Body Politics Archives - Public Seminar

New School Alum Melissa Febos uses memoir to understand the startling shame of becoming a woman in the eyes of others in this excerpt of her book Girlhood

October 20, 2021 • by Melissa Febos

"I got my period when I was ten, and I’d been reading Judy Blume books for a while so I knew it was coming," said Tanaïs. "And when it came, I wasn’t prepared for it anymore." A 2011 American Association of University Women (AAUW) school survey shows that early development ...

Politics

Did Judith Butler Really Say TERFs Are Fascists?

No—Butler did something far more useful. They asked us to think more deeply about body politics

October 19, 2021 • by Hannah Leffingwell

The latest Judith Butler story goes like this: Butler, a renowned philosopher and queer theory bigwig, did an interview with Jules Gleeson of The Guardian. The interview was published on September 7, 2021: social media instantly exploded over Butler's assertion that so-called “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” (otherwise known by their opponents ...