Judith Butler in The New Statesman

That reference to "habitus" gave me a flashback to all the stuff by Bourdieu that I've done my best to forget, Clangers!

Of course, even the "pink is for girls, blue is for boys" is a reversal of the situation a century or so ago. As Ben Goldacre noted in The Guardian back in 2007:

"The Sunday Sentinel in 1914 told American mothers: "If you like the colour note on the little one's garments, use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention." Some sources suggest it wasn't until the 1940s that the modern gender associations of girly pink became universally accepted. Pink is, therefore, perhaps not biologically girly. Boys who were raised in pink frilly dresses went down mines and fought in the second world war. Clothing conventions change over time."

Indeed they do!

www.theguardian.com/science/2007/aug/25/genderissues

There’s also invariably (as in many religious traditions) a desire to naturalise the cultural as something innate. It makes no sense to speak of an “innate gender identity” as a “psychological phenomenon” when all of those terms have varied wildly across epochs and cultures (remember too that “psychology” didn’t exist before the 1880s, and earlier concepts of the interior self were often radically different to our current models of it).

In the early modern period, women were considered under the irrational or animalistic sway of their feelings, and men were thought of as the rational ones. A century and a half later, in the eighteenth century, it was only men who were considered capable of the finest emotion and sentiment, and women were base, stoic and subject to lesser and coarser feelings.

In the medieval period, it was women who were considered more animalistic and sexual, and not naturally fitted to the highest forms of love, honour and chastity, as men were. In the nineteenth century it was the exact opposite.

Plenty of traits considered “feminine” today were anathema to earlier ideas of femininity, and the same for “masculinity”. This is hugely culturally variable too: you’ll find different cultural constructions of masculine traits in, for example, India or Mongolia, compared to in the Anglophone West. (Yet despite this, somehow, “uterus havers” end up usually worst off, whatever the cultural and historical variances used to justify this. Funny, that.)

It always amazes me how reductive and historically short sighted gender ideologists are. They inevitably need to learn a bit more about a whole range of culture and history and to understand how the ways people experience the world are fundamentally shaped by cultural assumptions and codes that we internalise as “within” us even though they are demonstrably not.

(There’s actually a name for this in sociology which is habitus — the process by which we naturalise cultural expectations as internal to us, so much that we cease to notice them and believe they are natural and innate rather than artificial and socially produced.)

This strange religion where people can believe in Transubstantiation without believing in God.

A religion which has its dogma , sin and guilt but lacks any compassion or redemption.

Where Confession doesn't lead to Communion , Holy or otherwise, but only to banishment.

I also think gender ideology is more of a religion than anything else. It's a belief in something not proven to actually exist, and a desire to structure society around that thing, regardless of the dissenting views of other people. It's just the new religion for people who think they're too intelligent to believe in God, but still need something to cling to.

Yes, exactly.

In other words, I think I'd say the US is a country at war with itself, with the right wing misogynists on one side and the left wing misogynists on the other side, and everyone caught in the crossfire.

Maybe the US is better thought of as two countries, one christian fundamentalist country, and one more closely aligned with western liberal values?

Not sure about this. There are many things being described as liberal and progressive which are nothing of the kind, gender ideology being the most obvious example. You must believe women are defined by stereotypes rather than by their biology, and if you disagree, you are a hateful bigot who should be shunned by polite society.

Both the religious conservatives and the "liberal progressives" accept the legitimacy of gender roles. It's just that the religious conservatives think those gender roles should be inextricably tied to biological sex, whereas the "liberal progressives" don't.

I also think gender ideology is more of a religion than anything else. It's a belief in something not proven to actually exist, and a desire to structure society around that thing, regardless of the dissenting views of other people. It's just the new religion for people who think they're too intelligent to believe in God, but still need something to cling to.

Maybe the US is better thought of as two countries, one christian fundamentalist country, and one more closely aligned with western liberal values?

Maybe. Or maybe it's that the 'United' states ... aren't?

Maybe the US is better thought of as two countries, one christian fundamentalist country, and one more closely aligned with western liberal values?

People who live in the US, what do you anticipate will happen in areas where the 2 co-exist? E.g., Christianity seems to be large-scale in New York, especially (but not only) from the African diaspora (I don't know where this sits on the spectrum of Christianity, either more left or right in US terms). Yet, New York seems strongly aligned with western liberal values.

My impression is that the metroplexes of the future (built out from current huge cities/metropoles) will have diverse populations as they currently do. Within these, there will be substantial faith communities that may well reflect the faith in people's country of origin or family tradition. I've seen estimates that there will be 16 metroplexes. If that is accurate, will there be a rump of states with the non-metroplex population that is governed by a range of faiths?

Will faiths in metroplex and non-metroplex areas share a theology but they will live very differently and in a way that reflects local culture?

Yes @WeeBisom very well summed up. A language game indeed. And Butler has the biggest Scrabble bag in California.

For all the Butler supporters, I'd like to point out that Butler's brand of postmodernism feminism does NOTHING to dismantle white male dominance, and NOTHING to actually combat the roll-back of abortion rights we see in the USA. If you read 'Gender Trouble', she is adamant that the project of feminism is not, and cannot be, liberation of women from male oppression because the very concept of 'woman' is a power structure which is just as illegitimate as male power. So what is feminism, according to Butler? Well, it then becomes a matter of constantly defining, debating and forever 'deferring' the meaning of the term 'woman' and then 'subverting' and 'playing with' that concept. In short, feminism becomes nothing more than a language game. Butler is adamant that there cannot be real political change, we can't actually DO anything to overthrow patriarchy so the best we can do is 'queer things up' a bit and poke our tongues out at those in power while skirting around the edges (curiously, if you read her other works she does not advise this strategy for black people or Palestinians. It seems they get to be straightforwardly liberated). So it is a complete red herring to say 'if you don't support Butler you must support right wing white christian men.' I don't support either, and in fact think they are mutually supporting. Butler's lack of teeth and claws, her political and academic vacuity, has enabled the right wing backlash against feminism to succeed beyond their wildest dreams.

She's a woman who pretends not to be a woman because she thinks a woman is someone who conforms to feminine stereotypes and she's too cool for that.

I'm not sure I would describe her thinking as "forward", and I don't think she has much to teach others about feminism.

I hope I'm too pessimistic about the time frame, too. Still, the US political situation is so much more polarised than the UK one, and the alt right and the alt left are both awful (the alt right is much more awful but the alt left is also misogynistic in its woke clothing), yet they are important as the bases of voters in a two-party system.

I have found no obvious way to break that pattern.

Is it to do with high heels and make-up and a tinkling laugh and a cute little head tilt? If not, I don't know. It's a mystery.

Oh and it might be worth having taking a look at the article linked to that original one mentioned. It’s by Butler‘s response to JKR.

I am a feminist who has a sense of humour & I also know how ridiculous & pretentious Butler is.

I can't remember exactly which states but there are Republican states which have longer time limits, even post R v W, than several European countries.

This is very clear analysis of the current position in each state.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2022/jun/28/tracking-where-abortion-laws-stand-in-every-state

when the current tax on women passes, and I no longer have to fund court cases to establish the bleeding obvious, I'm hoping to be able to send some small financial support to the cause of abortion rights in the US.

I'm assuming the need will be two fold - on the ground support to enable women to access abortions, and campaign funding. it's good to talk about it to try to get a picture of what's likely to be most effective, and therefore the best place to donate

Agree with all of this.

It is gutting to watch this unfolding shit-show from across the pond though, unable to do anything at all.

First, though, they really need to separate the abortion rights arguments from the rest of the Left-wing ideologies, as it's really not helping.

Yes. If you want buy-in from the moderate Republican voters who did support abortion rights on grounds of civil rights and autonomy of the individual, you need an old-fashioned feminist approach to women’s rights — you can’t be going about with the “birthing bodies” / “pregnant persons” nonsense. Who you need support from are the moderate voters, including well-off middle class American men and women who don’t like the idea of anyone, including fundamentalist churches, being able to tell their daughters what to do with their bodies.

You might not like that if you’re a blue-haired ideological gender enthusiast, but it’s essential to get abortion rights back in the frame. And the Democrats are, sadly, currently in thrall to this nonsense instead of building a public consensus based on material reality and women’s rights. The current American left will just let this one go by because men’s rights are more important to them.

Yes, I think so. I don't necessarily agree with @nepeta that it will take quite so long though.

I would think there are lessons to be learned from Ireland for US, as the religious comparators are not dissimilar.

First, though, they really need to separate the abortion rights arguments from the rest of the Left-wing ideologies, as it's really not helping.

I wish there was anything I could do, but meanwhile it's fun to laugh at JB ramblings, whatever the new puritans in this thread tell us.

Yes, exactly, and this will be a very slow process, possibly taking anywhere up to a century (and of course based on the premise that there will be future movements which we used to call for women's rights).

The decision to impose these rights, rather than work on them state by state, made those rights weak, always controversial, never secure, and used as political football by both sides

so to reestablish abortion rights, campaigners will need to work state by state, as if they were working through the countries of Europe?

yes, I have to say I agree with this. 'as early as possible, as late as necessary' is an ideological position, and quite hard to justify. I think it harms the pro choice position

@nepeta 'I was told that it was because there were no better legal devices for the decision to apply over the whole country.' That is likely correct, but the abortion rights movement was gathering pace in US at that point, with some states introducing laws on to the books (luckily, as otherwise there would not be any legal abortion in any US state now).

The decision to impose these rights, rather than work on them state by state, made those rights weak, always controversial, never secure, and used as political football by both sides.

The way Roe v Wade was justified (based on privacy) was always problematic, but I was told that it was because there were no better legal devices for the decision to apply over the whole country. I believe the right to contraception in the US is also based on the concept of privacy.

In my feminist view Roe should have been based on equal rights by sex, because if women can't control their own reproductive systems then women and men can't have equal opportunities in life.

And, sadly, I agree that things won't get better for women in the red states any time soon. I also agree that the pro-choice movement is cutting off its own feet before going on marches for those rights which were previously called women's rights but which now seem to affect all 'people' equally except that they affect the alphabets so much more and so we should center them.

The stern sermons on what to believe and how to behave aimed at the group formerly-known-as-women-and-girls on various repro rights sites are a new development and shockingly rude and condescending.