Study guide on Judith Butler on Perlego

Just posting this here as I cant find the thread about this book, and dont want to give JB the satisfaction of another FWR thread title.

But good review of her recent book by Lesbian Caucus of US WDI

https://womensdeclarationusa.com/whos-afraid-maybe-judith-butler-is/

“The very attribution of socially constructed femininity to female bodies that are socially constructed as if it were a natural or necessary property takes place within a normative framework in which the assignment of socially constructed femininity to socially constructed femaleness is one mechanism for the production of sex gender itself."

like that? Though the claim that bodies are socially constructed is bonkers.

Granted that labelling bodies as ‘male’ and ‘female’ is a social construction but so is every bloody thing on this planet. We don’t go around proposing to all call whales crabs from now on.

There must be some stability to language to be useful. Otherwise Butler shouldn’t quarrel if she orders a cappuccino but gets an chai latte.

Judith Butler always sounds like she is parodying herself.

That's excellent, @LilyBartsHatShop and I shall be stealing into use in future arguments.

@Nothingeverything I have no idea. I always felt that, if you truly believe that our discourses construct our reality surely the most moral thing to do is to publish hundreds of textbooks which say that all childhood cancers can be cured with smarties.

Indeed. By 'gender itself' she actually means sex. The whole of a person's sex is confected, and society responds to/interacts with the confection.

Didn't Stock say that this idea is so ludicrous that only a really clever person could possibly believe it?

We're mammals. Obviously we know what sex people are.

Also, Butler's ideas aren't really compatible with trans theory. Which is that a trans person's true biological sex is incongruent with their body, and their gender identity is the evidence of that. It's pure (if wacky) biology: no need to bring into it how gender is constructed or the role of cultural gender norms.

This is what I can never get my head round. How can gametes be socially constructed?

Except that when Butler says gender is being produced she's also saying the notion of sexed bodies is being produced.
The "femaleness" in Butler's sentence isn't a fixed point of reality around which the gender norms can be constructed. It's another construct being, ah, constructed.

“The very attribution of femininity to female bodies as if it were a natural or necessary property takes place within a normative framework in which the assignment of femininity to femaleness is one mechanism for the production of gender itself."

What's puzzling to me is that I agree with that sentence and read it as a criticism of the production of gender. Doesn’t Butler?

Such that, my next sentence would be…

"This mechanism for the production of gender is a key reason why many females object to the construction and imposition of gendered stereotypes and reject the forced attribution of femininity to being female."

I'm quite partial to a haunted house myself, though sadly I've yet to see a ghost. I've worked in the higher education sector for quite a while, but never seen a thesis on them either.

Could be quite fun - the more I think about it the more it seems like studying the figure of the ghost in folklore and storytelling about places and buildings would be rather interesting.

Well once you believe haunted houses can be sentient, believing you can change sex is a doddle.

I believe that education is a societal and personal good, as is the gaining of knowledge in a wide range of topics. And I believe society needs people studying the Arts as well as people studying STEM subjects, but I’m as shocked as anything that people can get funding to study ‘sentient haunted houses’.

Her dissertation examined sentient haunted houses

I feel like I missed a trick with my boring PhD thesis. I should have been studying sentient haunted houses!

Does anybody remember David Gauntlett's Lego social theorists? There was Judith Butler, of course, but also Angela McRobbie, Michel Foucault and Anthony Giddens. He's rearranged his website and I can't find them any more but it made me smile about 10-15 years ago.

These are some of the more recent threads about JB, but can see there are more, some from 10 years ago!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4946170-judith-butler-explains-gender

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5014102-gender-critical-feminism-is-a-misnomer-there-is-nothing-critical-about-what-they-do

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5024782-financial-times-interview-with-judith-butler

There have been many, many threads on FWR about Judith Butler, and nearly always comes down to how did someone who has not relationship to the real worlds has become such a darling of the academic world.

And so year after year, new university students are introduced to JB as though she is the go to writer about feminism.

Not sure that Perlego would be interested in a critique, but maybe you could write and say that surely their reading list should provide a balance of views. Just as employers have been told to balance to different sets of beliefs surely of all places, an education establishment, should be providing a reading list the encompasses a range of views. ie it is their role to indoctrinate students to one set of beliefs, but to help student learn about different sets of beliefs.

Are there any gender critical books on the list?

I give up. This is all completely barking mad.

That's been my job for over 2 decades, and people tell me I'm good at it. But to clarify meaning you have to start with something that - however poorly expressed - does actually mean something.

They like to give that impression, but Oxford was was one of the last in the UK to drop unconditional/2 E offers for people.who were good at sport.

“The very attribution of femininity to female bodies as if it were a natural or necessary property takes place within a normative framework in which the assignment of femininity to femaleness is one mechanism for the production of gender itself.”

Yes, this is exactly what trans identifying men do. They call this gender reassignment and they take artificial hormones and cross dress to obtain the femininity they want to produce their "gender".

Doesn't actually work though as they still are male, men, masculine, blokes.

The obfuscation is deliberate.

If no one can work out what the fuck she's trying to say, they won't be able to say with any confidence that what she's saying is total fucking nonsense.

One aspect of a job I held many years ago was to take very complex scientific , legal and technical reports and "translate" them into plain English that everyone could understand.

I wouldn't have know where to start with Butler's word salads.....

I thought Oxford University was supposed to attract thinkers.

Yes, thanks for confirming - pretty much as I suspected. A level of understanding that'll get you through a queer theory essay on a gender studies course, but not much else.

I've always been very frustrated by the model of academic feminism that goes 'Marxist feminists believe X', 'liberal feminists believe Y', 'Terfs belive Z' and so on. When I read that sort of thing I know I'm going to see mischaracterisation, or at best, oversimplification.