This interview makes my pulse quicken. Judith Butler is a genius, but I also would respectfully suggest she has no clue what kind of feminists are reacting negatively to gender ideology. The total objectification and misrepresentation of TERFism in the academy is a Problem. https://twitter.com/Skull_Beneath/status/1308431511809658880

I truly don't know how anyone can read JK Rowling's essay & think she is for bio essentialism. "When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone...

... de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’" Etc. https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

This interviewer is also infuriating. No, the question for me is not " how we define 'the category of women' and, as a consequence, //who it is that feminism purports to fight for//." Maybe when JB told you "one does not have to be a woman to be a feminist, and we should not...

... confuse the categories. Men who are feminists, non-binary and trans people who are feminists, are part of the movement if they hold to the basic propositions of freedom and equality that are part of any feminist political struggle," you should have listened.

I think that @jkrowling should consider updating Terf Wars to take into account the rejection of self-ID. The essay's discussion of *cis predators* who might take advantage of self-ID to gain access to women has been willfully misinterpreted by so many people, but...

... as I read it the argument turned primarily on the implications of self-ID for cis men who wish to take advantage of the policy for their own ends and had not very much to do with trans people who are living in their chosen gender. This interviewer cuts off the quote...

... exactly where it turns to cis predators--a very good sign of a willful misreading. All misreading makes me mad, but intentional misreading or not-reading makes me madder. Read Butler, read Rowling. Think about gender without fear.