Note added in 2021: In the years subsequent to this essay being published, Judith Butler has come out as nonbinary and now uses they/them pronouns.
For starters, my apologies about the eponymous blog-post
title—I simply wanted this piece to be readily “findable” for people who do web
searches using both our names.
Over the years, I have read and heard numerous reactions to my
first two books—Whipping Girl and Excluded—that presume that I have
negative or antagonistic views of gender theorist Judith Butler. This is
not actually the case. Others have presumed that some of my work is a “misreading”
of her theories, when in actuality I have never directly critiqued Butler’s
work (only misinterpretations of her work). So to set the record straight, I
have penned this blog-post, which will admittedly only be of interest to a
small subset of readers.
