[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_70

Gender trouble, Judith Butler, 1990

My baptism with Judith Butler's vision of gender occurred late one evening in a bar in Venice. It was my favorite bar when I was a student: a microscopic, dark, and messy place full of political posters, rock band stickers, photographs of old customers, and epic evenings, with a grumpy barkeeper and beautiful music,where a glass of wine cost you less than water and where people loved wine much more than chatting. And they talked a lot.

In a city like Venice, sold and rebuilt for the sole enjoyment of foreign tourists, I have always found this bar to be a free zone, an authentic place free from the weight of appearance, an inspirational place where I could meet people who weren't afraid to say what they thought or to discuss it.

One evening, talking about study interests with a girl who regularly frequents the bar, I found myself confiding that I was getting closer to gender studies and that this had profoundly changed my perception of the world. The girl, whom I will call Anna here and who presented herself as a progressive person, seemed rather disappointed by what I had just confided in her. She placed her wine glass on the shelf of the bar window and lit her cigarette. "Be careful," she told me with the look of someone who has seen things that “other” humans can't even imagine. "Judith Butler ruined the world".

"Who?"

I was new to feminist literature then and had never heard of the American scholar.

“Come on! Don't you know who she is?” Anna teased me, “Being interested in the gender issue and not knowing Judith Butler is like for someone passionate about Christianity not knowing who Judas is.”

So Anna, between a glass of wine and another, explained to me that it was all Judith Butler's fault if nowadays people were confused about their sexuality if it had become fashionable not to be heterosexual, if kids still in their teens wanted to change sex if Males wore crop tops with their belly buttons out and painted their nails with colored nail polish. But it was Judith Butler's fault if Anna couldn't find a "real man," a man "like those of the past." Anna liked gentlemen, bold, gallant, and passionate men. But those men were no longer there. “Now they are more vain than women,” she told me, making me understand that for her,vanity was inherent in our very gender: “They wax, comb their eyebrows, go shopping, and take selfies.”

“Is this all the work of Judith Butler?” I thought to myself, “This woman must be a genius.”

But I didn't say it; I asked instead: “Are you sure that the men you speak of ever existed?”

Anna was sure, yes. She gave me many examples from literature and cinema and a couple from History, mostly left-wing partisans and intellectuals. But those same men that Anna defined as "great" seemed to me to be the same ones who, once they returned home, found a tired and unhappy wife who prepared their meals, ironed their shirts, and raised their children; they were the same ones who perhaps kept their wives jealously, blaming them, exploiting them, betraying them and, sometimes, beating them.

“I don't believe that 'the men of the past,' as you define them, have ever existed, Anna,” I told her, “The men of the past are our grandfathers and our fathers; do you think they are “great”? Despite my affection forthem, I don't." I paused and then added, "The only thing that's great about these men is the bullshit they've been telling us for years!"

Anna put the glass back on the shelf. It signaled that I had said something that deserved to leave her hand free. It's a bad sign. She looked at me grimly and said, “That's exactly what I was telling you: Do you see how you end up thinking? Like a feminist?” She lit another cigarette and said, “Women no longer find a partner because of people like you.”

No one had ever called me a feminist before. I didn't define myself as a feminist because I hadn't yet fully understood what it meant and because I wouldn't say I liked definitions. Hearing myself called that way alienated me: I was both sorry and flattered by it. I was sad because that word marked an unbridgeable distance between me and her, and I was flattered because without knowing what feminism was, I was already part of it.

I don't remember what I answered or if I answered anything; I knew that whatever I argued, Anna would put the glass back on the shelf, light a cigarette, and give me another label. I wasn't mad at Anna; I had been thinking the same way as her for a long time, too, having grown up in a strongly Catholic and conservative context. I couldn't accept that my difficulty in relating to the opposite sex was linked to a cultural problem based on systemic discrimination of which we were all victims, nor could I accept that the Charming Prince they had trained me to wait for had never existed, and so I was looking for someone to blame. Sometimes, I blamed the mothers who had not educated their sons; sometimes, I blamed the activists because they increased men's suspicion and blame towards women. Unlike Anna, however, I had never found a single scapegoat. It must have been comforting for her to think there was a Judas she could spit on for all the betrayals she had suffered.

Once again, my favorite bar gave me something to think about: The following day, I first looked up information on Judith Butler. Her most famous book, Gender Trouble, would keep me busy.