities. They're. They're very attuned to open ended wars that seem to be based on justifications that aren't clear or that keep changing. And I think that the question is, where do they have some sense of control. Where do they feel like they get to have a place in the world? They get to be recognized for who they are. And sometimes I think the moment in which a young person says, I go by the following pronoun, please call me that is one of the limited zones in which they feel some power over their own lives. Call me this, or this is my gender. This is how I'm defining myself. It's a power of self definition in a world in which very few young people feel a lot of power. So maybe it's a way of circumscribing a zone, like we'll call it the gender zone, in which they get to say who they are and ask others to recognize them in ways that they prefer and see whether the world is willing. Like, are you gonna say yes or are you gonna say no? Are you gonna honor me as a person or are you gonna dishonor me as a person? But also, I mean, I think there's been a lot of activism. For sure. There have been celebratory marches and demonstrations for some time. Yes, there's queer theory in universities and trans theory and trans studies in university now. But I don't believe that those academic disciplines have the power to reshape the world. They have to be appealing to something that people are already wanting. Randy Rainbow calls it expressive freedoms. Like, yes, expressive freedoms within the family, outside the family, in the community, in the world. Setting themselves up to a certain degree as different or as having a choice, as having the power of self definition.
- [35:50]
Kara Swisher
Somewhere right, where they can do that. So what advice would you give them? I always call that the what of it. What of it?
- [35:56]
Judith Butler
Well, I also think that especially for young people for whom the computer is really important, you know, you can change your gender online and use an avatar and construct an identity there, but that's very different from being part of a broader solidarity. And right now, given the freedoms that are being ripped away, the rights that are being stripped away, we actually have to find ways of connecting and of reusing our Internet connections to produce broader networks of solidarity. I see this happening in the sanctuary networks that are connecting universities and helping people who are either at risk of deportation or actually in the process of being deported. And I'm seeing it also in queer communities and trans communities, ways of getting together and of figuring out strategies. But we need to prize solidarity at this point over our individual freedoms, or rather realize that without solidarity, none of us are going to have individual freedoms.
- [37:02]
Kara Swisher
Which step to the next thing I want to talk about what's happening on universities, they suddenly realize their strength stronger together, sort of stone souping it, essentially. So you're a distinguished professor at the graduate school at UC Berkeley. A number of universities quickly folded at the Trump administration demands to shut down DEI policies. Many are reviewing their Title 9 policies. And also certain people are saying things you'd be surprised at, like Governor Newsom of California recently said that trans women participating in women's sports is deeply unfair. There's all kinds of shifting sands here. The Trump administration has launched investigations at colleges, including UC Berkeley, and has threatened to withhold government funds from the auspices of protecting students, for example, from antisemitism. So it's reaching all over the place. Talk a little bit about the mood on the campus.
- [37:50]
Judith Butler
Well, I can't talk well about that because I'm living in New York this year, although I'm certainly in touch with people at Berkeley. And I think there's enormous anxiety, mainly among the international students and those who have either shown up at a Palestine protest or are presumed to be sympathetic to Hamas or some such thing. So, I mean, I think that's where the concern is, at least at UC Berkeley, as I understand it, they have not turned over their students. They've not fed ice the names of students, as some other universities have done, facilitating deportations. And I think at this point, we're seeing more and more colleges and universities realizing that it's not worth selling their soul or trammeling academic freedom and self governance, which are two hallowed principles of university life to placate a federal government that will never be placated. Right, because if they come in asking for deportations today, they'll ask for the shutdown of ethnic studies, Africana studies, or African American studies, gender and sexuality studies. They'll start deciding what the curriculum can be. They'll effectively be putting universities in receivership. And I know Columbia is at risk of that right now.
- [39:13]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. Although Columbia is now pushing back.
- [39:15]
Judith Butler
I think it's pushing back more for sure. And I think it's being supported by the alliance of presidents who have come forth, I think, following the lead of Michael Roth and Eisen Gruber from Princeton.
- [39:31]
Kara Swisher
Right. And also Harvard's president, Alan Garber. Yes. And they're losing, but they're losing billions of dollars. And Trump is trying to revoke Harvard's nonprofit status. From your perspective, what's the right strategy here, do you think? They've been slow to come together. Some of them have, some of them haven't.
- [39:46]
Judith Butler
Look, I mean, it's good that the top schools have realized that bonding together makes them stronger and they will be able to defy Trump's demands more effectively that way. But they should also be bonding with state schools and community schools and schools that are even more dependent on federal funding and have less endowment monies than they do. So I think it would be unfortunate if the elite institutions decided just to defend themselves at the expense of everybody else. I think we need an even broader solidarity that would be based on the equal worth of all these universities and the equal value of open inquiry and self governance and academic freedom for the very definition of the university.
- [40:36]
Kara Swisher
So you also mentioned Ford and students who come to study at American universities. They spend $56 billion a year in tuition and living expenses for people who don't know the US Has a trade surplus in higher education, or had. Now, European universities and governments are offering US researchers scientific asylum. Is there going to be this attack on academia impacting enrollment or willingness and ability of American scientists and scholars to continue their work here? This is a reverse brain drain. I've had two friends that are considering offers from France to do so. Would you consider going abroad?
- [41:10]
Judith Butler
Well, I wouldn't consider, probably because of my age. For instance, I'm too old to teach in France, but. But I also think whatever I have to offer needs to be offered here now, because this is where this struggle is. And I wouldn't want to abandon universities and I don't wanna abandon the students. For those of us who are tenured or retired or established financially in ways that are fairly comfortable, I think we stay and fight. I think we keep trying to build even stronger solidarities, connecting people, trying to make good arguments, getting them out in. That's our job. And in fact, I think academics generally need to be making a public case for what they do to the broader public, because only then will we have the power to resist the caricatures and slanders that are leveled against us. So we have at least two jobs at this point. We teach our students and we explain to the broader public what the value of what we do is and the value of university life.
- [42:18]
Kara Swisher
Are you nervous anyway? You've been Bernard Fiji before.
- [42:21]
Judith Butler
Well, I'm always a little nervous, yeah. You know, I have security guards when I give talks and I have a lawyer now if I run up, if I run into a problem at the border. But I'm not quaking.
- [42:34]
Kara Swisher
No, not quaking. I mean, obviously you've been burned at effigies, so you're used to. This is.
- [42:39]
Judith Butler
No, I've been. It's funny, the things I was maligned for for years. I felt that to be very personal. And now I see that the exact same allegations are are being leveled against everybody. So.
- [42:52]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [42:53]
Judith Butler
You know, I've been around the block. I've been around the block. It's useful for me to stay around.
- [42:58]
Kara Swisher
We'll be back In a minute. 25 years ago, McDonald's restaurants across the country were being robbed by a masked man who always entered through the roof and was always polite.
- [43:23]
Judith Butler
He was a gentleman going so far as to use ma'am, sir.
- [43:28]
Kara Swisher
And I didn't know whether to laugh or to be scared because, you know.
- [43:34]
Judith Butler
You see in the movies, robberies are not like that.
- [43:39]
Kara Swisher
I'm Phoebe Judge. Listen to part one of the Roofman right now on Criminal and listen to part two early by becoming a member of Criminal.
- [43:47]
Randy Rainbow
Plus.
- [43:54]
D
The regular season is in the rear view and now it's time for the games that matter the most. This is Kenny Beachum and playoff basketball is finally here on Small Ball. We're diving deep into every series, every crunch time finish, every coaching adjustment that can make or break a championship run. Who's building for a 16 win marathon? Which superstar would submit their legacy and which role player is about to become a household name? With so many fascinating first round matchups, will the west be the bloodbath we anticipate? Will the east be as predictable as we think? Can the Celtics defend their title? Can Steph Curry, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard push the young teams at the top? I'll be bringing the expertise, the passion, the genuine opinion you need for the most exciting times time of the NBA calendar. Small Ball is your essential companion for the NBA postseason. Join me, Kenny Beachum for new episodes of Small Ball throughout the playoffs. Don't miss Small Ball at Kenny Beecham. New episodes dropping through the playoffs, available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast.
- [44:55]
Randy Rainbow
Right now, in courtrooms across the country, but mostly in and around D.C. the future of the tech industry is on trial. That sounds hyperbolic, but it's true. Google just lost a case that will change the way that the ad business works on the Internet and maybe change Google forever. And Meta is on trial about whether it's going to have to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp. Some of the most important parts of Mark Zuckerberg's empire. On the Vergecast this week we discuss why this is happening, where it might go, and what the new Internet might look like. All that on the Vergecast. Wherever you get podcasts.
- [45:31]
Kara Swisher
So before we go, I want to talk about the Way forward. And who's afraid of gender. You wrote something about the left. I want to play a clip from the audiobook.
- [45:39]
Judith Butler
We know how to dismantle the arguments and expose the rhetoric, but to what passions do we appeal? And how do we address the fears both discovered and provoked by the right? What, finally, are the passions that might gather the targeted movement more effectively than the way that we are targeted? If we fail to come together and promote more compelling visions of the world in which we want to live, then we are surely lost. For that, we need to know what we are fighting for, not just what we are fighting against.
- [46:17]
Kara Swisher
So you wrote this before President Biden stepped down from the presidential campaign in 2024, before Vice President Kamala Harris took up the mantle. Talk about that. Because one of the things is there is not a compell compelling vision that progressives have, or that they seem censorious or tsky or Trump's terrible as their only vision here, which is true, but doesn't seem to be compelling to people. What do you think? I guess Democrats or progressives should be doing to combat the politics of cruelty? What you're saying there is passion?
- [46:48]
Judith Butler
Well, a passion for a set of principles, a passion for a way of life. So, I mean, it seems to me that many of the people who gather together to protest Trump are also supporting one another. They look over and they go, oh, look, people who are workers are suffering, and people who are trans are suffering, and yet they're here and they're courageous and they're coming out to make their views known. What kind of world do we want to live in together? How do we want to handle questions of unpayable debt and low wages, unlivable wages? How do we want to handle trans rights? Why don't we put these together? And if they're going to target migrants and trans people at the same time and strip them both of their rights, then we need an analysis of rights stripping and new authoritarianism that can allow us to produce new solidarities and a way of living that acknowledges our interdependency not just among each other, with each other, but with the earth itself. Right. We should be putting all these issues together in a set of visions. And to do that, we need artists, we need tech people who know how to get the word out and the image out. But we also need an analysis so that our points are not just punctual and vanishing. Right. We need to build a vision.
- [48:08]
Kara Swisher
And what is that from your perspective? Because it can't be just combating the Politics of cruelty, saying he's an idiot.
- [48:13]
Judith Butler
No, but what is the. What is the opposite of cruelty? I guess I would say the affirmation of life. You know, I think collective life. What it means to live together on conditions of equality. What it means to overcome nationalism, racism, and xenophobia. I mean, this means living in the broader world and accepting human complexity. And actually valuing also means valuing knowledge. It means valuing economic equality and rethinking our institutions and our understanding of labor so that we don't see these extraordinary gaps between rich and poor and a billionaire oligarch hierarchical class ruling the world. I mean, I think we need to listen to Bernie or maybe the next generation of Bernies who will let us know what democratic socialism is for our time. One that would be not a fair weather friend of trans people like Gavin Newsom.
- [49:16]
Kara Swisher
Huge disappointment.
- [49:17]
Judith Butler
But would understand issues of gender equality and sexual equality as absolutely central to any vision of democracy.
- [49:26]
Kara Swisher
If you had to give a criticism of progressives or left or Democrats, what would it be? Is it that it's only about saying they're cruel and not enough about. And who is that person? Is it aoc? Is it.
- [49:38]
Judith Butler
No, I think I worry about centrist Democrats trying to marginalize those whose rights are now actually under threat. And I think it's been a terrible mistake to dismiss as wokeism. And that happens not just by the right, but by the centrist Democrats as well. I think we need to rethink what is being described as Wokist. Exactly. And does it have to do with racial justice, the struggle for racial justice? Does it have to do with the struggle against prison violence? What kind of world we want is one. Yes. That is, of course, less cruel. But also, I affirms our interdependency on this earth because without addressing the climate issue, we won't even be around to address the social and political problems we're talking about.
- [50:31]
Kara Swisher
Which is the biggest joke. You get that it's the biggest joke in the end of that. Yeah. Who is that person? Is that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez? Who?
- [50:39]
Judith Butler
Do you know what? I don't know if there's a person, and I sometimes wonder, are we wrong to try to find the person who will represent all that we care about?
- [50:49]
Kara Swisher
Well, just Bernie's been holding her hand a lot lately.
- [50:51]
Judith Butler
No. Well, I appreciate both of them, I must say. I think they're quite heroic during this time. But I think what's much more important than a compelling or charismatic leader at this moment is a sense of solidarity, a New sense, one that we didn't think we would have. If we start with the idea like, okay, some of the folks are losing their rights to exist legally, right? Some folks are. Are being abducted on the street. Some are being sent into destitution by economic arrangements. Others are being deported or actually expelled from the country or being detained under conditions that are inhumane, not just in defiance of constitutional law, but international law as well. So, I mean, we could make a list and leave it there, like, oh, all of these ways of treating people are wrong. But what if we started to collect all of those forms of power and try to understand them as part of a new authoritarianism? A new authoritarianism that is very compelling. Well, what would a radical democracy look like that would actually not just analyze and criticize that new authoritarianism, but give us a sense of life together that would restore, preserve the earth and articulate our bonds to one another in ways that are ethically valuable to us, if not beautiful to.
- [52:18]
Kara Swisher
What about the rest of us? The Guardian. This is something you wrote, and I'd love you to finish on this, that I thought was very compelling, that you wrote in the Guardian. Cause it's about rage, and it's being stuck in rage, right? Being stuckness and rage, I think, is what you call it. If we continue to be gripped by outrage instilled by stupefaction by each day's new proclamation, we will fail to discern what links them. To be gripped by his statements is precisely the aim of their utterance. We are, in some ways in its thrall when it captures and paralyzes us. While there is every reason to be outrage, we cannot let that outrage flood us and stop our minds. I spend a lot of time when people say, can you believe it? I'm like, I believe it. Like, I believe what he just did.
- [52:58]
Judith Butler
Next step.
- [52:59]
Kara Swisher
What do you think people should do right now to overcome this tide?
- [53:02]
Judith Butler
Well, look, you know, I have one friend. She's bilingual, she speaks Spanish. She spends, you know, six to eight hours every week helping people fill out their legal form. You know, she just goes to a local church and helps them. You know, there's another friend who works for a local organization that's in favor of democratization, but that local organization has no idea how to put a paragraph together. She puts the paragraph together. It's not big. It's like figuring out what your power is, what your talent is from where you're living and what difference you can make. So there are a lot of networks that are being built and very Quickly in the way that some of those networks were built very quickly after the repeal of Roe v. Wade. And these are not necessarily on the front page of any newspaper. And they can't be. Exactly, because their relationship to hypervisibility is mixed. Like, on the one hand, they want to be known. On the other hand, like, no, we need to keep this on the down low. I'm thinking that a lot of important political activity is happening right there on the border between what's visible and what's not visible and figuring out what assistance we can offer those forms of. I don't want to say grassroots, but it is kind of like a grassroots solidarity movement. They actually turn into larger movements and they do make a difference at the ballot box one day.
- [54:40]
Kara Swisher
So you sound hopeful. Are you hopeful?
- [54:42]
Judith Butler
I have some hope when I pay attention to how these networks of solidarity are emerging and how almost everybody I know is trying to do something for someone and moving out of their comfort zone and out of outrage to take a stand and actually asking others to do the same.
- [55:02]
Kara Swisher
Is there a place for outrage?
- [55:04]
Judith Butler
Outrage is hugely important. I live with enormous amount of rage, and most people I know do as well. The issue is not to repress it, but to cultivate it. I think the well cultivated fuck you is one of the most important things you can learn in this life. You don't just express your rage and, oh, I got it out of my system and that's the end of it. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Figure out what form it's going to take. Figure out what demand you want. Figure out the demand for justice that's in the middle of your rage. The demand for equality or freedom, that's in the middle of your rage. It's like those principles, those demands are inside the rage. You need to bring them out and put them into language or some other medium that allows them to be known. Make your claim on the world. But that takes a certain amount of patience and thoughtfulness, but also always solidarity. You can't just act a little.
- [55:59]
Kara Swisher
Well, I think the well cultivated fuck you is the name of your next book. Honestly.
- [56:02]
Judith Butler
There you have it. Yeah, that would be a good one.
- [56:05]
Kara Swisher
So good. I dare you. I dare you. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on.
- [56:11]
Judith Butler
Thank you.
- [56:15]
Kara Swisher
On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor Wisel, Kateri Yocum, Dave Shaw, Megan Burney, Megan Cunane and Kaitlyn Lynch. Nishat Korwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Eamon Whalen. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you have a well cultivated fuck you ready to go. If not, bring your rage into language and allow it to be known. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.