Judith Butler interview

Just checked the Guardian comments on Twitter. It's overwhelmingly sceptical or negative. Why aren't they listening to that? Is click-bait trolling women too irresistible maybe?

I'm reasonably intelligent and am capable of understanding difficult stuff but when I read JB's:

The anti-gender ideology movement, a global movement, insists that sex is biological and real, or that sex is divinely ordained, and that gender is a destructive fiction, taking down both “man” and “civilization” and “God”. Anti-gender politics have been bolstered by the Vatican and the more conservative evangelical and apostolic churches on several continents, but also by neoliberals in France and elsewhere who need the normative family to absorb the decimation of social welfare.

I find it so full of tricks, strawmen, and misleading terminology that it doesn't really say anything, it's such a mess it's effectively meaningless. Beyond word soup signifying a cat's bum mouth, that is.

What edits did the Guardian make? It says at the end -

This article was edited on 7 September 2021 to reflect developments which occurred after the interview took place

That's today, so did they get a lot of complaints or something?

Not criticising you RedYellowPink, just responding to some of the philosophical points in your excellent translation.

The scientific method does question.  It is a constant cycle of questioning and revision of knowledge and has been since the enlightenment.  

Since Postmodernism is the dominant narrative now, it IS the "power" in society, it should be turning that finely honed perception on itself round about now.

Society is structured around sex because it is the prime driver of any species, in a way that eye colour never will. Unless blue and brown eyes have some function in gene propogation.

It seems that "Western Knowledge" is not challenged in areas that don't threaten the power of the people getting power and position by decrying it. It also presupposes that other humans have developed in any other way, which they have not in any significant way.

It also ignores the fact that all concepts have to at some point be anchored to something universal. Physics, maths, biology, evolution.

Any biological dimorphism we have as a species is BECAUSE of the sex binary. The binary drives specialisation of reproductive role. Evolution in action.

The power that one sex as a group has over the other sex as a group exists in populations that are non verbal. Primates, Wolf packs because that is what propagates genes.

Non western societies reach the same mathematical solutions and scientific understandings given the same set of variables.

For all the inequality, we are still living in the least violent, healthiest, wealthiest time ever known. I suspect this is how it stalls. Human progress sidelined by identity politics dissapearing up its own spoilt , second rate philosophical arse.

I care less about the environment these days, I don't think we really deserve to persist as a species. Postmodernism makes me feel nihilistic.

Clarity is a dominant western concept. JB is queering it.

Philosophy should be of use to ordinary people. It will always escape from its domain.

It’s entirely unclear who the fascists are, which would be a starting point in her making a sensible argument.

Philosophy is full of weird ideas to ponder.

Nihilism anyone? Just off the top of my head I'm no philosopher!

The problem with this is it's escape from that domain.

Let's be blunt about this. It's just bollocks from beginning to end. It's like someone advocating astrology but dressed up in fancy language. I don't have any patience with it and find it depressing that any self-respecting human being does. Nobody actually believes that biological sex isn't important. I don't suppose she even believes it herself. She's just made a living for so long out of peddling gender woo that she feels obliged to continue with it.

Society could, just as equally, have been structured around humans with blue vs brown eyes but it isn't because we dont have a whole field of knowledge and language around these two categories, to the same extent that we do biological sex

@Redyellowpink, did she actually say that, or is that an example of the sort of thing she might have said?

'Judith Pamela Butler[2] (born February 24, 1956) is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory,[3] and literary theory.[4] In 1993, Butler began teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, where they have served, beginning in 1998, as the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory. They are also the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School.[5]'

Went to Yale.
Around for years.
Groundbreaking and very interesting ideas which as a philosopher is kind of the thing.

I focus my ire on the MRAs, misogynists, govt depts etc who are and having been pushing this in real life, as it were.

JB wiki

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler

I read the thing and as usual from JB it's word salad, unrelated points being linked because why not.

The main things for me in that piece are:

The idea (fact) that biological sex is in any way important in humans is wrong oppressive and bad.

Anyone who thinks that biological sex us relevant to anything at all is either a religious fundamentalist, t*RF or some other sort of baddy.

Strangely the fact that 99.9999% of the world knows exactly how important sex is and what it means for how people are treated/ expected to behave is... As usual not even slightly alluded to. The ONLY people who are the worst of the worse for saying sex matters are t*rfs aka women.

It's very interesting that.

Anyway. There you have it from one of the most famous long term proponents of this philosopher.

And JB is a philosopher. As such it's their job to think about all sorts of things. In the end it's a highly intellectual and academic discipline that is not to do with being grounded in the day to day.

So her theories and arguments. Perfectly more than fine as a point for consideration, debate. To provoke questions and challenge attitudes etc.

The fact that what should have been interesting thought experiments and challenging concepts got consumed by the criminal justice system etc.

Well that's another question entirely. It wasn't her having behind closed doors meetings with govt etc. Or somehow getting the department of health to tell NHS to have single gender wards but LIE to the public about it bloody years and years ago.

God, I hate my phone. Let's try again....get bollocked for lack of clarity if you spew word salad...

It's amazing how in most of academia you get bollocked for a lack of clarity of spew word salad everywhere. Yet somehow in social science it's normal.

I can't get over the thinly veiled 'all three plebs are too thick to understand my books'. I know I am far from thick, and I just can't be bothered to sit there unravelling bollocks. I did it quite enough when I was studying, and used to reduce a side and a half to three sentences.

Not read the whole thread but wanted to comment before forgot what I was going to say!

JB is a major and long term proponent of queer theory. Her work and publications etc have been fundamental to the whole concept of gender > sex.

JB and acolytes have no difficulty observing such cases because [I shall leave them to fill the credibility gap with something appropriate and a black hole density of evidence].

Someone, anyone, pray, do tell me (genuinely interested here!), where precisely to draw the line between a philosophical take on "reality happens because you think it" and New Age bullshit like the "Law of Attraction", which, basically makes the same claims

The philosophical take isn't so much 'reality happens becuase you think it'...but more language, discourses and accepted knowledges (e.g. things we take to be facts without questioning them) are the main sources of 'power' in society....so much so that labelling and classification actually creates things and objects by defining them and making them seem significant. For example, Butler's argument would be that the two categories of biological sex only exist -and are only seen as meaningful- because of the bulk of scientific knowledge and language that exists to describe and demarcate them. Society could, just as equally, have been structured around humans with blue vs brown eyes but it isn't because we dont have a whole field of knowledge and language around these two categories, to the same extent that we do biological sex. She would also argue that the reason knowledge exists around biological sex is to enforce compulsory heterosexuality and by doing so uphold the patriarchy.

This is the person who signed both the petition for and the petition against the antisemitic Bristol Uni lecturer last year, so basic understanding of issues and attention to detail obviously not her thing anymore, if they ever were.

And I'll take no lectures about equality or solidarity from someone who, when asked to come and speak at an academic event in the UK (budget fuck all, as usual with these things) demanded both a first class plane ticket and that the organisation pay for her dogs to be kennelled.

And right now there's an actual American far right terrorist in the process of self-IDing into a lighter sentence and a women's prison.

This kind of thinking, if the far right are interested in a cause we have to back away from it, led those with responsibility in Rochdale and other places to see that a scandal would attract the far right and as a result inaction and continuing to let children get gang raped was the best course.
Same with the Guardian's lack of reporting on the Cologne NYE rapes.

It's a childish polarisation that means some grim real life consequences are acceptable so the party line isn't challenged.

This kind of thinking, if the far right are interested in a cause we have to back away from it, led those with responsibility in Rochdale and other places to see that a scandal would attract the far right and as a result inaction and continuing to let children get gang raped was the best course.

As I recall it the Guardian weren't overly concerned about that outcome either.