Judith Butler in The New Statesman

Is Feminism saying that a woman you don’t agree with has gone daft?

🙄 I know this isn’t the easiest concept for you but some of us use words to describe reality as we perceive it to be. We consider the truth value of the statements we make and try to say things that we perceive to be true. We don’t just say stuff because we think it sounds good or because we think it will help us score points off our perceived enemies.

I’d suggest you try it sometime but I honestly don’t think you’re even capable.

Who’s Sue?

Mumsnet activists seem to be very keen on abusing those they disagree with, ridiculing their appearance, calling them thick and so on.

Not just fascist enablers or open fascists, but nitpicking open fascists or fascist enablers

The fact that people are deported from Eastern Europe doesn't mean that
black people are not deported.

For all her intellectualism, Judith Butler seems to have some rather simplistic ideas.

I can’t help wondering if the company she keeps (being a genderist hero) has degraded her intellect. I understand there was never much there, there. But she used to at least manage to sound as if she might be saying something interesting. There was something to the little bits of her work that I’ve read, maybe it was just pure audacity but I could kind of understand how she became a big deal (though I did not understand exactly what she was saying!)

Now she sounds like… well, any of the TRAs that posts here, but with extra syllables.

For all her intellectualism, Judith Butler seems to have some rather simplistic ideas.

Left = good
Right = fascist = bad

For the record, I am a left-leaning gender critical feminist. Im not even sure what Judith Butler is, politically speaking. Martha Nussbaum's critique is spot on, though.

Yup.

I suspect it is a wilful, disingenuous kind of misunderstanding though.

Bit of an odd duck that one. But a lot of male-centric burble that's successfully got her name in the papers again. Judith Butler; murdering feminism and comprehensible sentences, one paper at a time.

Anyone who tries to dismiss gender critical views as a "toilet obsession" reveals how shallow and facile their understanding of the issues is.

I have never said a supportive word about Posie Parker.

I do however think "anti-fascist" these days means nothing more than "you don't agree with me, I'm right , you're wrong, so not agreeing with me makes you a fascist"

Your reply makes no sense but I'm taking from it your sympathies lie with that mob?

I thought JB was NB and used ‘they/them’ pronouns although I can see that some of JB’s most ardent supporters refer to JB as a ‘woman’ and ‘she’? Has something changed?

I don't know who made that comment, but IMO it affords JB's writing style all the respect it deserves - none. It is execrable.

I don't know what other thread you're referring to.

I see you still find yourself unable to separate a viewpoint from an individual.

Did you mean to post that here? Nobody here has a 'toilet obsession' (except perhaps you, since you are the only person to mention toilets on this thread).

Have a read of this thread to educate yourself about what the discussion here is really about:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

“the Conservative Party deporting black people,”

This may not fit your world view, but the Home Office is very diverse when it comes to deportation. To quote their official statistics- “The top 5 nationalities accounted for 63% of the total enforced returns in 2020, and these were: Romania (21%), Albania (17%), Poland (11%), Lithuania (8%) and Brazil (5%).”

Which kind of casts doubt on your other points, really.

Thanks for proving my point. The far right use Mumsnet to spray their poison.

I see you are happy to continue to attack me rather than recognise that the chief supporters of your toilet obsession are the extreme right who are in the process of attacking human rights and workers rights all over the world

Thanks, Screaming! Martha Nussbaum's critique of Butler is excellent:

In this way obscurity creates an aura of importance. It also serves another related purpose. It bullies the reader into granting that, since one cannot figure out what is going on, there must be something significant going on, some complexity of thought, where in reality there are often familiar or even shopworn notions, addressed too simply and too casually to add any new dimension of understanding. When the bullied readers of Butler’s books muster the daring to think thus, they will see that the ideas in these books are thin. When Butler’s notions are stated clearly and succinctly, one sees that, without a lot more distinctions and arguments, they don’t go far, and they are not especially new. Thus obscurity fills the void left by an absence of a real complexity of thought and argument.

[...]

Judith Butler’s hip quietism is a comprehensible response to the difficulty of realizing justice in America. But it is a bad response. It collaborates with evil. Feminism demands more and women deserve better.

Indeed!

Yeah, we all know that few of these activists who promote gender ideology actually believe in it really. The evidence is always slipping out that they know as well as we do that it’s a load of old nonsense.

It’s just a convenient whipping post for castigating women about something, and the goalposts (whipping posts?) are constantly changing. Language not “inclusive” enough? Think that women actually exist? Not solicitous enough of a man’s feelings? Don’t agree with the right kind of “feminist”? Bad, bad fascist women!