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Berkeley professor explains gender theory | Judith Butler
Posted
June 8, 2023
Views
2,160,837
Likes
83,249
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Engagement
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June 8, 2023
2,160,837
83,249
13,821
4.49%
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13:24Now PlayingSex, gender, and the debate over identity explained by Berkeley professor Judith Butler.
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What if gender wasn't a predetermined reality, but a fluid construct formed by culture, history, and individual identity? This is a question that drives the work of Judith Butler, a gender theorist and distinguished professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
While acknowledging the biological realities of sex, Butler promotes the concept of gender as performative — something that is enacted and shaped through our actions and interactions. This view, although challenging to traditional perspectives, is instrumental in the discourse on queer, trans, and women's rights. Butler encourages a shift in societal conversation to include diverse gender identities.
This transformation, they believe, allows us to work toward a society where equality, freedom, and justice are at the forefront, reinforcing the foundations of our democratic society.
Read the video transcript ►
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About Judith Butler:
Judith Butler is a post-structuralist philosopher and queer theorist. They are most famous for the notion of gender performativity, but their work ranges from literary theory, modern philosophical fiction, feminist and sexuality studies, to 19th- and 20th-century European literature and philosophy, Kafka and loss, mourning and war.
They have received countless awards for their teaching and scholarship, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a Rockefeller fellowship, Yale's Brudner Prize, and an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award.
Their books include "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity," "Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex," "Undoing Gender," and "Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?"
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