Judith Butler occupies a curious position in feminist and queer theory: she's simultaneously one of the most influential thinkers these movements have produced and one of their most persistent internal critics. Her skepticism toward identity categories puts her at odds with political strategies that depend on unified group identities, yet her work has been foundational for expanding how we think about gender and sexuality.
The Exclusionary Nature of Identity Categories
Butler's critique begins with a troubling observation: the categories that enable political mobilization can also become regulatory and exclusionary. When feminism organizes around the category "women," who counts as a woman? The definition inevitably draws boundaries that leave some people out—trans women, people who don't conform to feminine norms, those whose experiences don't match the presumed universal subject of feminism. The very act of defining "we" creates a "they" who don't belong.
This isn't just an academic concern. Throughout feminist history, women of color, working-class women, lesbian women, and trans women have repeatedly found themselves marginalized by a feminism that claimed to speak for all women while actually centering the experiences of white, middle-class, straight, cisgender women. The category "women" that seemed like a natural foundation for feminist politics turned out to be exclusionary and contested.
Coalition Politics Without Fixed Identities
But Butler isn't simply arguing for more inclusive definitions. Her critique goes deeper: she questions whether politics requires a stable, unified subject at all. What if the instability and contestation around identity categories isn't a problem to be solved but a resource for more democratic coalition-building?
Butler advocates for what we might call an anti-foundationalist politics—one that doesn't depend on establishing who "we" really are before political action can begin. Instead, political coalitions should remain permanently open to challenge and revision. The boundaries of "we" should be constantly renegotiated rather than fixed in advance. This means accepting that feminist politics will always involve internal conflict about who belongs and what the movement's priorities should be.
This position makes some activists nervous. Don't we need solidarity? Don't we need to know who we're fighting for? Butler's response is that the solidarity we need shouldn't be based on presumed sameness or shared identity, but on coalitions formed across difference. Real solidarity means building alliances with people whose experiences and perspectives differ from our own, without demanding that they conform to some preconceived notion of the proper feminist or queer subject.
The trouble with categories, then, isn't that they're useless—they remain necessary for political organizing. The trouble is when we forget that they're constructed, contingent, and contestable. When we treat "women" or "LGBTQ" as natural kinds with fixed boundaries and essential properties, we turn our political categories into new forms of regulation. Butler asks us to use identity categories strategically while maintaining a critical awareness of their limitations and exclusions.
See also: Why Your Body in the Street Is Already a Vote – Butler and The Politics of Presence
