If Judith Butler is The Queen of Gender, Anna Fausto-Sterling is its goddess: zoologist, biologist and lecturer in gender studies -now at Brown University- starting from the rare genetic condition of intersexuality in the early 1990s, she was the first to attack the concept of sexual binaryity, arguing that sexuality is a spectrum and that at least five sexes can be identified ('come on, it wasn't a theory, I was being ironic, it was just a provocation' she later said. But in vain). [...]

There is something good here. In these years we are resisting the invasion of being a woman by men. In reality it is just the latest figure in the old envious story of all time, or patriarchy. Men have always wanted to appropriate the being-woman and her creative power, exploiting women's bodies in every way and occupying the centre of the world. The good thing is that today language reveals this movement in all its clarity. Today a significant number of men are asking to [...]

In a much-discussed article published in the Guardian, Judith Butler stated that 'the category of women needs to be rethought', as well as claiming that gender-critical feminism is allied to fascism. And here is Pakistani Bina Shah's reply. Yesterday I wrote an angry tweet. Afghan woman: Save me from the Taliban Judith Butler: We'll redefine womanhood, you'll be fine It went like this: 'I just need to know how Judith Butler's definition of woman applies to Afghan women [...].

Disaster of identitarianism: I was supposed to interview the American essayist at Mantua's Festivaletteratura but, 24 hours before, she cancelled the meeting, opting for a speech without a debate. They told her I was 'transphobic' and that she would get into trouble. Here are my questions, which she had wanted in advance: you judge When I announced on Twitter that I would be interviewing Rebecca Solnit at the Festivaletteratura in Mantua, one user warned me: "A transfeminist open to debate?". I would never have imagined that 24 [...]

When I announced on Twitter that I would be interviewing Rebecca Solnit at the Festivaletteratura in Mantua, a user warned me: "A transfeminist open to debate?". I would never have imagined that 24 hours before the meeting, with no respect for my work, Solnit would have refused the dialogue - opting for a short speech without a debate - because, according to her, I am 'transphobic'. Dear Twitter friend, I should have listened to you. Things like this have happened to many others, and many times. JK Rowling, a [...]

Thirty years ago, the now 64-year-old philosopher Judith Butler published a book that revolutionised popular perceptions of gender. "Gender trouble", the work for which she is best known, introduced the idea of gender as performance and raised questions about how we define the category of "women" and who feminism claims to be fighting for. Today, "Gender Trouble" is considered the seminal text in any bibliography of gender studies and its arguments have passed [...]