Writers and gender theory

Terfmore

While I was looking for the stuff posted above I came across Jensen discussing Queer Theory with Sheila Jeffreys, it's also long but SJ is great. I have started to read Unpacking Queer Theory by her and this seems to be a good introduction to it.

Enjoy the fresh air!

"She said that I do have a gender; my gender is female because I wear skirts and makeup."

Your sister is an academic? Sorry, but she's a bit thick. 'Female' is not a gender, it is a sex. 'Feminine' is the gender she was thinking of.

Sorry to be so pedantic, but if this is the level of expertise your sister has in her subject ("My sister, an academic who has lectured gender theory") then heaven help her poor students.

Thankyou, I wanted to look at his references.

Focault did indeed say the age of consent should be abolished. I read his argument (admittedly on wikipedia) and can see where he's coming from. But then it all gets too weird. What a stupid stupid man.

I can't find Gayle Rubin's justification of paedophilia that he talks about. (I don't want to look too hard)

Pat Clivia - what a creep!!

I've yet to find Judith Butler's reference to incest but I can imagine it. She seems to think its all a fun game without consequence.

I can see why "anti intellectual" has become popular.

I'll watch the interview in a while. I'm off to my allotment for some fresh air and have a think!

If course you can refuse the female gender. But society will probably still judge everything you do through a lens of gender conformity/non-conformity. So in that sense it is inescapable.

I have no clue where your sister stands on it - if she is a women’s studies lecturer you would hope her point of view would be a bit more nuanced and perhaps she is just expressing herself badly. Or maybe she is a bit thick. You are probably the best judge of that.

Terfmore

Strangely I was just looking at the clip I think you're referencing the other day, link below

Derrick Jensen also did an interesting interview with Susan Cox about queer theory.

Derrick Jensen of Deep Green Resistance l? He's not a fan of queer theory.

I have read some of her stuff and the excellent Nussbaum piece.
We had to do a queer theory module when I did my social work degree. It was absolute bollocks, childish nonsense.

There is a clip on you tube that I've seen of an American academic who mentions Butler as an advocate of incest. I can't remember his name but I think Jensen or Jenner? Does anyone know?

I've found Judith Butler . Might give it another go one day.

This might interest you - Unpacking Queer Politics by Sheila Jeffreys is available as a free download on RadFem archive.

Emma I bet even if you read Judith Butler your sister wouldn't debate gender with you. She set JB precisely because JB is difficult to read and so you probably won't read her and if you do she can tell you that you don't understand JB. Think how difficult her life as an academic would be if she started questioning gender ideology. Obviously shes got the qualifications to correctly understand the matter. You on the other hand listen to those silly mumsies DM reading types on MN. Maybe you even want to refer to rl and your own experience. The nerve.

I think Butler's thought is often oversimplified or misrepresented, and that's a shame because it's worth engaging with. But it's true that she's quite difficult to read - I think if you can get to the end of a book you'll have a better idea if what she was saying at the beginning.

Bear in mind as well that she's much more interested how gender is performed by lesbians than by trans women (and now I'm oversimplifying).

But yes, do read Butler. Even if you don't like it, you'll have a clearer picture of how some of the debates about gender work. Her thought has been enormously influential. And as Sashkin says above, she's the opposite of a gender essentialist.

Op - I’m pretty sure your sister will be hounded out of her job if she dares to breathe a common sense word on the subject. Universities are so deep in the kool aid that you have to be extremely careful if you don’t want formal complaints made about you by students.

And no she isn’t contradicting herself - she distinguished between gender presentation (basically people should be able to present however they want, free from societal expectations) and biological sex (society maps one into the other, but shouldn’t). But as I say, she does have to state that position with a lot of caveats to avoid being accused of being a TERF.

Oh I love Judith Butler. She’s the opposite of a gender essentialist - she is all about gender being a social construct rather than anything innate, and that people should find their own relationship with their gender presentation (ie if you are a woman and want to wear trousers and work as a bricklayer, that does not make you any less female and it is only society that tells you otherwise).

She has had to tread a very narrow tightrope to avoid being accused of TERFism (because if gender is a social construct, how can trans women possibly have ladybrains?) She still works in a US university, which may explain some of her more cagey trans-inclusive comments recently. But she certainly doesn’t say that you are only a woman because you wear a skirt. More that you only wear a skirt because that is how we signal womanhood in our society.

www.denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm

Harsh, but probably deserved.

Is it just me or is she contradicting herself?

No , not just you- she is -insofar as anyone can make any sense of what she is on about.

Materialist
Thanks for the link, fab read.
Mouthtrousers
Yes absolutely, anyone saying that female biology doesn’t matter CLEARLY never had period pain/pregnancy scare/fertility issues/pregnancy/miscarriages/ breastfeeding/the fucking menopause
That shit is real

The notion of biological sex. I had this said to me by a trans identified male. My female biology is an opinion. The fact is a penis is female, that is not a notion. It's not only shite, people have been brainwashed into believing this nonsense.

I've just been out sailing with the female admiral of our yacht club, she was crippled with period pain. We all had exactly the same sailing gear on, ten men and women, for four days. Anyone telling me that she is anything but a competent female in pain due to her biology is just naive to the point of idiocy.

Agree re Judith Butler. There are less turgid reads I feel.

For someone who has supposedly lectured on 'gender theory' however, your sister's analysis seems very shallow
^^
This
I used to lecture on gender theory and I can quite categorically state that i did not once inform my students that they were the female gender because they wore skirts and makeup. How ridiculous.

They seem to think that clothing makes the man but for some reason (misogyny) it does not make the woman.

I suggest you read some reviews of Butlers word salad and then read Dworkin instead. Or Jeffreys or Spender.

Judith Butler’s main point is that gender is performative. It’s not a performance by the individual but gender is performed by society through the individual. Understanding this means that the individual can then choose their own relationship with gender and that is where agency and freedom comes in. Does that make any sense?

Ok according to this dumbed-down video, Butler accepts that gender is a social stereotype and that we'd be better off rejecting it. It seems to me that she's not arguing for TRA ideology (e.g. if you subscribe to female stereotypes then you're a woman).

But on the Trans Advocate site she argues 'No matter whether one feels one’s gendered and sexed reality to be firmly fixed or less so, every person should have the right to determine the legal and linguistic terms of their embodied lives'. So she thinks that gender identity is a choice, and for instance a male can become female if he acts according to female gender stereotypes.

Is it just me or is she contradicting herself?