Joshua Scheer
Women are more visible in public life than ever before. They lead corporations, run for president, dominate popular culture and shape public debate. Yet according to media scholar Allison Butler, visibility is not the same as power—and it is certainly not the same as being heard. With a core theme of this interview being “visibility is not the same thing as power.”
In this wide-ranging conversation with Joshua Scheer, Butler discusses the themes of her book Judgment of Gender: Analyzing the Silencing of Women, examining how patriarchy, capitalism, media narratives and political power continue to shape whose voices matter and whose stories are ignored. From Roe v. Wade and reproductive rights to Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, transgender inclusion, critical media literacy and the enduring legacy of misogyny, Butler argues that many of the structures limiting women’s autonomy have not disappeared—they have simply adapted to new cultural realities.
At the center of the discussion is a challenging question: How can women be increasingly visible in politics, media and popular culture while simultaneously remaining marginalized, controlled and silenced? Butler contends that answering that question requires looking beyond individual personalities and toward the systems that determine which stories are told, who gets to tell them and who benefits from the status quo.
Among the many powerful moments in this conversation, several observations from Butler have stayed with me long after the interview ended. One in particular feels especially relevant not only to the struggle for women’s rights, but to how we navigate life itself: “We get comfortable being uncomfortable.” It is a deceptively simple observation that speaks to the way injustice, inequality and even personal unhappiness can become normalized when they persist long enough.
Closely connected is another insight that deserves deeper reflection: “We generally don’t question what works for us.” That may be one of the central challenges facing any movement for social change. Whether the issue is gender, race, class, war, healthcare or economic inequality, those who benefit from existing systems often have little incentive to examine them critically. Butler’s reminder that “Patriarchy harms all human beings” expands the conversation beyond women alone, challenging us to consider how systems of domination and hierarchy limit all of us. Together, these ideas form one of the most important takeaways from our discussion: meaningful change begins when we become willing to question what feels normal, interrogate the systems that shape our lives, and refuse to accept injustice simply because we have grown accustomed to it.
The conversation is ultimately a call for critical inquiry—not only into media narratives, but into the economic, political and cultural structures that shape modern life. As Butler argues, meaningful change begins when people become willing to question what has been normalized and confront the power behind it.
Guest Info: Allison Butler is a Senior Lecturer, Associate Chair of Undergraduate Advising, and the Director of the Media Literacy Certificate Program in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Amherst, MA, where she teaches courses on critical media literacy and representations of education in the media. Butler co-directs the grassroots organization, Mass Media Literacy, where she develops and runs teacher trainings for the inclusion of critical media literacy in K-12 schools. She holds an MA and a PhD from New York University. She is the author of numerous articles and books on media literacy, most recently, Educating media literacy: The need for teacher education in critical media literacy (Brill, 2020) and Key scholarship in media literacy: David Buckingham (Brill, 2021).
The Newest Book Discussed: The Judgment of Gender: How Women Are Centered and Silenced in Pop Culture
Editor’s Note: The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, readability, grammar, and length. Filler words, repeated phrases, false starts, and transcription errors have been removed. The substance of the conversation, the arguments presented, and the intent of both participants have been preserved. No material changes have been made to the meaning of the discussion.
Joshua Scheer Interviews Allison Butler Author of The Judgment of Gender: How Women Are Centered and Silenced in Pop Culture
Part I: Centered and Silenced
Editor’s Note: The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, grammar, readability, and length. Repetitions, verbal pauses, false starts, and transcription artifacts have been removed while preserving the substance, meaning, and intent of the conversation.
Introduction
Joshua Scheer: It’s a privilege to speak with Allison Butler, Associate Chair of Communication at UMass Amherst, where she also serves as a Senior Lecturer of Communication. We’re discussing her book Judgment of Gender: Analyzing the Silencing of Women. Thank you so much for joining me.
Allison Butler: Thanks so much for having me.
Joshua Scheer: I want to begin with the foundation of the book. You write extensively about critical media literacy, patriarchy, misogyny, and the ways women are represented in culture. What is the central argument you’re making?
How Can Women Be Centered and Silenced at the Same Time?
Allison Butler: The foundation of the book is contained in its subtitle: how women are centered and silenced in popular culture. At first glance, that sounds contradictory. How can women occupy more space, have more stories told about them, and yet still be silenced?
The answer lies in examining how those stories are told, who is telling them, and what aspects of women’s lives are being highlighted.
We can have more women represented in media and still not have comprehensive, complex stories being told about those women.
Patriarchy is a social organization that places men and masculinity at the top of a hierarchy. While it’s obvious how patriarchy harms women, I would argue it harms men and boys as well.
It harms boys, teenagers, and young men who do not fit into a particular model of masculinity. Within patriarchy, women are often treated as second-class citizens, but boys and men who fail to meet expectations of masculinity are also punished.
As a social and economic structure, patriarchy harms all human beings.
Misogyny becomes one of the primary ways that structure is enforced. It is a more active and aggressive form of harm directed at women.
The reason my work focuses on critical media literacy is because these messages are learned. People learn from media what success looks like, what power looks like, and how gender is supposed to function. Certain boys and men learn that harming women is tied to power because those are the messages they repeatedly encounter.
The stories we tell matter.
Patriarchy, Capitalism and Collective Life
Joshua Scheer: One thing that kept coming to mind while reading your book was the contrast between collective ways of organizing society and the highly competitive systems we live under today.
Many Indigenous cultures emphasized community and cooperation. By contrast, much of modern society is organized around hierarchy—whether that’s religion, capitalism, or patriarchy.
How do you see those systems connecting?
Allison Butler: I think we can always blame capitalism.
Joshua Scheer: Fair enough.
Allison Butler: I think we probably should blame capitalism quite often.
One misunderstanding is that people assume criticism of patriarchy means advocating for matriarchy. That’s not what we’re talking about.
Matriarchy isn’t simply patriarchy flipped upside down.
What we’re really talking about is a more collaborative, community-centered way of organizing society.
When we look at many Indigenous cultures, while recognizing they are all distinct and different, we often find traditions in which women were valued as life-givers and treated with a level of respect that differs significantly from patriarchal systems.
Women worked alongside elders, men, and children within communities that often functioned more collectively.
When we look for alternatives to patriarchy, we’re really looking for ways of working together rather than organizing society around rigid hierarchies.
Capitalism and many forms of organized religion both rely on hierarchy. They create structures where some people are elevated and others are pushed down.
Those structures become normalized.
Most of us are born into them and grow up believing that this is simply how the world works.
The Importance of Critical Media Literacy
Joshua Scheer: And that normalization becomes invisible.
Allison Butler: Exactly.
We generally don’t question what works for us.
We begin questioning systems when they stop working for us.
That’s where critical media literacy becomes important.
Critical media literacy asks us to examine the stories we are told and the assumptions embedded within those stories.
It asks questions like:
Who benefits from this narrative?
Who is excluded?
What power structures are being reinforced?
What assumptions are being presented as natural when they are actually constructed?
Capitalism is constructed.
Modern understandings of religion are constructed.
Our insistence that gender exists as a rigid binary is constructed.
Critical media literacy helps us undo those constructions.
That doesn’t erase privilege.
No amount of critical media literacy changes the fact that I’m a white woman. It doesn’t erase my education or my social position.
What it does is help me understand how those systems operate and how I may benefit from them without even realizing it.
And once we understand that, we can begin asking how to challenge those structures.
Listening to Those Most Affected
Joshua Scheer: That reminds me of conversations we’ve had at ScheerPost about race, policing, homelessness, and inequality.
One of the things I often tell people is that when we’re discussing these issues, we need to listen to those directly affected by them.
If we occupy a position of relative privilege, our responsibility is to help amplify those voices and bring those experiences into public discussion.
That’s how people begin thinking critically.
That’s how movements begin.
And that’s really what struck me while reading your book—the invitation to question assumptions that many of us rarely stop to examine.
Pull Quote
“We generally don’t question what works for us. We start questioning things when they stop working for us.” — Allison Butler
Pull Quote
“Patriarchy harms all human beings.” — Allison Butler
End of Part I
Coming in Part II: Feminism, the Four Waves, the Birth Control Pill, LGBTQ Visibility, Stonewall, and why media narratives continue to shape who gets included—and excluded—from the story.
Judgment of Gender and the Politics of Silence
Part II: Feminism, Gender and the Stories We Tell
Editor’s Note: The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, grammar, readability, and length. Repetitions, verbal pauses, false starts, and transcription artifacts have been removed while preserving the substance, meaning, and intent of the conversation.
Understanding the Four Waves of Feminism
Joshua Scheer: One of the topics you explore in the book is feminism and how it has evolved over time. You write about the four waves of feminism and also about contemporary debates surrounding gender identity, trans rights, and media representation. How do you understand the history of feminism?
Allison Butler: One thing I try to emphasize is that feminism didn’t happen in neat, separate chapters.
When we talk about “waves” of feminism, I really want people to think about actual waves in the ocean. They rise, they crest, they recede, and they overlap. They don’t simply stop and start.
The first wave is generally associated with women fighting for voting rights, property rights, divorce rights, and basic recognition as full human beings.
But even in that first wave, we have to remember there were women of color saying, “Yes, those issues matter—but let’s also talk about slavery, racism, and exclusion.”
Too often, the stories that received attention were the stories of white women with economic privilege.
That doesn’t mean they were the only women fighting for equality. It means their stories were the ones most likely to be amplified.
Whose Feminism Gets Seen?
When we move into the 1960s and 1970s, we see major victories.
The Equal Rights Amendment nearly passes.
Roe v. Wade is decided.
Women gain greater access to credit, property ownership, and financial independence.
Women gain greater autonomy over their lives and bodies.
But again, we have to ask: whose stories were being highlighted?
The dominant public narrative largely focused on educated, middle-class, straight white women.
Women of color were often marginalized.
Queer women were marginalized.
Women with disabilities were marginalized.
Their struggles were real. Their activism was real. Their contributions were real.
But they often remained outside the mainstream story.
And in many ways that was intentional.
The idea of women’s equality was already considered threatening. To make it more acceptable, public narratives often elevated the “safest” possible women—those who fit existing cultural expectations.
The Rise of the Girl Boss Era
By the 1980s, feminism became increasingly tied to career advancement and professional success.
The message became that women could have it all.
You could be successful in your career.
You could have the perfect family.
You could be attractive, accomplished, professionally successful, and effortlessly balance every aspect of your life.
That narrative eventually evolved into what we might call “girl boss” feminism.
A version of feminism heavily connected to consumer culture and capitalism.
A version where empowerment could be marketed, branded, and sold.
T-shirts could say “Feminist AF.”
Companies could market feminism.
Brands could market feminism.
But all of that remains a story being told.
And critical media literacy asks us to examine the limits of that story.
The Complicated History of the Birth Control Pill
One example Butler points to is the birth control pill.
The pill undeniably expanded women’s autonomy.
It gave many women greater control over reproduction and sexuality.
It helped weaken long-standing restrictions placed on women.
But Butler argues that understanding history requires looking at origins as well as outcomes.
Allison Butler: The history is more complicated than many people realize.
The birth control pill provided greater freedom for women. That’s undeniable.
But some of its origins were also connected to eugenic thinking.
There were efforts to limit reproduction among poor women and women of color.
So we have to be able to hold multiple truths at once.
The outcome expanded freedom.
The origins were often rooted in systems of control.
That’s one reason why I keep returning to the wave metaphor.
We need to ask where ideas come from, how they evolve, and what consequences they ultimately produce.
The Exclusion of Queer and Trans Voices
Joshua Scheer: One thing that stands out today is the continued struggle over LGBTQ rights and trans rights.
Many people who identify as feminists are supportive of trans inclusion, while others actively oppose it.
How do you understand that conflict?
Allison Butler: Part of the answer lies in the stories we’ve historically told.
When we look at earlier feminist movements, there was often tremendous fear about expanding the narrative too far.
Including queer women was seen as dangerous.
Including trans people was seen as even more threatening.
The mainstream media preferred simple stories.
And simple stories require clear categories.
Trans identities challenge those categories.
They complicate narratives that many institutions have relied upon for generations.
Stonewall and the Politics of Visibility
Butler pointed to the history of Stonewall as an example of how inclusion has often been uneven.
The dominant public narrative of the gay rights movement frequently centered middle-class white men whose appearance and behavior fit relatively conventional expectations.
People whose gender presentation challenged social norms were often pushed to the margins.
Allison Butler: Media organizations tend to prefer stories that are easy to explain.
They want clear heroes.
Clear villains.
Clear categories.
Trans identities challenge those assumptions.
They complicate simplistic narratives.
And when media systems struggle to tell those stories, the result is often silence.
But silence itself becomes a message.
When certain people are consistently excluded from public conversation, society learns that those people are somehow outside the norm.
That exclusion becomes part of the story.
Why Visibility Still Matters
Joshua Scheer: And that silence creates fear.
Allison Butler: Exactly.
If people are rarely represented, or only represented negatively, then entire communities become unfamiliar.
Fear grows in the absence of understanding.
That’s why representation matters.
Not because representation alone solves problems.
But because people deserve to see themselves reflected in public life.
And because everyone benefits from seeing the complexity of other people’s experiences.
Pull Quote
“The safest women possible were the women whose stories were allowed to be told.” — Allison Butler
Pull Quote
“We need to ask where ideas come from, how they evolve, and what consequences they ultimately produce.” — Allison Butler
Pull Quote
“Silence itself becomes a message.” — Allison Butler
Pull Quote
“Media systems prefer simple stories. Human beings are more complicated than that.” — Allison Butler
End of Part II
Coming in Part III: Roe v. Wade, reproductive freedom, sex education, bodily autonomy, and why Butler believes the struggle over abortion is fundamentally a struggle over power, citizenship, and who controls women’s lives.
Judgment of Gender and the Politics of Silence
Part III: Roe, Reproductive Freedom and the Politics of Control
Editor’s Note: The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, grammar, readability, and length. Repetitions, verbal pauses, false starts, and transcription artifacts have been removed while preserving the substance, meaning, and intent of the conversation.
The Conversation We Refuse to Have
Joshua Scheer: One of the major themes in your book is reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy. We seem to be living through a moment where rights many people assumed were settled are now being challenged or reversed.
How do you understand the history of Roe v. Wade and the larger struggle over reproductive rights?
Allison Butler: One thing that’s important to understand is that nothing exists in isolation.
Before Roe, women found themselves pregnant for many reasons, often in a culture that provided little meaningful sex education and almost no public conversation about sexuality.
Many young women learned how pregnancy happened only after becoming pregnant.
We have spent generations being afraid to talk openly about sex, consent, relationships, and even the basic biology of our bodies.
That silence has consequences.
Sex Education and Moral Panic
Joshua Scheer: That’s something I’ve thought about a lot.
We often act as though discussing sex somehow encourages dangerous behavior, when in reality ignorance creates far greater risks.
We should be talking about consent, respect, relationships, and the many different ways people can connect with one another.
Instead, we often avoid those conversations altogether.
Allison Butler: Exactly.
We still don’t have comprehensive sex education in many schools.
We don’t adequately discuss consent.
We don’t adequately discuss healthy relationships.
And we have decades of evidence showing that abstinence-only education doesn’t work.
Yet we continue to repeat approaches that fail.
The result is that many young people enter adulthood without the vocabulary necessary to understand their own experiences.
Before Roe
Butler explained that before Roe, the burden of pregnancy fell overwhelmingly on women.
Women with privilege sometimes had access to resources unavailable to others.
Some were quietly sent away to maternity homes.
Others were hidden from public view until a child was born.
Still others entered rushed marriages to avoid public shame.
But those options were often unavailable to poor women and women of color.
Allison Butler: Young women of color were rarely granted those protections.
They often had to continue working.
They had fewer resources.
They faced harsher public judgment.
The culture itself created those inequalities.
We built a society that treated different women differently based on race and class.
Contraception, Privacy and Women’s Autonomy
The history of contraception was similarly restrictive.
For many years, obtaining birth control was itself difficult or illegal.
Even purchasing condoms could involve public embarrassment and social surveillance.
Allison Butler: There were periods when pharmacists might report purchases back to families.
Married couples faced restrictions on access to contraception.
The assumption was that reproduction wasn’t a private decision.
It was a matter of public morality and social control.
That framework existed long before Roe.
What Roe Actually Did
According to Butler, Roe is often misunderstood by both supporters and critics.
Allison Butler: Roe did not create complete bodily autonomy.
What Roe created was the ability for women to have private medical conversations with their doctors and exercise a degree of choice.
But those rights always existed within limitations.
Waiting periods.
Parental consent laws.
Geographic restrictions.
Clinic regulations.
Over time, those restrictions expanded.
So even before Dobbs, reproductive freedom was already being narrowed in many places.
The right existed, but access was increasingly difficult.
The Long Road to Dobbs
Joshua Scheer: That’s one of the things that often gets lost in public discussion.
The erosion didn’t happen overnight.
Missouri, for example, eventually reached a point where there was only one abortion clinic left in the entire state.
Then even that disappeared.
This wasn’t a sudden change. It was a process.
Allison Butler: Exactly.
When people understand how power works, they understand the long game.
Restrictions are introduced gradually.
People adapt.
What once seemed unacceptable begins to feel normal.
Then another restriction follows.
And another.
Eventually the new reality becomes familiar.
That process isn’t limited to reproductive rights.
It happens throughout society.
When Restrictions Become Normal
One of Butler’s most powerful observations concerns normalization itself.
Allison Butler: We become familiar with systems, even when we don’t particularly like them.
People may not be comfortable with private healthcare, for example, but they’re familiar with it.
Because they’re familiar with it, alternatives begin to feel unrealistic.
The same thing happens with reproductive rights.
A clinic closes.
People adapt.
Travel becomes necessary.
People adapt.
Access becomes harder.
People adapt.
At each stage, something that once would have generated outrage becomes normalized.
That’s how systems change.
Not always through dramatic events, but through gradual adjustments that people learn to live with.
The Question of Bodily Autonomy
The discussion then turned toward the broader philosophical question at the center of abortion debates.
Who controls the body?
Who has authority over medical decisions?
And why are those questions applied differently to women?
Joshua Scheer: If government required people to take medication, submit to procedures, or surrender control over their bodies in almost any other context, there would be enormous resistance.
Yet reproductive rights are often treated differently.
That contradiction seems impossible to ignore.
Allison Butler: That’s because reproductive rights are fundamentally tied to gender and power.
There are certainly people who oppose abortion because of sincere moral beliefs.
But we also have to acknowledge the implications of those beliefs when translated into law.
If we create a legal framework where women have fewer choices about their bodies than men do, then we are creating a legal framework that grants women fewer rights.
Whether people are comfortable with that conclusion or not, it remains part of the discussion.
The Post-Dobbs Landscape
Butler argues that the post-Dobbs era reveals a broader political project.
Restrictions on abortion do not exist in isolation.
They are part of larger efforts to shape family structures, gender roles, and women’s place within society.
Allison Butler: Since Dobbs, we’ve seen renewed emphasis on pronatalist politics.
We’ve seen proposals designed to encourage higher birth rates.
We’ve seen rhetoric about traditional family structures.
We’ve seen efforts that reduce women’s autonomy while presenting themselves as pro-family.
The question we should always ask is simple:
What support accompanies those demands?
Childcare?
Healthcare?
Housing?
Education?
Long-term support for families?
If those supports don’t exist, then we have to ask what the real goal is.
End of Part III
Coming in Part IV: Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, media double standards, misogyny in politics, and why Butler argues women leaders are often judged by standards that have little to do with policy and everything to do with gender.
Judgment of Gender and the Politics of Silence
Part IV: Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and the Gender Double Standard in Politics
Editor’s Note: The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, grammar, readability, and length. Repetitions, verbal pauses, false starts, and transcription artifacts have been removed while preserving the substance, meaning, and intent of the conversation.
Can We Criticize a Woman Politician Without Being Misogynistic?
Joshua Scheer: One thing I struggled with while reading your book was how to navigate criticism of women in politics.
Obviously misogyny exists. No serious person can deny that.
At the same time, many people—including myself—have had serious disagreements with politicians like Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris over issues ranging from foreign policy to policing to economic policy.
How do we separate legitimate political criticism from misogyny?
Because sometimes those conversations become tangled together.
Critique the Policy, Not the Gender
Allison Butler: One thing I try to emphasize is that I will defend people—even people whose politics I strongly disagree with—if they’re being attacked for reasons that have nothing to do with policy.
Let’s start with someone like Nikki Haley.
I disagree with many of her political positions.
But when she was attacked on television because she was supposedly “past her prime,” that’s not a critique of policy.
That’s a gendered attack.
It’s rooted in assumptions about women, aging, and value.
The same thing applies to many women in public life.
If we’re going to criticize political leaders, then let’s criticize their ideas.
Let’s criticize their policies.
Let’s criticize their actions.
But criticizing a woman’s age, clothing, hairstyle, voice, or appearance isn’t political analysis.
The Hillary Clinton Example
According to Butler, Hillary Clinton offers one of the clearest examples of this phenomenon.
Long before Clinton became Secretary of State, Senator, or presidential nominee, she was being scrutinized for things unrelated to governance.
Allison Butler: When Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton was criticized for wearing headbands.
She was criticized for keeping her maiden name.
She was blamed for political setbacks because she wasn’t behaving like people thought a political wife should behave.
How does any of that relate to policy?
It doesn’t.
Whether someone likes Hillary Clinton’s politics or not is entirely separate from criticism based on gender expectations.
Throughout her political career, conversations about her clothing, hairstyles, facial expressions, and tone of voice often overshadowed discussions of her actual positions.
That doesn’t happen to men in the same way.
The Kamala Harris Experience
The same dynamic emerged with Kamala Harris.
Joshua Scheer: As a Californian, I followed Harris long before she became vice president.
People had legitimate debates about her record as attorney general, her approach to criminal justice, and her political evolution.
But alongside those discussions there was also something else happening.
Allison Butler: Absolutely.
Kamala Harris has been criticized for her race.
She’s been criticized for being biracial.
She’s been criticized for her voice.
She’s been criticized for her appearance.
She’s been criticized for who she may or may not have dated.
She’s been criticized for her clothing choices.
None of those things tell us anything meaningful about her governing philosophy.
If someone wants to criticize Harris, there are plenty of policy issues available to discuss.
But reducing criticism to gendered stereotypes or racist assumptions isn’t political analysis.
The Problem With Media Coverage
One of Butler’s central arguments is that media institutions often reinforce these double standards.
Women politicians are expected to satisfy contradictory demands.
They must appear strong but not too strong.
Competent but not intimidating.
Assertive but not aggressive.
Ambitious but not overly ambitious.
The standards constantly shift.
Allison Butler: Men are generally allowed to exist as politicians.
Women often have to exist as women politicians.
Those are not the same thing.
The media frequently asks questions of women that would never be asked of men.
How does she dress?
Is she likable?
Is she warm enough?
Is she too ambitious?
Is her voice annoying?
Those aren’t questions we regularly ask male candidates.
The Importance of Interrogating Power
At the same time, Butler rejects the idea that women politicians should be shielded from criticism.
Quite the opposite.
She argues that all leaders should be held accountable.
Allison Butler: If Kamala Harris were president, I would expect people to critique her policies.
If Hillary Clinton had become president, I would expect people to critique her policies.
That’s what democracy requires.
We should interrogate power.
We should challenge power.
We should demand accountability.
The problem isn’t criticism.
The problem is criticism rooted in misogyny rather than governance.
Refusing Cynicism
The conversation eventually turned toward political frustration more broadly.
Many Americans feel trapped between candidates they dislike and institutions they no longer trust.
Despite those frustrations, Butler argues against surrendering to cynicism.
Joshua Scheer: One of my concerns is that people increasingly feel like meaningful alternatives don’t exist.
Whether we’re talking about economic policy, foreign policy, or social issues, many people feel trapped between choices they don’t particularly like.
Allison Butler: I refuse to be cynical.
That doesn’t mean I’m always optimistic.
But I refuse to believe that better possibilities are impossible.
People often say we’ll never have another Shirley Chisholm.
We’ll never have another Angela Davis.
I don’t want to accept that.
Because if we decide those possibilities no longer exist, then we’ve already ended the conversation.
We have to keep looking for thoughtful, capable people.
We have to keep amplifying voices that challenge existing power structures.
That’s how change happens.
Politics Beyond Elections
Butler also emphasized that democracy does not begin and end at the ballot box.
She spoke about participating in protests and community organizing efforts while recognizing that meaningful change often occurs outside electoral politics.
Allison Butler: I attend protests.
I support organizing.
I support people who are willing to challenge power.
But what matters most is maintaining a willingness to ask questions.
Democracy requires continuous engagement.
It requires us to interrogate power no matter who holds it.
That responsibility doesn’t disappear when our preferred candidate wins.
End of Part IV
Coming in Part V: Critical media literacy, protest, social change, becoming ‘comfortable being uncomfortable,’ and Butler’s final reflections on why questioning power remains essential in a democracy.
Judgment of Gender and the Politics of Silence
Part V: Becoming Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
Editor’s Note: The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, grammar, readability, and length. Repetitions, verbal pauses, false starts, and transcription artifacts have been removed while preserving the substance, meaning, and intent of the conversation.
The Long Game of Power
As the conversation drew to a close, the discussion returned to one of the central themes running throughout Butler’s work: power rarely transforms society overnight.
Whether discussing reproductive rights, gender equality, LGBTQ rights, healthcare, economic justice, or media representation, Butler repeatedly emphasized that social change often happens slowly—and so does the erosion of rights.
Joshua Scheer: One thing that stands out in all of these conversations is that so many of these struggles are long-term battles.
The restrictions on abortion didn’t appear overnight.
The attacks on public education didn’t appear overnight.
The erosion of social safety nets didn’t happen overnight.
These are processes that unfold over years and decades.
Allison Butler: Exactly.
People who want to transform society understand how to play the long game.
They make small changes.
Those changes become familiar.
Then they make another change.
And another.
Eventually people adapt to conditions that once would have seemed unacceptable.
That’s how normalization works.
Familiar Isn’t the Same as Good
Throughout the interview Butler returned to an idea that has implications far beyond feminism.
Human beings often accept systems not because they work particularly well, but because they are familiar.
Allison Butler: Most of us don’t necessarily love every aspect of the systems we live under.
But we’re familiar with them.
And familiarity has power.
People may dislike private healthcare, but they’re accustomed to it.
People may dislike economic inequality, but they’re accustomed to it.
People may dislike restrictions placed on women, but if those restrictions emerge gradually enough, people adapt.
The danger is confusing familiarity with legitimacy.
Something isn’t necessarily good simply because we’ve grown used to it.
Learning to Question the Story
One of the major themes of Judgment of Gender is that media literacy is not simply about identifying misinformation.
It is about understanding power.
Who is telling the story?
Who benefits from the story?
Whose voices are absent?
What assumptions are being presented as natural?
Allison Butler: Critical media literacy is ultimately about inquiry.
It’s about asking questions.
It’s about refusing to accept that things are inevitable simply because they currently exist.
Every system we live under was created by people.
That means those systems can also be changed by people.
Beyond Cynicism
The discussion concluded with a reflection on political frustration and the temptation to give up.
For Butler, cynicism is understandable—but dangerous.
Joshua Scheer: A lot of people feel defeated right now.
They feel trapped between institutions they don’t trust and political choices they don’t like.
What keeps you from becoming cynical?
Allison Butler: I refuse to be cynical.
That doesn’t mean I’m always hopeful.
It doesn’t mean I always think things are moving in the right direction.
But I refuse to surrender to the idea that improvement is impossible.
The moment we convince ourselves that change cannot happen, we’ve already lost the ability to create it.
We have to continue asking questions.
We have to continue challenging power.
We have to continue imagining alternatives.
The Most Important Lesson
Perhaps the most powerful moment of the conversation came when Butler reflected on how people adapt to systems that make them uncomfortable.
The observation applies not only to women’s rights, but to nearly every political, economic, and social issue confronting modern society.
Allison Butler: We get comfortable being uncomfortable.
That may be one of the biggest challenges we face.
We learn to live with things that should trouble us.
We adapt to systems that should be questioned.
We normalize conditions that should not be normal.
At some point, meaningful change requires us to recognize that discomfort and refuse to simply accept it.
Final Reflections
For nearly an hour, Butler explored the ways patriarchy, media, capitalism, and political institutions shape public life.
Yet the conversation ultimately returned to something surprisingly simple:
The willingness to question.
Question the stories.
Question the assumptions.
Question the structures that appear inevitable.
Question the narratives that benefit some while excluding others.
And perhaps most importantly, question the systems that seem normal simply because they have existed for a long time.
As Butler argues throughout Judgment of Gender, critical inquiry is not merely an academic exercise.
It is a democratic responsibility.
Editor’s Reflection
Among the many powerful moments in this conversation, several observations from Butler have stayed with me long after the interview ended.
One in particular feels especially relevant not only to the struggle for women’s rights, but to how we navigate life itself: “We get comfortable being uncomfortable.” It is a deceptively simple observation that speaks to the way injustice, inequality, and even personal unhappiness can become normalized when they persist long enough.
Closely connected is another insight that deserves deeper reflection: “We generally don’t question what works for us.” That may be one of the central challenges facing any movement for social change. Whether the issue is gender, race, class, war, healthcare, or economic inequality, those who benefit from existing systems often have little incentive to examine them critically.
Butler’s reminder that “Patriarchy harms all human beings” expands the conversation beyond women alone, challenging us to consider how systems of domination and hierarchy limit all of us.
Together, these ideas form perhaps the most important takeaway from our discussion: meaningful change begins when we become willing to question what feels normal, interrogate the systems that shape our lives, and refuse to accept injustice simply because we have grown accustomed to it.
End of Interview
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