I reached out to the philosopher Judith Butler last year, not long after I wrote an article titled “I Am A Sexist,” as the #MeToo movement was in full swing. I hoped to get an unvarnished critique of the essay. I got much more: A bracing and profound exchange that led to this interview and the reminder that violence against women, in its many forms, is a global tragedy.

Judith Butler is known for her decades of work in philosophy, feminism and activism worldwide. A professor in the department of comparative literature and the program of critical theory at the University of California, Berkeley, she is the author of numerous influential books, including “Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly” and the forthcoming book, “The Force of Non-Violence.” The interview was conducted by email.

George Yancy: I know you are familiar with the multinational activist movement Ni Una Menos. The movement, which spans several countries in Latin America, is fighting many forms of violence, in particular femicide, which is the intentional killing of women and girls because of their gender. (One example: In Argentina, one woman is said to be murdered every 30 hours.) In the United States, of course, we have the #MeToo movement. What do you make of these different but similar mobilizations?

Judith Butler: It is important to underscore that there are many feminisms right now (as there have always been) and they differ in regard to their focus and framework. Ni Una Menos is a movement that has brought millions of women into the street across Latin America to fight violence against women, trans people and the indigenous. The slogan “not one less” means that not one more woman will be lost to violence.

Importantly, this is a call that is uttered by a collective: “Not another one will be lost from the class of women, this expanding collective that resists the violence directed against them.” But also: “As women, we will not lose another life.” The movement is not based on a narrow idea of identity, but is a strong and intensifying coalition that draws support from women and trans people who are workers, who belong to unions and churches, who may or may not have any relation to universities.

The fierce collective opposition to the killing of women is paramount, but this is also violence against trans people, especially trans women, and “las travestis” (who do not always identify as trans). That is why it is sometimes referred to as a movement against “feminicidio” — all those who are feminized or regarded as feminine. This is important because it is not just that murder is committed on the basis of gender; violence against women is one way of establishing the femininity of the victim. The violence seeks to secure the class of women as killable, dispensable; it is an attempt to define the very existence of women’s lives as something decided by men, as a masculine prerogative.

The movement is equally a struggle for freedom and equality, and it struggles for the right to abortion, the right to equal pay and the struggle against neoliberal economics that is intensifying precarity, especially for women, the indigenous and the poor. The right to abortion is based on the right of every individual woman to assert freedom over her own body, but follows from the collective demands of women to be able to live their desires freely without state intervention and without the fear of violence, retribution and imprisonment.

The movement has distinguished itself from individualist modes of feminism that are based on personal liberty and the rights of the individual subject. That does not mean that individual histories and stories do not matter. They do, but forms of feminism that do not engage a critique of capitalism tend to reproduce individualism as a matter of course. Collectives are formed through a realization of a common social condition and a social bond, one that recognizes that what is happening to one life, whether it is violence, debt or subjection to patriarchal authority, is also happening for others. And though they may happen in different ways, the patterns are there, and so also are the grounds for solidarity.

In the United States, “#MeToo” has been very powerful in exposing the pervasive character of sexual harassment and assault across every kind of workplace. There is no way to shut our eyes to how long women have suffered with harassment, retaliation, and the loss of their careers — the loss of trust in those upon whom they often depend for work. But the “me” in #metoo is not the same as the collective we, and a collective is not just a sequence of the stories of individuals. The basis for solidarity, for collective action, requires that we depart from the presumption of individualism; in the United States, the tendency is to reaffirm that tenet of political liberalism at the expense of strong and enduring collective bonds. In Argentina, Ni Una Menos is in some ways taking up the ethical and political obligation of “Nunca Mas!” or “Never Again!” forged in the aftermath of the dictatorship. The destruction and disappearance of the lives of thousands of students and activists on the left has led to a sharp opposition to state censorship, repression and violence. The killing of women is equally horrific, very often aided and abetted by police and courts who fail to acknowledge the crime and by a government that refuses to assert the equal rights of women to live their lives in freedom and without the fear of death.

Yancy: The reasons for these two movements are linked to political and economic structures that marginalize and oppress women. Political and economic structures are inextricably linked to machismo, the toxic sense of male identity that translates into male entitlement to women’s bodies; indeed, tied into whether or not women live or die. Talk about the performative dimensions of machismo.

Butler: I am no longer sure what counts as performative, but my view is that one reason that men feel free to dispose of women’s life as they see fit is because they are bound to one another through a silent (or not-so-silent) pact of brotherhood. They look the other way; they give each other permission and grant each other impunity. In so many places, the violence done to women, including murder, are not even conceptualized as crimes. They are “the way of the world” or “acts of passion” and these phrases disclose deep-seated attitudes that have naturalized violence against women, that is, made it seem as if this violence is a natural or normal part of ordinary life. When feminist men break that pact of solidarity, they risk exclusion by some communities, and yet that kind of defection from the ranks is exactly what is needed.

In Barcelona, a well-meaning man told me he was not entitled to join in a feminist demonstration against violence. But I disagreed with him. Well, maybe I agree with him: participation is not an entitlement; it is an obligation. But men who join that important fight against violence against women and trans people need to follow the leadership of women. If they stand together against the lethal pact of brotherhood that permits, deflects and exonerates, they do it first and foremost by confronting other men, and by forming groups that reject violence and affirm radical equality. After all, when the lives of women and minorities of all kinds are taken, that is a sign that those lives are not treated as equally valuable. The struggle against violence and the struggle for equality are linked.

Yancy: In what ways does your new book on nonviolence speak to questions regarding the vulnerability of women?

Butler: The new book, “The Force of Non-Violence,” is concerned with women, for sure, but with all people who are considered to be more or less ungrievable. I work with the feminist idea of “relationality” in order to show not only how lives are interdependent, but also how our ethical obligations to sustain each other’s lives follow from that interdependency. The interdiction against violence is a way of asserting and honoring that bond based on the equal value of lives, but this is not an abstract or formal principle. We require each other to live and that is as true of familial or kinship ties as it is of transnational and global bonds. The critique of individualism has been an important component of both feminist and Marxist thought, and it now becomes urgent as we seek to understand ourselves as living creatures bound to human and nonhuman creatures, to entire systems and networks of life. The various threats of destruction can take the form of state violence, feminicidio, abandonment of migrants, global warming. We have to rethink the ties of life to know why we are obligated to oppose violence even when, or precisely when, hostilities escalate.

Yancy: In what ways does your discussion of nonviolence address our pervasive cultural practice of specifically male violence?

Butler: That is a good question. For me, violence is not male or masculine. I don’t think that it comes from the recesses of men or is built into a necessary definition of masculinity. We can talk about structures of masculine domination, or patriarchy, and in those cases it is the social structures and their histories that call to be dismantled. It is difficult to know how to understand individual acts of violence within social structures that encourage, permit and exonerate such acts. It may be that we are social creatures whose lives are lived out in social structures that we have some power to change. So I don’t think individual men can point to “social structures” as an excuse, i.e. “the social structure of masculine domination made me commit this act of violence.”

At the same time, it is all of our responsibility to ask ourselves how we are living out, reproducing or resisting these structures. So though change can happen at an individual level, restorative justice models tell us that individuals change in the context of communities and relationships, and that is how new structures of relating are built and older ones are dismantled. In turn, this means that ethics has to become more than an individual project of self-renewal, since lives are renewed in the company of others. Those relations are what sustain us and, as such, deserve our collective attention and commitment.

George Yancy is professor of philosophy at Emory University. His latest book is “Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly About Racism in America.”

Now in print: “Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments,” and “The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments,” with essays from the series, edited by Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley, published by Liveright Books.

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