Judith Butler in The Guardian

@9toenails

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the conceptual penis hoax

We argued that climate change is “conceptually” caused by penises

Brilliant.

JB displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the gender critical position. And The Gruniad is paying her to spread disinformation. I don't know why I'm surprised by this any more, perhaps it's my natural optimism that sense will prevail over toxicity.

I don't think it's acceptable for an academic to write in this way, given that she appears to be critiquing something she hasn't bothered to investigate. The most charitable interpretation is that she is writing a book report without reading the book.

At this point, the lack of ability to engage with other opinions, whether deliberate or for some other reason, doesn't say anything good about Butler, or the people who decided to publish this piece, particularly given the call to action to anti-fascists.

I think this is why I feel a bit sceptical about the ‘tide is turning’ posts that show up at present. While I understand it feels that way in some respects, and I am greatly relieved we have the likes of d of e updated guidelines to point at with schools and EHRC clarifications and and Nolan investigates and so on, I also suspect the likes of JB heels in approach will also remain and still gain traction in ways that will still make it difficult for people to address the way gender ideology has infiltrated public institutions.

I agree, and this is the clash of worldviews at the heart of this.

On the one hand you have feminists and others operating with the perspective that we make a well evidenced case, we persuade, and reasonable people, whom we assume most are, will form a critical mass and the ship will right itself, to mix metaphors.

The trouble is Butler et al don't function that way. They have no motivation or desire to make a convincing case, they do not care about persuading. The methods used are propagandist, relying on confusion, emotional manipulation, coercion and intimidation. That's why none of her arguments have evolved, and why it's plain she hasn't read or listened to any opposing viewpoints. She doesn't think she needs to. It's something we do in our model, in order to make a better case. She doesn't seek to make a better case.

She (and others like her) seek to draw as many naive acolytes and disciples as possible who don't think deeply, because this is basically an intellectual version of a war of attrition.

We look at her facile, incompetent work and are unpersuaded and unimpressed. But she's not trying to persuade us. She is proselytising her Gender gospel to as many as will gullibly gulp down her mystical revelations.

I have read much of Judith Butler’s work (and sometimes have wished I had used the time I took to do so more fruitfully, but there you go). It has seemed to me – a view I have shared with students and colleagues – that her work, far from being difficult, is actually overly easy to produce. As Martha Nussbaum once pointed out, in Butler’s work, ‘… obscurity fills the void left by an absence of a real complexity of thought and argument. ’ (Reference below.)

This ease of production is one reason post-structuralist and postmodern bullshit generators proliferate as they do. And, as well as by such mindless bots, such bullshit has been (easily) produced and published by several real scholars with the explicit intent of showing it for what it is. Sokal and Bricmont’s Impostures Intellectuelles has a claim to precedence in this genre; or here, a more recent example (Boghossian and Lindsay), aimed at specifically Butlerian shit: conceptual penis hoax.

Reading this latest Guardian article, it strikes me there are two possibilities concerning Butler herself:

1. She understands the stuff she writes is bullshit, but keeps doing it as a career. This amounts to a serious – because in this case dangerous – example of trahison des clercs ; it is very sad if so.

1. She really does not understand how awful is the stuff she writes. This, if true, would entail she is very stupid, despite her wide postmodern/post-structuralist vocabulary; but as I said above, writing this bullshit is easy for anyone – even a mindless bot – to do.

Generally I have inclined to (1); Butler has something of a cynical air about her. But in the light of some of her recent outpourings, (2) begins to look more and more plausible. (Of course it is possible to be stupid and cynical.)

Either way, we should not take such bullshit seriously. The Guardian should be ashamed to publish it unedited and without commentary.

[For a more measured putdown of Butler in general, look at Martha Nussbaum’s (1999) The Professor of Parody, see Professor of Parody. Nussbaum (a real philosopher, unlike Butler), finishes by saying, ‘Judith Butler’s hip quietism …collaborates with evil. Feminism demands more and women deserve better.’]

I hadn't made it to the end before. Just saw this:

As a fascist trend, the anti-gender movement supports ever strengthening forms of authoritarianism. [...] It threatens violence against those, including migrants, who have become cast as demonic forces and whose suppression or expulsion promises to restore a national order under duress.

Gender critical feminism supports violence against migrants?!

I know, it's the TRA trick of conflating feminism with fascism. But I've never seen it taken this far.

Can’t even be arsed to read it. Scanned and it’s gobbledegook

It is not easy to fully reconstruct the arguments used by the anti-gender ideology movement because they do not hold themselves to standards of consistency or coherence.

You have to almost admire the audacity of this, particularly as she then says that her own ideas are so clever they can't be expressed in a way that mere mortals understand.

We have all noted, Judy, that you don't address the specific arguments made by Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce, both of whom have written books which are logical, consistent and use language that is crystal clear.

Interestingly, at no point does she address what "gender ideology" (a term I have never heard) means or how it is applies.

'Gender ideology' is used on here to mean the ideology behind the idea that we all have a gender identity.

Some right wingers use 'gender ideology' to mean anything to do with feminism, gay rights and trans rights.

www.newstatesman.com/world/2019/09/why-far-right-obsessed-gender-ideology

Butler is conflating these two meanings to imply that when we say 'gender ideology', we are using it with the far right meaning, making us anti gay rights and anti women.

I read Butler's piece and understood it, regrettably. It is full of logical fallacies. Interestingly, at no point does she address what "gender ideology" (a term I have never heard) means or how it is applies. She cherry picks examples to prove her point and engages in ad hominem attacks.

I can’t see how JB, given her ‘I’m the expert and you all aren’t smart enough to understand’ ego, will ever be able to find a way back from her stance and understand rational arguments about the real impact of gender ideology. She will be arguing her stance until the grave. And that quixotic megalomania tends to pull followers.

Quite. She's functioning, front and centre, as a c**t leader at this point. That's an article for the faithful. That's why it ends with that bizarre rallying cry.

I think if she is claiming gender as a proxy for free and equal society, that does a disservice to the many, many people who have fought for the freedoms we hold dear (and is myopic to the ways in which those freedoms are threatened). It also does not seem to recognise that with freedom comes responsibility and it is possible to hold things in tension, whilst not letting go of the foundations of freedom (indeed, freedom recognises and accepts dissent).

I think one of the worrying things about this piece from JB is that there is no way back for her.

People who didn’t understand the harm of gender ideology can say fuck I didn’t get that part and move on to understanding more. People who didn’t know enough about it can say fuck there’s a lot more to this than I realised. People who were young and clamped on to the trend can grow up and think shit the gc women knew what they were talking about. Politicians can reevaluate and admit they were listening to the wrong groups in an attempt to be inclusive and didn’t grasp the full implications for other groups. Organisations can say they had their hands tied by sw et al & their members/employees were afraid for their jobs. Parents can realise that it’s very different when your own children are teens and victims of this ideology, it’s no longer some hypothetical thing that might happen to other people.

Lots and lots of people can easily move towards understanding the harm of gender ideology without loosing face, without being horrified at how they weren’t in fact on the ‘right side of history’, without that realisation dismantling their sense of self.

I can’t see how JB, given her ‘I’m the expert and you all aren’t smart enough to understand’ ego, will ever be able to find a way back from her stance and understand rational arguments about the real impact of gender ideology. She will be arguing her stance until the grave. And that quixotic megalomania tends to pull followers.

A lot of protest and defence (including insulting people who are religious, traditional, working class etc).

The arrogance of suggesting people are not educated enough to understand her theoretical ideas is so insulting and evidences the fragility of Butler's arguments. The philosophical arguments that underpin Butler's writing are interesting but not workable in society. You cannot deny biology. That is the entirety of the problem.

This article is much more a return to her normal, incoherent style. This paragraph, that others have picked out, is pure projection, in my opinion.

It is not easy to fully reconstruct the arguments used by the anti-gender ideology movement because they do not hold themselves to standards of consistency or coherence.

Perhaps that links to the earlier essay, of course. It seems to me, she either isn’t bright enough to understand the gender critical position, or simply has such a closed mind that she is unable to hear it.

There is a lot going on in that article and it makes for interesting reading.

I suppose my first point is what gender is being taken to mean here, and that may be why she has it in inverted commas. But more broadly, I think there is something in what she says about a concept becoming many things to many people, whether they are arguing for or against it.

I mean, if you took apart the layers of her argument and the ways different groups are using the concept of gender, it would lack consistency - therefore it is not surprising that she says ‘anti-gender’ activism lacks consistency. There are many layers of what is going on here.

I have long thought there are at least five different ways people use the word gender - legal gender which can be changed, gender identity which is seen as internal to the individual, as a synonym for biological sex, as a way of coding masculine and feminine, and as a way of describing the power hierarchies which operate along sexed based lines. These are distinct but not mutually exclusive and often overlap. So the very foundations of discourse about gender are confusing, and this lends it to being used by groups in contradictory ways, for or against. (I just realised she is possibly using gender in another way, as the force which has pushed against the power hierarchies which operate along sex-based lines (whereas I would have called that feminism and gay right’s activism)).

But in her argument, it seems to me that gender has also almost become a proxy for post-colonial (neo?)liberal (or libertarian?) democracy, if that makes sense. Individual freedoms and autonomy have become bound up with the concept of gender, and that is why any attempt to put boundaries around what is appropriate are seen as fascist or authoritarian in her argument. (To accept this, you also have to accept that gay and women’s rights have also been won and upheld through ‘gender’ and not activism). But then it also makes sense why she argues that ‘gender critical’ people should pull together with trans, non-binary or gender queer people to uphold these freedoms against authoritarian governments who threaten individual freedoms and autonomy for all minority groups, including women.

That is how I understand what she is saying.

The only thing that I take from that article is that DAVRO is still going strong and only a moron would believe in her bs

Very badly written and thought through, ranty and intellectually dishonest.

And it goes on, and on, and on, crying out for a sub editor all the while. I don't know how on earth it was published except maybe to appease a certain readership.

Can you imagine if someone like Sonia Sodha, Susanna Rustin or Hadley Freeman submitted something that absurd from a GC perspective?

It's just baffling nonsense. She's trying to sound very intelligent whilst saying next to nothing and the people who agree with her stance are just all "Oh yes, yes, she's right you know, absolutely" on twitter when you know they don't understand it either. How on earth did she work out that GC feminists want to remove protections for women? I don't understand why UK Guardian is letting US Guardian publish such rubbish.

Do writers not have to use actual quotes etc when they refer to the opinions they’re opposing or labelling as transphobes? It was all generalising and probables with no actual evidence!

Urgh, I couldn't make sense of "that" - all the words that are "in inverted commas" are just too "irritating". Like croutons in the "word salad".