In "Who's Afraid of Gender?" (2024), Judith Butler wonders if "[a]gainst the passion for authoriarianism we could perhaps pose another desire, the one that wants freedom and equality passionately enough to stay in the struggle." This echoes Adrienne Rich's "Twenty-One Love Poems", poem VII ("The Dream of a Common Language", 1978): "And how have I used rivers, how have I used wars / to escape writing of the worst thing of all— / not the crimes of others, not even our own death, / but thefailure to want our own freedom passionately enough / so that blighted elms, sick rivers, massacres would seem / mere emblems of that desecration of ourselves?" (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 5 August 2025)