Judith Butler

Philosopher, gender theorist, political activist

• Born: February 24, 1956
• Place of Birth: Cleveland, Ohio

Education: Bennington College; Yale University

Significance: Judith Butler is an American philosopher who has written extensively on the subjects on gender, sexuality, and identity.

Background

Judith Pamela Butler was born on February 24, 1956, in Cleveland, Ohio. Butler’s mother was a social services advocate, and her father worked in dentistry. Butler was raised in a Jewish household, her ancestry descending from Hungary and Russia. Butler’s maternal grandmother had lost most of her family to the atrocities of the Holocaust. Growing up, Butler attended Hebrew school—a supplemental education that provides teachings on Jewish history as well as instruction on the Hebrew language. Butler also began taking classes in Jewish ethics when she was fourteen. These classes were her first taste of the philosophical studies to which she would later dedicate her career.

Butler began her higher education at Bennington College, a small liberal arts college in Vermont. At the time she attended the school, it was a women’s college. She went to Bennington for two years before transferring to Yale University to study philosophy. It was from this university that she received her bachelors degree in 1978. Butler continued her education at Yale, earning a master's degree and PhD in 1982 and 1984, respectively. Butler’s doctoral dissertation provided the groundwork for her first published book, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France. The book explored ideas put forward by German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel in his nineteenth century book, The Phenomenology of Spirit.

Life’s Work

Butler is best known for the ideas presented in her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, which was first published in 1990. In Gender Trouble, Butler argued that rather than being an innate or natural concept, gender is instead a social construct. This idea was not original to Butler, but she expounded upon it in groundbreaking ways. In the book, Butler introduced her theory of gender performativity—an idea that suggested that gender is an artificial construct propagated through actions and speech. She proposed that gender is in some sense a performance, making it not all that different from the way in which one performs a part in a play. According to Butler, gender is not determined by who one is, but rather by what one does. In this way, Butler suggested that individuals do not exist apart from the gender roles they perform; instead, she argued, the individual is, in fact, created through this performance. It is only in the ways in which individuals stray from these conventional forms that the true nature of gender becomes apparent. Butler held that rather than being a fixed attribute, gender is fluid.

In addition to her critique of society’s constructed conceptions of gender, Butler argued that sex is based on biology (that is, whether someone is biologically female or male) but that it is also a social construct like gender. In other words, society’s division of the sexes, a distinction that is imposed on individuals before they are born and is reinforced throughout life, makes sex, like gender, a performative construct. This distinction, according to Butler, is responsible for the relationship between sex and gender as it relates to sexuality, a relationship that she deemed artificial as a result. She maintained that these constructs subsequently promote society’s acceptance of heterosexuality as normal. These ideas pertaining to both sex and gender presented by Butler in Gender Trouble laid the groundwork for queer theory. Queer theory is based on the idea that an individual’s identity, whether relating to gender or sexual orientation, is fluid and not a determining factor in who a person is.

Gender Trouble was immediately successful when it was published in 1990, and it sold over one hundred thousand copies. The book has since been translated into nearly thirty different languages and is studied all around the world. In 1993, Butler wrote a sequel, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex." Butler has also written numerous other books, including Precarious Life (2004), Undoing Gender (2004), Giving an Account of Oneself (2005), Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, and The Force of Nonviolence (2020). In 2024, Butler published a sixteenth book, Who's Afraid of Gender? The book discusses the reaction of conservatives to gender issues and became a bestseller.

Butler’s conclusions about society’s gender distinctions led her to be intensely critical of many feminist political ideas. Many feminists, in their pursuit of equality between the sexes, acknowledge and promote the differences between men and women. By contrast, Butler believed that this approach had a negative effect on the feminist cause. Instead, she held that much of the gender inequality faced by women stemmed from the fact that women were sorted into a distinct group. Butler proposed that by separating women into their own group, society considers men and women to be different—which therefore makes true equality impossible.

Butler is most well known for her innovative thoughts on gender and identity, but she has also been active politically, speaking out on issues relating to gender-related questions. She served as the chair of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Butler has also been vocal about war atrocities around the world, especially those related to Israel and Palestine. She is an executive member of the Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace in the United States.

Butler has taught at many prestigious universities throughout the United States, including Wesleyan University, Johns Hopkins University, and George Washington University. In addition, Butler was named the Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School, an international graduate school located in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Butler is also the Maxine Elliot Professor for Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.

Impact

Judith Butler’s writings on gender, sex, and identity have greatly impacted the social and political landscapes of both the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Her ideas have helped change many preconceived notions on the concept of gender and queer identities as a whole. Not only has her work been extremely significant in the field of academia, but her ideas have also been a catalyst in the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) movement all around the world.

Personal Life

Butler lives with her partner, political scientist Wendy Brown, in Berkeley, California. Together, the pair has an adopted son.

Bibliography

Aloni, Udi. "Judith Butler: As a Jew, I Was Taught It Was Ethically Imperative to Speak Up." Haaretz. Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd., 24 Feb. 2010. Web. 7 Jan. 2016. www.haaretz.com/news/judith-butler-as-a-jew-i-was-taught-it-was-ethically-imperative-to-speak-up-1.266243. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024.

Bennett, Jessica. "Judith Butler Thinks You’re Overreacting." The New York Times, 26 Mar. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/03/24/books/booksupdate/judith-butler-thinks-youre-overreacting.html. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024.

Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex." New York: Routledge, 1993. Print.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.

Duignan, Brian. "Judith Butler." Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., n.d. Web. www.britannica.com/biography/Judith-Butler. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024.

Wilchins, Riki. Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer. New York: Alyson, 2004. Print.