Nonbinary queer theorist Judith Butler warned last Friday that the world is “witnessing the restoration of patriarchy, nationalism, racism, and capitalist individualism” as well as right-wing “nostalgic fury to return to an idealized past — one that perhaps never truly existed.”

Butler — who is best known for their thoughts on queer theory, particularly the social and performative constructions of gender — made their comments at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, Spain, as part of a speaking series for the 10th anniversary of the “Ideas” supplement of the Spanish newspaper El País. The publication has previously named Butler one of the most influential minds in the world.

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During their talk, Butler mentioned that their newest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?, examines anti-gender movements that vilify feminism, gender fluidity, and trans and nonbinary people as threats to men, families, communities, cultural stability, and even civilization itself.

“Everyone who thinks trans people should live however they want are building bridges. In fact, there are many bridges being built,” they said, referencing individuals and groups fighting to protect and expand wider avenues for more varied gender expression overall. “But then there are groups that say they don’t want bridges,” they added.

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“We can debate hormones or surgery, but gender assignment is a form of coercion that we must name and resist,” they said, referring to the social habit of “assigning” how people are expected to look and act in accordance with gender roles, and, more fundamentally, gender identities being assigned to young people without taking their own identities into account. “We have to support young people, not tell them that they can’t experiment or imagine how to live [in] their bodies in the world: Let’s leave that path open.”

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Last December, Butler spoke about access to gender-affirming care for trans youth, saying, “Not providing support to gender non-conforming youth strikes me as an act of cruelty. I don’t think every time a kid says, oh, I want hormones, you rush to the doctor. But you also don’t refuse the idea.”

Butler also acknowledged that trans issues had driven a wedge between LGBTQ+-inclusive feminists and trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), but said, “Womanhood won’t be erased just because we open the category and invite some more people in.” Butler has previously accused transphobic feminists of allying with fascists.

At the time, Butler also said that the current U.S. president won the 2024 election by making his opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, as a scapegoat for the nation’s problems through characterizations as a “woke, Marxist, feminist, Black and brown [woman], who presumably supports trans surgery (terrifying) on migrants who flooded over the border (also terrifying),” Butler said.

“On the left, we don’t know how to appeal to people’s deep passions. We think we’re very smart and very critical. But where’s the radical imaginary by which people will be passionately absorbed?” they said. “As a consequence of that, [the right-wing is] furiously turning against some of the most vulnerable people in this country, stripping of them of rights as they fear that the same will be done to them.”

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