In Good Company
A Review of an Article by Faheem Nusrat (3rd Space, July 6, 2025)
I was deeply touched by Faheem Nusrat’s recent piece, From This Side of the Railing, published on the website 3rd Space. Reflecting on a recent lecture titled Gender Phantasms and the New Authoritarian Times, Faheem weaves personal insight with Judith Butler’s latest work, Who’s Afraid of Gender?, to show how control over gender discourse has become a tool of authority—shaping what’s considered acceptable, or even legal, in public life.
“When you control how people understand the most basic categories of human existence, you control their capacity to respond to everything else.”
Faheem engages with Butler’s central argument: that the push to define and regulate gender isn’t just a debate about identity—it’s a mechanism of power. It defines who is and isn’t fully human, and who's version of reality is allowed to count.
“If you can make people police the boundaries of their own being, reject their own complexity, then you’ve already won. They’ll police everything else for you.”
As disturbing as that is, a ray of light emerges in the way Faheem shows how these conceptual overlays falter in the face of real human encounter. When we meet another person as they truly are, definitions can fall away.
He ends with a powerful invitation—to welcome those who interrupt our habits and certainties, who pierce our complacency with a different view:
“Who can hold their worldview lightly enough that a stranger’s perspective can nudge them—potentially leading to a transformed self?”
This is a piece well worth reading—even, perhaps especially, if it leaves you feeling a little uncomfortable.
Read it here: https://3rd-space.org/from-this-side-of-the-railing-refections-on-judith-butlers-gender-phantasm/
“When you control how people understand the most basic categories of human existence, you control their capacity to respond to everything else.”
Faheem engages with Butler’s central argument: that the push to define and regulate gender isn’t just a debate about identity—it’s a mechanism of power. It defines who is and isn’t fully human, and who's version of reality is allowed to count.
“If you can make people police the boundaries of their own being, reject their own complexity, then you’ve already won. They’ll police everything else for you.”
As disturbing as that is, a ray of light emerges in the way Faheem shows how these conceptual overlays falter in the face of real human encounter. When we meet another person as they truly are, definitions can fall away.
He ends with a powerful invitation—to welcome those who interrupt our habits and certainties, who pierce our complacency with a different view:
“Who can hold their worldview lightly enough that a stranger’s perspective can nudge them—potentially leading to a transformed self?”
This is a piece well worth reading—even, perhaps especially, if it leaves you feeling a little uncomfortable.
Read it here: https://3rd-space.org/from-this-side-of-the-railing-refections-on-judith-butlers-gender-phantasm/
