Shadowing Practice: Judith Butler on Gender - Learn English Speaking with Video
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107 sentences
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Who is afraid of gender?
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In some sense, all of us are.
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If we think of gender as a set of norms that communicate expectations about how we should emerge in the world,
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what bodily form we should take, and how we are to comport ourselves,
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then there is good reason to worry that one will fail at the task required.
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Who sets the rules and what freedom is there to change them?
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I am Judith Butler, distinguished professor in the graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Who's Afraid of Gender,
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published by Alan Lane in the UK.
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Gender, conceived as a normative organization of social reality,
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is also communicated as a set of demands or expectations with the understanding
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that certain very painful consequences may follow if one fails to conform.
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Thus, some might fear gender as one would fear any set of norms and possible punishments.
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But there is something intimate about gender.
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It is a way bodies are organized, but also a way they conduct themselves in relation to one another.
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It is this body, after all, material and singular, that is at once socially formed and acting with,
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against, or beyond those norms.
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Yet others, doubtless mindful of this intimate terrain, wish for a set structure, one that does not change in time,
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an identity fixed either by natural or symbolic law or by the state itself.
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They fear the variability of gender, not only the different ways that men and women now act,
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but the apparent fact that the categories change meaning in time, that those assigned female at birth can become men,
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that those assigned male at birth can become women, that intersex people are demanding recognition for their embodied lives,
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and that some people live outside the binary categories of man and woman, either in new categories or in the interstices among them.
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Those who are unsettled by the variability of gender,
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its different configurations are especially vulnerable to those politicians who insist that gender is an ideology and,
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together with other forms of wokeism, are responsible for the destruction of the family, civilization, man, or national cultures.
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The anti -gender political discourse heightens the ordinary anxiety that people have about gender,
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associating and conflating that anxiety with a generalized fear about the future of the world itself,
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its climate, the increasing precarity of work, the intensification of wealth among the very few, the open -ended character of brutal wars,
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the challenges to the homogeneity of national and local cultures posed by migration and displacement.
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There are many reasons to fear, but gender is not the cause of any of those conditions
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that have given rise to a generalized concern about the future of the world.
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In my book, Who's Afraid of Gender?, I track the history of the anti -gender ideology movement from
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its inception at Vatican conferences in the 1990s through its appropriation and reformulation in Latin America and Eastern Europe.
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I respond to many of the criticisms leveled against gender,
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including those that characterize gender as a made -up construct that denies the materiality of the body,
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as an imperialist concept imposed upon local cultures of the global
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South, as a doctrine that has the force to destroy the family, man, civilization, and the natural order,
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as a form of indoctrination or seduction harmful for children, as a denial of biology or biological difference.
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In addition to refuting these charges with arguments and evidence,
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I propose that gender has become a phantasm that collects anxieties,
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fears, and desires that are already circulating in the general public about the future of their way of life,
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the fate of their children if they have them,
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and the general instability of economic and political I suggest that people do have reasons to fear the continuation of war,
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climate catastrophe, the increasingly destructive character of capitalism,
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systemic racism, and forcible displacement of many populations.
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Gender is not the reason for any of these instabilities, which is one reason why the defense of gender,
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as a framework for social analysis, as a field of study, as an essential part of research at all universities,
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has to provide an analysis of how gender became construed as a demonic power and destructive force.
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The defense of gender is at once the defense of open inquiry and the ideal of the university.
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Like the demonization of migrants and trans people in contemporary politics,
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gender functions as a phantasm that absorbs contemporary anxieties as it deflects from their true source.
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For instance, it is said that gender is a doctrine, like totalitarianism, or that it represents the extremes of capitalism.
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Inconsistent allegations abound, culminating in the conviction that gender is an ideology by
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which is meant a false and dogmatic set of beliefs.
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Consider, however, that gender studies as a discipline is by definition interdisciplinary,
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drawing from several paradigms, and it is defined by a set of debates
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and problematics not by statements of doctrine or settled truths.
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Instead, gender studies classrooms are often models of open debate.
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People disagree about methods, the status of theory, the need for regional ethnographies, and the relationship of the academy to social movements.
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There are, in fact, so many disparate approaches
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that most courses dedicated to introducing gender studies can hardly manage to include all the points of view that constitute the discipline.
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I belabor this point only
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because there are those who would reduce gender to a dangerous ideology
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and thus efface the complexity and richness of the framework and its many conceptual contributions to thinking about nature,
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society, power, and embodiment.
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To those who think that gender studies pedagogy is a form of indoctrination, the response must be firm.
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Gender is neither an ideology nor a form of indoctrination.
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Indeed, the critique of gender within gender studies is productive.
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If anything, it is a framework that allows us to ask, among other questions, how is the social world organized,
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through what exclusions, and with what potentials?
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The debates on such questions are open -ended.
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For those who have learned from the field, that openness is a promising value to be affirmed. For others,
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social structures should remain unchanging and based on pre -social differences
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that can be known apart from any interpretive framework or social meanings.
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Those who seek to censor books on gender
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or to close down the teaching of gender studies are themselves imposing a doctrine on research and teaching.
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In addition, shutting down open debate in public life and open inquiry in the academy does not bode well for democracy.
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And yet, this is precisely what the anti -gender ideology movement calls for.
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It is a campaign of falsification and censorship that strengthens repressive state powers.
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My book seeks to understand how the intensified opposition to gender fits within the emerging of authoritarian regimes
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that gain support through the fantasy of restoring patriarchal and heteronormative orders.
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The more that gender ideology as a phrase is discussed as if it describes something real,
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this fiction becomes part of a shared and emergent cultural understanding, or what some call a backlash.
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The complexity of feminism, sexuality, and gender studies as fields,
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and their potential to describe and understand human embodiment in its complexity is replaced by a caricature.
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But that is just one problem to be faced.
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If the only task were to dispel an increasingly prevalent mischaracterization of a field of study,
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we could simply demonstrate the different approaches to scholarship and teaching and show why, based on the evidence provided,
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the caricature fails to grasp the field of study its institutional forms, and its effects on social policy.
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The caricature of gender ideology, however, is deployed to incite fear,
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to identify gender as the cause of public anxiety about the future,
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and to promise a return to a time in which gender binarism and gender hierarchy could be assumed as unchangeable.
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Gender does not only characterize identities it is a framework for understanding a major form of power in society,
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the way it establishes separate spheres and social inequalities and exclusions. For feminists,
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gender became an important term in the 1970s through which to describe and criticize social inequalities and the persistence of masculine domination.
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They asked about the gendered division of labor, the gendering of the public sphere,
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and they help to formulate and institute public policies that seek to oppose discrimination, to establish equal treatment under the law,
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to expose gender -based violence, to delineate specific health care needs,
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and to inquire into the ways society might be transformed to support greater equality,
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justice, and freedom, the basic principles of democracy.
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Gendered frameworks have proven to be productive in ecological politics, migration studies, and anti -violence policies.
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They have been affirmed as part of the history of freedom and equality,
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not only demonstrating how and why inequalities or exclusions exist,
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but contesting discourses and policies that keep a range of people from flourishing.
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It seems important to keep our minds open to all the ways that people can flourish.
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To do that, however, we must affirm the complexity of human experience,
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including biology, rather than accept reductive accounts that take us further away from the truth.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Judith Butler on Gender”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: gender, ideology, fear, studies, framework. This video has 107 sentences and 1537 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:02. The speaker talks at a steady 128 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 78% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ideology noun | /aɪ.diˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/ | Doctrine, philosophy, body of beliefs or principles belonging to an individual or group. |
| framework noun | /ˈfɹeɪm.wɜːk/ | A support structure comprising joined parts or conglomerated particles and intervening open spaces of similar or larger size. |
| anxiety noun | /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/ | An unpleasant state of mental uneasiness, nervousness, apprehension and obsession or concern about some uncertain event. |
| complexity noun | /kəmˈplɛk.sɪ.ti/ | The state of being complex; intricacy; entanglement. |
| doctrine noun | /ˈdɑk.tɹɪn/ | A belief or tenet, especially about philosophical or theological matters. |
| norm noun | /nɔːm/ | That which is normal or typical. |
| inequality noun | /ˌɪn.ɪˈkwɑ.lɪ.ti/ | A condition or state (of social, cultural, or legal matters) that is not equal; especially, such a condition that is thereby also unfair. |
| exclusion noun | /ɪksˈkluːʒən/ | The act of excluding or shutting out; removal from consideration or taking part. |
| establish verb | /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ/ | To make stable or firm; to confirm. |
| increasingly adverb | Increasing in amount or intensity. | |
| equality noun | /ɪˈkwɑ.lɪ.ti/ | The fact of being equal. |
| inquiry noun | /ɪnˈkwaɪ(ə)ɹi/ | The act of inquiring; a seeking of information by asking questions; interrogation; a question or questioning. |
| discipline noun | /ˈdɪsəplɪn/ | A controlled behaviour; self-control. |
| biology noun | /baɪˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/ | The study of all life or living matter. |
| productive adjective | /pɹəˈdʌk.tɪv/ | Capable of producing something, especially in abundance; fertile. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| close down verb | /kləʊzˈdaʊn/ | To stop trading as a business. |
| make up verb | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | To constitute, to compose. |
| shut down verb | To close, terminate, or end; to stop operating, either permanently or temporarily. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is also communicated · are organized · are unsettled |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | one that does · Those who are · instabilities, which is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have given · has become · have learned |
Pronunciation to watch
- The “th” sounds: authoritarian /əˌθɑ.ɹəˈtɛɹ.i.ən/, ethnography /ɛθˈnɑɡɹəfi/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: exclusion /ɪksˈkluːʒən/, establish /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ/, migration /maɪˈɡɹeɪʃ(ə)n/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: ideology /aɪ.diˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, anxiety /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/, complexity /kəmˈplɛk.sɪ.ti/, inequality /ˌɪn.ɪˈkwɑ.lɪ.ti/, equality /ɪˈkwɑ.lɪ.ti/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like ideology, framework, anxiety.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.