Judith Butler defends Genderism in New Statesman, and Jane Clare Jones critiques it

I think Butler saw the direction of travel and wanted to make sure there was no threat to her job security/speaking invitations.

The comparison with Peterson is unfair to Peterson. Peterson's job was on the line. He stuck to his principles. The unexpected bonus for him is he doesn't need his university now.

Yes exactly, Floral.

Yes, I was referencing the colour blind stuff.

This whole thing reads like an academic version of a toddler covering their eyes and believing you can no longer see them. It's just not cute and it's hard to escape the conclusion that it's actually maliciously mendacious.

The funny thing is that race actually is a social construct. But yes, I know exactly what you mean, pretending to be 'colour blind' is supremely unhelpful.

Quite. You can't end racism by pretending that people of colour don't actually physically exist and have been oppressed because of their inner sense of self.

Saying you don't understand Butler is a bit self-undermining- it sort of invites readers to dismiss your subsequent arguments.

I do understand Butler, or what she is trying to say, most of the time anyway. I just think she writes very badly and I suspect that this is a deliberate tactic on her part - or even if it isn't, I suspect that it greatly contributes to the reverence in which she is held. I don't think everything she writes is nonsense. She is of course correct that religions have very damaging views on sex and gender.

The main sticking point is that however much we might wish it to be so, sex is not a social construct for humans any more than it is for badgers or gerbils. We can't deal with sexism by taking this route. It's never ever going to work because sex-based oppression is, well, sex-based. Human beings actually are a sexually dimorphic species and we can't change sex and that is something we have to accept. We can't theorise our way out of this one.

As a child of the 70s, I remember being angry and resentfu missing out on all that let it all hang out sixties hippyshit. Where was my free love?

Now I think a lot of people have been taught postmoderism badly and lack the grounding in basic concepts of objectivity vs subjectivity that makes critical thinking possible.

So much jazz hands.

And so much bourgeois.

And cravenly courting patriarchy itself, too. The thinking appears to be 'attempt to convince the overlords that women and men menstruate, and then they might think that as men are struggling too, they should change the system.'

It's a line of thinking that doesn't acknowledge male power in a patriarchal system, but still absolutely relies upon it to grant permission.

How many times have you heard people saying 'if men had period pains we'd have the meds to deal effectively with it by now'?

But they don't. Because they physically can't. So it's not an issue for men. You do have a blind spot with this, don't you?

It's like renaming mosquitos "otherbees" and then declaring that you've solved the problem of malaria.

You have the best analogies AAK exactly.

If 'people who menstruate' etc can be women or men (flame me!) it takes the sexist imperative out of the equation.

But they can't, can they? Changing a label doesn't change reality. It just means, as the "Women's" March illustrated so beautifully at the weekend, that "menstruator" is used as a lazy "inclusive" shorthand for "woman". They said that 23 menstruators were in parliament in 1973. They have no way of knowing which women menstruated and I believe some were included in that who definitely couldn't have due to age,

Um ... consequences..

Yes Bernard, and back in the nineties I believed all that. After all most of my female friends were better paid than our male peers, what were all those sour faced women complaining about?

And then we inevitably started to procreate because that is what humans do, and it became clear that growing another human in your body is rather more complicated than spreading your seed.

Sex has onsequences.

it feels linked to the 90's ladette thing, where we were all supposed to pretend that we like getting shitfaced and sleeping around. I mean if women are performing toxic masculinity too then it's not a problem anymore right?

It's like arguing social inequality with the etiquette administrator of Versailles. Oblivious.

I mean, if you want to make jazz hands at oppressive systems then have at it, but be aware that the system doesn't give a shit.

And be aware that you're a bourgeois idiot whose jazz hands are fucking over the women you can't name stuck at the bottom of every pile - in refuges, prisons, needing care, doing low level service jobs.

It's like renaming mosquitos "otherbees" and then declaring that you've solved the problem of malaria.

If 'people who menstruate' etc can be women or men (flame me!) it takes the sexist imperative out of the equation.

No it doesn’t. It just allows discrimination against people who menstruate.

Women of child bearing age don’t suffer discrimination because employers hate ‘feminine’ people. Employers discriminate because they want to avoid the costs of maternity leave and they can identify sex.

It's like renaming mosquitos "otherbees" and then declaring that you've solved the problem of malaria.

rely on a biological sex binary to oppress women.

There is a biological sex binary though. You might not like it but you can’t avoid it. If society doesn’t actively accommodate the differences between men and woman so that women can participate on equal terms with men women are excluded.

But everyone knows that people who menstruate are female, regardless of whether we call them women or softshygentleunicorns, and thus pissing around with terminology does nothing to prevent or address discrimination.

I mean, if you want to make jazz hands at oppressive systems then have at it, but be aware that the system doesn't give a shit.

One of the things Butler is suggesting is that understanding gender as a social construct can serve to dismantle the systems which rely on a biological sex binary to oppress women.

One good example is: we menstruate. We lose months of career time dealing with this. And yet the fields of medicine and technology haven't bern funded or focussed on resolving our monthly pain and discomfort. This is sexist. How many times have you heard people saying 'if men had period pains we'd have the meds to deal effectively with it by now'?

You could apply this to smear test discomfort, breastfeeding problems, anorgasmia, contraception side effects, management of birth, paid parental leave, wages for housework, pay & conditions, etc etc etc.

If 'people who menstruate' etc can be women or men (flame me!) it takes the sexist imperative out of the equation.

She's basically calling contemporary GC feminists Serena Joys

No, she isn't.

She's defending a movement criticised for erasing women by, you guessed it, erasing GC feminists. If she doesn't address their critique, she can pretend it doesn't exist.

Genderists believe gender is innate and bodies/sexed social roles should be altered to fit a state of mind (in the real world, we like to call this personality). Catholics and Butler's other targets in this article believe gender is innate and a state of mind (in the real world, we like to call this personality) should be altered to fit a sexed body.

GC feminists believe any state of mind can and should be able to inhabit any sexed body.

The two former ideologies are prima facie regressive. The latter is progressive. None of this is difficult.

Others have picked up on the 'religious system' comment, which is so back to front I'm smiling. But I think this is worth comment, too.

She's basically calling contemporary GC feminists Serena Joys.

Yes, I'm sure she is, which is absolutely astounding considering that in the Handmaids Tale, the oppression of women is not based on their lack of freedom to define themselves. It's based on their biology.

The religious aspect of this issue is people believing in invisible gendered souls that can find themselves in any body at all, and the religious control aspect is the movement which campaigns for medical surgical intervention on non conforming children, access to sex specific space for certain men to validate their 'female soul' with cries of bigot to objections, and language manipulation so that women are prevented from speaking about their oppression.

If anyone is Serena Joy in this scenario, it's Butler.