“There was a brief moment after 9/11 when Colin Powell said we "should not rush to satisfy the desire for revenge." It was a great moment, an extraordinary moment, because what he was actually asking people to do was to stay with a sense of grief, mournfulness, and vulnerability.” PeopleShouldSaidMomentsDesireGriefAskingExtraordinaryRevengeVulnerabilityGreat MomentsWell SaidBrief MomentsExtraordinary Moments Author:Judith Butler
“When some people rejoin with “All Lives Matter” they misunderstand the problem, but not because their message is untrue. It is true that all lives matter, but it is equally true that not all lives are understood to matter which is precisely why it is most important to name the lives that have not mattered, and are struggling to matter in the way they deserve.” PeopleWayImportantMatterProblemNamesStruggleMessagesUnderstoodDeserveUntrue Author:Judith Butler
“War begets war. It produces outraged and humiliated and furious people. That is almost invariably the case.” PeopleWarCasesProduceBegetsFuriousHumiliatedOutraged Author:Judith Butler
“I think that public grieving is a good thing. People need to be grieved; loss needs to be acknowledged publicly, because it helps to confer a sense of reality on the loss but also because it makes it known that this was a real life.” PeopleThinkingNeedsRealHelpingRealityLossKnownGood ThingsReal LifeGrieving Author:Judith Butler
“"Gender trouble" is old. I mean, you know, in New York, it is old. I mean it's sweet. I mean people are really kind about it but it's like a former love affair you had and you're done.” PeopleKnowsKindMeanDoneTroubleNew YorkSweetAffairGenderFormerLove AffairMean PeopleFormer Love Author:Judith Butler
“Not all bodies are born in male or female. There is a continuum of bodies and it seems to me that trying to persuade medical and psychiatrist establishments to deal with the intersex involves critique of the binary gender system. Similarly there continues to be extreme, sometimes very extreme violence against transgender people.” PeopleTryingSometimesBodySeemsBornDealsViolenceFemaleMalesExtremesGenderMedicalEstablishmentTransgenderPsychiatristCritiqueContinuumBinaryIntersex Author:Judith Butler
“It's not my concern. It's your concern. I just keep working. I keep posing certain questions and I think there are times when people think "What happened to the Judith Butler I used to know?" or "She's not doing gender trouble. Does that mean she refuses it or she's disavowed it?" And I would say no. I have not refused or disavowed anything.” PeopleThinkingKnowsMeanDoeUsedCertainHappenedTroubleConcernRefuseGenderButlersPosing Author:Judith Butler
“If you have a conversation "Why is it you think masculinity is linked with heterosexuality? Or why is it you think masculinity is linked with sexual dominance or the sexually active position in the sex act?" If you start to ask people those questions, then they realize "Maybe gender is not one thing. Maybe I have collected a number of things under one category and I've made a mistake".” PeopleIfsThinkingMadeAsksSexRealizingNumbersMistakeOne ThingPositionConversationGenderActiveCategoriesLinkedMasculinitySexuallyMade A MistakeDominanceHeterosexuality Author:Judith Butler
“I think there is no one answer. It is still a struggle, there are tensions and I'm sure there are many people who would like to see these questions laid to rest or cease to be posed altogether.” PeopleThinkingStillsAnswersStruggleCeaseTension Author:Judith Butler
“I think something happens only when people find that they are moved with others, find themselves linked or allied in new ways, showing up or speaking out in ways that resonate with one another. That resonating can be very compelling and lead to moving and speaking more emphatically and with sharper focus.” PeopleThinkingWayHappensMovingFocusMovedThings HappenCompellingNew WaysLinkedShowing UpSpeaking OutResonating Author:Judith Butler
“Popular sovereignty has to be given by a people to itself, and this is the important meaning of self-determination.” PeopleImportantSelfGivenDeterminationSelf DeterminationSovereigntyPopular Sovereignty Author:Judith Butler
“There are doubtless all kinds of ways of explaining why people want security, but I do not think we can start with the psychological explanations. Even psychological states like fear or desire for safety are conditioned by social and political forms of intimidation and scare-mongering that intensify those emotions, and even work to persuade people that nothing less than their survival is at stake.” PeopleThinkingWayWantKindStatesFormPoliticalDesireSocialEmotionSecuritySurvivalSafetyPsychologicalAll KindsExplanationScareStakesExplainingIntimidation Author:Judith Butler
“It is true that one was not allowed at the time to really ask, what would lead people to do this, from what sense of political outrage or injury? And in that way, the possibility of sympathetic identification was foreclosed. That does not mean that some people took quiet pleasure in certain icons of US capitalism coming down, even though they would oppose such action on moral and political grounds.” PeopleWayMeanDoeActionPoliticalCertainAsksPleasureMoralPossibilityQuietCapitalismInjuryIconsSympatheticOutrageIdentification Author:Judith Butler
“I do situate myself in this problem of being a Jew who doesn't want to be represented by the state of Israel, a state that claims to represent all Jewish people and make me into a potential citizen.” PeopleWantStatesProblemCitizensClaimsJewIsrael Author:Judith Butler
“People need to know who I am and where I'm coming from.” PeopleKnowsNeedsWho I Am Author:Judith Butler
“I was born a Zionist, because I didn't have a choice about that. It was the ether of my family life, but I certainly broke with it as I asked more questions about it. And that doesn't mean I want to see the destruction of a people, it means I want to see a state structure that might embody more substantially the basic principles of democracy.” PeopleWantMeanStatesMightChoicesBornPrinciplesDemocracyMy FamilyDestructionStructureBrokeFamily LifeZionistBasic Principles Author:Judith Butler
“People who expect enmity to suddenly convert into love are probably using the wrong model.” PeopleModelsEnmity Author:Judith Butler
“There are ordinary spaces where people do, more or less, share neighbourhoods. In Haifa, there are whole communities that are more or less integrated. But of course that is with Palestinian Israelis who have, for the most part, accepted certain kinds of cooperative models, and also accept second-class citizenship.” PeopleKindWholeCertainCoursesCommunitySpaceAcceptingClassShareModelsOrdinaryAcceptedPalestinianCitizenshipIntegratedCooperativesNeighbourhoods Author:Judith Butler
“People who have been made stateless by military occupation are entitled to repatriation, and then the question is to which state, or to what polity or area? Those who have had their goods taken away are entitled to compensation of some kind. These are basic international laws.” PeopleKindHas BeensMadeStatesLawTakenMilitaryAreasInternationalGoodsOccupationEntitledCompensationInternational Law Author:Judith Butler
“In fact in politics, sometimes the thing that will never happen actually starts to happen. And there have to be people who hold out for that, and who accept that they are idealists and that they are operating on principle as opposed to realpolitik.” PeopleSometimesFactsHappensAcceptingPrinciplesIdealistRealpolitik Author:Judith Butler
“Gender assignment is a "construction" and yet many genderqueer and trans people refuse those assignments in part or in full. That refusal opens the way for a more radical form of self-determination, one that happens in solidarity with others who are undergoing a similar struggle.” PeopleWaySelfHappensFormStruggleDeterminationRefuseGenderRadicalConstructionSelf DeterminationSolidarityRefusalTransAssignments Author:Judith Butler
“Nothing is more important for transgender people than to have access to excellent health care in trans-affirmative environments, to have the legal and institutional freedom to pursue their own lives as they wish, and to have their freedom and desire affirmed by the rest of the world. This will happen only when transphobia is overcome at the level of individual attitudes and prejudices and in larger institutions of education, law, health care, and kinship.” PeopleWorldImportantHappensCareLawDesireIndividualWishLevelsAttitudeEnvironmentOvercomingPrejudiceInstitutionsAccessPursueHealth CareExcellentTransgenderTransAffirmativeKinship Author:Judith Butler
“I do know that some people believe that I see gender as a "choice" rather than as an essential and firmly fixed sense of self. My view is actually not that. No matter whether one feels one's gendered and sexed reality to be firmly fixed or less so, every person should have the right to determine the legal and linguistic terms of their embodied lives.” PeopleKnowsFeelsShouldBelievePersonsSelfMatterRealityChoicesTermViewsEssentialsShould HaveDetermineGenderFixedSense Of Self Author:Judith Butler
“I never did like the assertion of the "innate" inferiority or women or Blacks, and I understood that when people tried to talk that way, they were trying to "fix" a social reality into a natural necessity. And yet, sometimes we do need a language that refers to a basic, fundamental, enduring, and necessary dimension of who we are, and the sense of sexed embodiment can be precisely that.” PeopleWayNeedsTryingSometimesRealityLanguageSocialNaturalUnderstoodFundamentalsEndureWho We AreDimensionsInnateAssertionInferiorityEmbodiment Author:Judith Butler
“Sometimes there are ways to minimize the importance of gender in life, or to confuse gender categories so that they no longer have descriptive power. But other times gender can be very important to us, and some people really love the gender that they have claimed for themselves.” PeopleWayImportantSometimesImportanceGenderCategories Author:Judith Butler
“If gender is eradicated, so too is an important domain of pleasure for many people. And others have a strong sense of self bound up with their genders, so to get rid of gender would be to shatter their self-hood.” PeopleIfsImportantSelfWould BeStrongPleasureBoundsGenderDomainHoodSense Of SelfStrong Sense Of Self Author:Judith Butler
“I reject totally the characterization of a transwoman as a mutilated man. First, that formulation presumes that men born into that sex assignment are not mutilated. Second, it once again sets up the feminist as the prosecutor of trans people. If there is any mutilation going on in this scene, it is being done by the feminist police force who rejects the lived embodiment of transwomen. That very accusation is a form of "mutilation" as is all transphobic discourse such as these.” PeopleIfsMenFirstsDoneFormForceSexBornScenePoliceFeministRejectsDiscourseTransAssignmentsEmbodimentAccusationBeing DoneProsecutorCharacterizationPolice ForceMutilation Author:Judith Butler
“There is a rather huge ethical difference between electing surgery and being faced with transphobic condemnation and diagnoses. I would say that the greatest risk of mutilation that trans people have comes directly from transphobia.” PeopleDifferencesRiskHugeEthicalSurgeryTransDiagnosisCondemnationMutilation Author:Judith Butler
“Some trans people thought that in claiming that gender is performative that I was saying that it is all a fiction, and that a person's felt sense of gender was therefore "unreal." That was never my intention. I sought to expand our sense of what gender realities could be. But I think I needed to pay more attention to what people feel, how the primary experience of the body is registered, and the quite urgent and legitimate demand to have those aspects of sex recognized and supported.” PeopleThinkingFeelsPersonsBodyRealitySexFeltPayAttentionFictionNeededDemandAspectIntentionGenderPrimariesUrgentUnrealTrans Author:Judith Butler
“One of the things that neoliberalism does is, it relies on flexible workforces who are hired and fired at will and who are basically disposable labor. You can use them. You can get rid of them. They have no rights; they have no security. Their lives and well-being are made and unmade at the whim of those who are exercising the calculus. So, instead of looking at the institution and objecting to that kind of organization, people just go, "I'm a failure;"; "I'm not working hard enough"; or, "I'm not as smart as the next person."” PeopleWellsKindPersonsDoeMadeHardEnoughUseNextRightsSecurityExerciseSmartLaborOrganizationInstitutionsWell BeingRelyFlexibleWhimWorkforceCalculusDisposableNeoliberalism Author:Judith Butler
“I think there is a demand. The demand is for a radical economic and political restructuring of the world. And most people would say that's impossible. And it may or may not be achieved, but I think that's less important than articulating what a just and fair world can be.” PeopleThinkingWorldMayImportantPoliticalImpossibleEconomicDemandFairsRadicalRestructuringArticulating Author:Judith Butler
“It is always brave to insist on undergoing transformations that feel necessary and right even when there are so many obstructions to doing so, including people and institutions who seek to pathologize or criminalize such important acts of self-definition. I know that for some feels less brave than necessary, but we all have to defend those necessities that allow us to live and breathe in the way that feels right to us. Surgical intervention can be precisely what a trans person needs – it is also not always what a trans person needs.” PeopleImportantTransformationBraveBreathe Author:Judith Butler
“I agree completely that nothing is more important for transgender people than to have access to excellent health care in trans-affirmative environments, to have the legal and institutional freedom to pursue their own lives as they wish, and to have their freedom and desire affirmed by the rest of the world. This will happen only when transphobia is overcome at the level of individual attitudes and prejudices and in larger institutions of education, law, health care, and kinship.” PeopleWorldImportantCareDesireIndividualWishAttitudeEnvironmentOvercomingPrejudiceAgreeHealth CareExcellentTransgenderKinship Author:Judith Butler
“No matter what someone else has done, it still matters how we treat people. It matters to our humanity that we treat offenders according to standards that we recognize as just. Justice is not revenge - it's deciding for a solution that is oriented towards peace, peace being the harder but more human way of reacting to injury. That is the very basis of the idea of rights.” PeopleWayHumansStillsIdeasMatterDoneHumanityJusticeRightsSolutionsStandardsTreatsBasesHarderNo Matter WhatRevengeInjuryReactingOffenders Author:Judith Butler
“Indeed, even if one believed that criticisms of Israel are by and large heard as anti-semitic (by Jews, anti-semites, or people who could be described as neither), it would become the responsibility of all of us to change the conditions of reception so that the public might begin to distinguish between criticism of Israel and a hatred of Jews.” PeopleIfsMightChangeResponsibilityHeardConditionsCriticismHatredJewIsraelReceptionAnti Semitic Author:Judith Butler
