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Andrea Long Chu on Judith Butler's new book

66 replies

ArabellaScott · 12/03/2024 12:48

'Everyone should have the right to change sex'

https://archive.is/N7Rg1

ALC with an interesting, lengthy article. Very readable. Underneath it all, it seems to me to be roughly the more eloquent version of the fantastically insane Action for Trans Health Manifesto -

https://edinburghath.tumblr.com/post/163521055802/trans-health-manifesto/amp?__twitter_impression=true

'We must be prepared to defend the idea that, in principle, everyone should have access to sex-changing medical care, regardless of age, gender identity, social environment, or psychiatric history.'

ALC

Edinburgh Action for Trans Health — TRANS HEALTH MANIFESTO

https://edinburghath.tumblr.com/post/163521055802/trans-health-manifesto/amp?__twitter_impression=true

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Original poster
ArabellaScott · 12/03/2024 16:47

GrumpyPanda · 12/03/2024 16:42

I thought this passage was rather remarkable:

The left must reckon with its part in this. It has hung trans rights on the thin peg of gender identity, a concept clumsily adapted from psychiatry and strongly influenced by both gender studies and the born-this-way tactics of the campaign for marriage equality. This has won us modest gains at the level of social acceptance. But we have largely failed to form a coherent moral account of why someone’s gender identity should justify the actual biological interventions that make up gender-affirming care.

So, a high profile trans extremist abandoning the idea of gender identity?

It's really interesting to see how reason and sense is sort of immiscible with genderism.

Chu is obviously intelligent and well read, and so has apparently looked honestly at some of the beloved tropes of genderism, such as 'gender identity' and correctly adduced they are pish. His response, though, instead of abandoning the whole exercise, is to push it to even more mad extremes.

That puberty is 'non consensual', therefore blocking puberty is totally fine. That anyone should have total bodily autonomy, therefore any person should have any medical procedure they wish carried out.

It does then have some kind of internal logic - Chu is arguing for 100% bodily autonomy, shorn of any kinds of checks and balances and considerations of risk etc - but overall the underlying assertion is really just utterly lunatic.

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GrumpyPanda · 12/03/2024 16:42

I thought this passage was rather remarkable:

The left must reckon with its part in this. It has hung trans rights on the thin peg of gender identity, a concept clumsily adapted from psychiatry and strongly influenced by both gender studies and the born-this-way tactics of the campaign for marriage equality. This has won us modest gains at the level of social acceptance. But we have largely failed to form a coherent moral account of why someone’s gender identity should justify the actual biological interventions that make up gender-affirming care.

So, a high profile trans extremist abandoning the idea of gender identity?

TonTonMacoute · 12/03/2024 16:39

I'm way more interested in what Kathleen Stock has to say about Judith
Butler's new book. Especially the part where she points out that JB offers no evidence for many of her arguments relying solely on the assertion that if you disagree with them you are either a bigot or stupid, probably both, in which case it's simply not worth her time bothering to justify or explain.

https://unherd.com/?p=492821

There's another piece in the Sunday Times by Sarah Ditum

Judith Butler, the intellectual behind the trans movement, bites her feminist critics

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/25c2ccfd-d9d1-46a9-8c82-c8b501494688?shareToken=742d25b569cb863a66e9b291723a0ae7

What is Judith Butler afraid of?

https://unherd.com/?p=492821

lechiffre55 · 12/03/2024 16:31

ArabellaScott · 12/03/2024 16:14

This was another startling assertion:

"if children are too young to consent to puberty blockers, then they are definitely too young to consent to puberty, which is a drastic biological upheaval in its own right."

That's just madness. Puberty requires no consent, it is a biological process.
Can we opt out of death now? I don't consent to dying.
It really is a belief that we have the "right" to whatever we want and damn reality. Like a small child insisting that they want to be a whale. Yes dear, that's nice, now go and get ready for dinner.

I quite fancy not having to go to the toilet ever again. I wonder who I have to scream obscenities at to get that wish granted.

PickAChew · 12/03/2024 16:18

ArabellaScott · 12/03/2024 16:14

This was another startling assertion:

"if children are too young to consent to puberty blockers, then they are definitely too young to consent to puberty, which is a drastic biological upheaval in its own right."

😵‍💫

Maybe supple breasts is a reference to ones so saggy you can tie them in a bow.

Original poster
ArabellaScott · 12/03/2024 16:14

This was another startling assertion:

"if children are too young to consent to puberty blockers, then they are definitely too young to consent to puberty, which is a drastic biological upheaval in its own right."

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lechiffre55 · 12/03/2024 13:54

ArabellaScott · 12/03/2024 13:11

Yes. Chu manages two references to 'supple breasts' in this article. I'm not quite sure what that means, really.

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I think it means the author had a hard on when they wrote it.

Original poster
ArabellaScott · 12/03/2024 13:53

Supple applied to breasts is just weird.

'bending and moving easily and gracefully; flexible.'

I'm now picturing breasts waving about and doing pliés.

It makes me think of 'pneumatic' Lenina from BNW.

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Cauliflowery · 12/03/2024 13:47

ArabellaScott · 12/03/2024 13:11

Yes. Chu manages two references to 'supple breasts' in this article. I'm not quite sure what that means, really.

Show quote history

Well that is a term used by no breast owner ever.

I'd be surprised if implants felt like that either tbh. Sounds like it's from the "breasted boobily down the stairs" school of creative wanking writing.

terryleather · 12/03/2024 13:33

Expectant asshole ALC has nothing to say that I want to hear. Neither does JB.

But let them speak so that the arsewash that they spout can gain a wider audience - "sunlight.." and all that....

Original poster
ArabellaScott · 12/03/2024 13:17

The article is useful reading -

  1. it offers a lucid, if basically utterly irrational, argument, which makes a pleasant change
  2. it confronts several weakness of 'genderism' head on. The benefit of this is that the only place for these arguments to go is from vague and muddled to 'outright batshit' - takes the arguments to their logical, absurd, conclusions. ('everyone should have access to sex-changing medical care')
  3. it offers a rough idea of where the US is at the moment (around one half of states appear to have banned children from transitioning, according to this article)
  4. It offers a couple of points worth considering about wrt 'gender critical' feminism
  5. It illuminates that many if not most people who have given the subject a little thought are not in favour of children being allowed to change sex - here Chu lambasts 'liberals' who are clinging to old fashioned ideas like a risk/benefit analysis or consideration of potential iatrogenic harms.
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Original poster
ArabellaScott · 12/03/2024 13:11

nauticant · 12/03/2024 13:09

Andrea Long Chu shared with the world what being female means: "an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes."

Yes. Chu manages two references to 'supple breasts' in this article. I'm not quite sure what that means, really.

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nauticant · 12/03/2024 13:09

Andrea Long Chu shared with the world what being female means: "an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes."

fedupandstuck · 12/03/2024 13:01

There is no "sex-changing" medical care, any doctor who claims they can change your sex is lying.

And, really, any adult with sufficient funds can pay for a private surgeon to do whatever plastic surgery they might want, if they can find someone to do it. I don't see that is any kind of universal right, or principal that needs defending. But I can obviously fully understand the motivations of Chu to make that claim.

Original poster
ArabellaScott · 12/03/2024 12:57

'Freedom', I think is the gist.

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WelcomeMarch · 12/03/2024 12:54

We must be prepared to defend the idea that, in principle, everyone should have access to sex-changing medical care

Why?

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