MARIA DUARTE, LEO BOIX and ANGUS REID review Brides, Dead of Winter, A Night Like This, and The Librarians
Latest editorial
The prisoners of gender
CAL MCBRIDE recommends an accessible and erudite study that aims to link the struggle for gender rights with the wider critique of neoliberal capitalism
OPPOSITES COLLIDE: Protest in Oxford where Professor Kathleen Stock is due to speak at the the Oxford Union, May 30 2023
![REBELS: Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar in Nadia Fall’s powerful debut feature Brides [Pic: IMDb]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2025-09/round%20up%20web_0.jpg.webp?itok=41xI6jhN)
MARY CONWAY recommends an early Shakespearean tragedy that feels so contemporary that it mirrors our daily news
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends a dazzling production of Bernstein’s opera set in a world where chaos and violence are greeted by equanimity
MARY CONWAY is frustrated by a new play that loses its drama amid the moral dilemma of re-settling children in the aftermath of WWII
Acclaimed as a masterpiece when it premiered, this study of story-telling in an Irish pub more than lives up to expectations, says MARY CONWAY
SYLVIA HIKINS relishes a comedy that dives deep into Liverpool’s divided loyalties
Who’s Afraid of Gender
Judith Butler
Allen Lane, £25
ANYONE dipping even the most tentative toe into the currently tempestuous waters of gender discourse won’t be able to venture too far without encountering the name Judith Butler.
Works like Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter have become key texts in global gender studies, even as many of their theories have been misinterpreted, or just plain misunderstood over the years. That being so, it’s useful that rather than taking another deep dive into the intricacies of gender-oriented cultural philosophy, this book instead confronts head-on the current and heated so-called culture war that has sprung up in public discourse around gender.
Butler has a not wholly undeserved reputation for writing in dense academese but they’ve thankfully reined in that tendency for the most part here to produce a largely reader-friendly text.
Similar stories
WILL PODMORE welcomes the case put by a feminist, disentangling the abusive rhetoric of the trans rights debate
CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity
MARJORIE MAYO recommends a punchy demonstration of the the way class politics are being fragmented by the right
As the Establishment stokes a culture war against gender recognition — not in favour of it — the left must unite in support of the trans community, says TOM KING