The 18 Best Phrases of the Feminist Judith Butler

Judith Butler (Cleveland, United States, 1961) is an American philosopher who has dedicated her life to the study of feminism.

Among her main contributions to the field of gender and women’s studies, Judith Butler is recognized as one of the main representatives and ideologues of Queer Theory.

Famous phrases and reflections by Judith Butler

However, Butler is also a prestigious author in the fields of sociology and sexology. Her ideas are based on renowned authors such as Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.

In today’s article We are going to know phrases from Judith Butler that will allow us to get closer to this essential thinker

1. After all, the justification for the fight is given in the sensory field, sound and image are used to recruit us into a reality and to make us participate in it. In a way, every war is a war on the senses. Without the alteration of the senses, no State could wage war.

About the manipulation and populism with which power seduces the population and presents war as something desirable.

2. The structure of beliefs is so strong that it allows some types of violence to be justified or not even considered violence. Thus, we see that they do not talk about assassinations but about casualties, and that the war is not mentioned but the fight for freedom.

About the different types of violence and the manipulation of language. A phrase that refers us to the contributions of another brilliant thinker: Noam Chomsky.

3. Intellectual work is a way to connect with people, to be part of an ongoing conversation. Intellectuals do not lead the way nor are they essential. I believe that theoretical reflection is part of all good politics.

Encouraging critical and academic thinking.

4. Journalism is a place of political struggle… Inevitably.

Whether we like it or not, journalistic objectivity is not feasible.

5. I also don’t think literature can teach us how to live, but people who have questions about how to live tend to turn to literature.

Another of those famous quotes about books and literature.

6. For me, philosophy is a way of writing.

His vision on philosophy can be paradoxical.

7. If Lacan recognizes that women’s homosexuality comes from a disappointed heterosexuality – as observation is claimed to demonstrate – wouldn’t it be equally evident to the observer that heterosexuality comes from a disappointed homosexuality?

Dismantling one of the statements of the French psychoanalyst.

8. I have always been a feminist. This means that I oppose discrimination against women, all forms of gender-based inequality, but it also means that I demand a policy that takes into account the restrictions imposed by gender on human development.

A way to define the fight for equality between sexes and genders.

9. The category of sex is neither invariable nor natural, rather it is a particularly political use of the category of nature that obeys the purposes of reproductive sexuality.

A heterodox view about the definition of the concept ‘sex’.

10. Surely, same-sex marriage and family alliances should be available options, but to make them a model for sexual legitimacy is precisely to constrain the sociality of the body in an acceptable way.

Reflections on the social contract that marriage means.

11. Differences in position and desire mark the limits of universality as an ethical reflection. Critique of gender norms must be situated in the context of lives as they are lived and must be guided by the question of what maximizes the possibilities of a livable life, what minimizes the possibility of an unbearable life or even death. social or literal.

Other aspects that perhaps we do not usually analyze when we talk about gender and interpersonal relationships.

12. Intersex activists work to rectify the erroneous assumption that each body harbors an ‘innate truth’ about its sex that medical professionals can discern and bring to light on their own.

Another reflection that makes us think about the not so direct relationship between biological sex and psychological sex.

13. Sometimes a normative conception of gender can undo the person themselves by undermining their ability to continue living a livable life.

At this point is when this conception oppresses us and reduces us as human beings.

14. Whatever freedom we fight for, it must be a freedom based on equality.

Feminism cannot be conceived without equality of opportunity and treatment.

15. As a consequence, gender is not to culture what sex is to nature; Gender is also the discursive/cultural medium through which sexed nature or a natural sex is formed and established as prediscursive, prior to culture, a politically neutral surface upon which culture acts.

Another phrase from Judith Butler in which she reflects on the cultural patterns that must be questioned.

16. For me, public mourning is not limited to the need to personally mourn the dead. Certainly that need exists. I think that public mourning gives value to lives. It allows for a kind of heightened awareness of the precariousness of those lives and the need to protect them, and perhaps also understanding that this precariousness is understood beyond borders.

About grief and its value in our culture.

17. Is there a good way to categorize bodies? What do the categories tell us? Categories tell us more about the need to categorize bodies than about the bodies themselves.

Labels cannot correctly define that which constantly transforms itself and transforms us.

18. Social movements must unite the creative and affirmative energies of people, not just reiterate harms and produce an identity as subjects of harm. I certainly wouldn’t deny that there are extreme, persistent, and malignant forms of victimization, but adopting this perspective in a social movement is counterproductive.

Fleeing victimhood and looking to the future, joining forces: that is the scenario to which Judith Butler aspires.