Would anyone like to talk about Judith Butler with me?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I'm currently trying to get to grips with her writing. I read most of 'Gender Trouble' a while ago, in a rather hurried and sceptical mood. More recently, I've had a look at Undoing Gender. And now I'm trying to re-read Gender Trouble properly (there's an edition out with a new introduction where she explains how she's moved on a bit in response to criticisms, which is useful).

I'm really struggling, to be honest. My gut feeling is it's a bit Emperor's New Clothes, and I'm not keen - but I really want to give it some proper thought.

An example of what bugs me in a knee-jerk way is this sort of passage (from near the start of Undoing Gender):

If a decade or two ago, gender discrimination applied tacitly to women, that no longer serves as the exclusive framework for understanding its contemporary usage. Discrimination against women continues – especially poor women and women of color, if we consider the differential levels of poverty and literacy not only in the United States, but globally – so this dimension of gender discrimination remains crucial to acknowledge. But gender now also means gender identity, a particularly salient issue in the politics and theory of transgenderism and transsexuality.

I just can't help feeling this is an incredibly, even insultingly, privileged point of view? I mean, of course gender discrimination continues! She says it as if it's just in its dying gasp, but isn't it a huge issue?

Would anyone like to help me understand as I read?

Btw, I will totally understand if this thread dies a death, so don't worry!

most especially the violence against the subject that regulating sex-based gender produces.

See this is exactly the sort of thing I'm taking about. I know you aren't quoting Butler but your language is typical of her school of writing.

And what is metaphorical violence?

Look I'm not trying to put anyone off reading Butler. I just hope that they also read radical feminist work and don't think that Butler is all they need to have a handle of the subjugation of women. Something that is very useful IMO about the works of people like Dworkin, Daly, Millett, etc is that they don't write in the masculine tradition. They talk about the limitations of having to express oneself with masculine language and they create new words and ways of expressing things in order to present the female perspective. I think it is dreadful that they are so little read.

I know here you are responding to Beachcomber talking about Butler being philosophical rather than a theory, and her mention of Butler treating women's lives in the abstract.

'So what I'm trying to say that while I recognise philosophy can.feel abstract and because it is concerned with the production of subjectivity'

That isn't what Philosophy is concerned with. It is what certain specific forms of philosophy are concerned with.

'...it feels.like an abstracted discourse rather than something concrete I can name, define and boundary within statistical quantities or materially lived facts, it nevertheless feels real and immediate and pressing to me because the ontology of subjectivity is.precisely what I experience everything through...'

It isn't more abstracted than the understanding of materially lived facts. People's understanding of materially lived facts is based on them and /or someone else having previously abstracted them and explained that abstraction to them.

Some of what MacKinnon is saying is an abstraction of the concrete. The concept of sexual harassment in law is an abstraction that she is able to relate to a series of concrete situations women have been in, and she then uses that to advocate for change.

Mackinnnon is talking about oppression of the materially real - women's bodies through rape, forced impregnation and other atrocities, but she is also talking about oppression through social constructs - language used in sexual harassment in the workplace, verbal abuse in pornography.

It isn't abstracting that causes the problem with Butler's writing, as far as I can see. It is that it is almost solely an abstraction. It seems to give little concrete detail about how women are oppressed, and the abstraction never goes on to advocate for change. It does in the sense that she claims people can use gender in subversive ways, but as she says we don't know what would constitute that subversion, it only ever remains an abstraction.

Sorry you don't like my use of language. I didn't know how else to say what I said.

An example of a metaphorical violence against my subject position would be in the way that my subject position as woman means that the language that I have access to is already organised against me. Or in the way that my adult body has is the result of a childhood and adolescence which treated it as basically weak, in need of protection etc. and the body style in which I was disciplined encouraged this weakness in a number of ways. So while I wasn't exactly stitched into a corset my physical agency in relation to the men around me is damaged, has had violence done to it. I would describe these things as violence even though no one is physically doing it to me.

And why shouldn't Butler abstract endlessly and work through some really dense issues? Why shouldn't she engage with philosophy as an ontology of the subject? Why does she and not the rest of the continental tradition have to explain her decision to write extensively about the ontology of the subject?Why is the only valid feminism the kind that works through the legislature, or the kind that sets up a shelter? And why shouldn't we consider the implications of the ways that feminism works, even if they are uncomfortable?

Judith Butler is engaged with arguing against the oppression of women. She is in lots of contexts, working against violence. Her writing is exhaustively concerned with the critique of violence. She has been vocal and active in trying to end the violence of 'compulsory' hetrosexuality. She is vocal and active in critiquing the support of Israeli violence. She has argued against transnational violence, gender violence, and, in her objectionably written books, violence against the subject.

Granted, she has disagreed with specific aspects of the work of some brilliant feminists. And actually, in every iteration of this, I found myself in opposition to her. But I really don't think that this necessitates my writing her off. I don't see why finding myself in agreement with Mackinnon means I have to disavow the totality of Butler's work.

Her work, it's true, has been appropriated in anti-woman ways. But I have seen Dworkin misappropriated to prove the irrationality of the feminist argument; I have seen men misappropriate equality legislation in order to insist on access to female spaces; I have seen many people misappropriate the equality argument to disadvantage women; I have seen men working as Mackinnon does, inside of legislature, in order to enshrine their privilege. All of these are misappropriations of feminist work and thinking and yet we are not ready to disavow that work and thinking because it has been misappropriated.

I don't think Butler should be written off. She is raising some important points.

There are other feminists writers who have raised an issue and discussed it in depth, but don't have an answer to the problem they have raised - Ariel Levy in the Rise of Raunch Culture, for example.

I assume the reason that Butler is being criticised and not some other philosophers is because it is becoming hard in some situations to talk about gender without somebody going, 'but Butler says...' The other philosophers are not mentioned really, so most feminists aren't going to bother commenting on them.

I don't know if the same situation exists for other serious issues. If you are very involved in discussing war crimes, disability, poverty or similar, is there a philosopher who has written a book about the topic, without any concrete detail about the specific oppressions faced, and with no proposed perspective on the solution, which you have to have read to discuss war crimes or similar? is there a war crimes trouble?

I don't know.

It certainly isn't the case that the only kind of feminism is the one that sets up shelters. Radical feminism is a theory about how and why patriarchy happens and what it is. I don't see how Butler's approach is somehow more involved with considering the implications of how feminism works than any other approach.

I completely agree that Butler shouldn't be thrown out just because she has been misappropriated. But I do think she could do more to clearly state how she has been misappropriated. And other philosophers have done so - Latour had to be clear on climate change and how his critique of science had been misappropriated. Butler should do the same on women.

I assume the reason that Butler is being criticised and not some other philosophers is because it is becoming hard in some situations to talk about gender without somebody going, 'but Butler says...' The other philosophers are not mentioned really, so most feminists aren't going to bother commenting on them.

That's literally never happened to me. It's also not Judith Butler's fault or doing, same as it's not Dworkin' s fault or doing that her descriptions of piv sex under conditions of patriarchy has been described as "all men are rapists" and taken as evidence that all feminists are man haters.

She has rebutted those misappropriation, she routinely has done so at conferences, there is lengthy email exchange in here

I don't see how Butler's approach is somehow more involved with considering the implications of how feminism works than any other approach. I'm not suggesting it is more involved. Just that it is involved and that is valid. To my mind it is basic leftist procedure to critique the tools that do your work. That's what I perceive her as doing, in conjunction with her participation in organisations, groups and activities that oppose violence and discrimination.

But that is the purpose of the thread. LRD feels the need to read Judith Butler because so many people use her to talk about gender.

That is also my reason for doing so. Although I am in agreement with Beachcomber that the word gender should be replaced with the word frequently used before - sex role, as gender is now such a fuzzy term.

And perhaps Butler occupies the same situation as bio sex. She doesn't exist prior to the social constructions we read her through. And if it is mainly used to bolster a gender identity/transgenderism belief system damaging to women, then the power and social meaning of her book can only be understood in those terms.

Butler's writing didn't create the whole no such thing as a woman, gender is an identity group, even though it was written prior to it. The power of the gender is an identity group created the notion of Judith Butler.

I've tried really really hard, but this entire thread is still impenetrable to me.

That this line of thinking (that is only understood by a relative handful) is informing decision makers that affect me is, quite frankly, terrifying. It's not, is it?

And the non - evidenced based policy making?

I just watched the last ever episode of West Wing and it showed a Foucault book being removed from the Oval Office shelf... I had a ponder.

Buffy, I'm really glad that have have downloaded some MacKinnon. I know you can find Towards a Feminist Theory of the State and Feminism Unmodified as PDFs. I don't think Are Women Human? and Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws are available online free though.

IMO it is important for feminists (who want to read books about feminism, not everybody does and nor should they have to) to read the backbone writers of feminist theory/analysis - of which MacKinnon is undoubtedly one of the most important.

So when you read a sentence three times and are still dissatisfied because you are not sure you have grasped her point, that's what she wants. - I'm kind of shocked by that, if it is true.

Manlyalmondcakes, you said this about Butler; It isn't abstracting that causes the problem with Butler's writing, as far as I can see. It is that it is almost solely an abstraction. It seems to give little concrete detail about how women are oppressed, and the abstraction never goes on to advocate for change.

I agree with this. It is what I mean when I say that I think there is something kind of obscene about doing thought experiments about gender. If they were to lay out a concrete plan of action or an avenue for improving the situation, or be useful for consciousness raising then that would make sense to me. Like I say, there is no reason why Butler should not do these thought experiments, I'm questioning the use of her writing and what it is for (in feminism). What it does to forward women's struggle for liberty.

OutsSelf, I'm sorry if I gave you impression that I don't like your language! It isn't that really, it's more that I find it odd (within the context of feminist discussion) - for example the sentence that I quoted of yours just didn't really speak to me, I'm still not entirely sure what you meant by it. (I'm guessing that you were talking about male violence against women...???)

Thanks for explaining what metaphorical violence means. It was the use of 'metaphorical' that made me feel uncomfortable because it makes it sound figurative and unreal. I see what you mean, it is what I would call structural violence.

I think Butler is so criticized because she is so high profile and influential and considered such an authority. Her writing is in the foundations of Queer Theory - I think it is fair enough that people have an opinion on that writing and the theory.

I think the problem is Buffy that the vast majority of people in our society, while not particularly fond of the ideathat there is an objective truth, do believe that there is a reality that we can be nearer to or further away from understanding.

And while discussing how different claims are believed or not believed due to power structures is important, it is actually only one small part of why people believe what they believe, as far as most people are concerned.

And the other parts of how we know things to be true are just as valuable and complex.

I think there is something kind of obscene about doing thought experiments about gender.

I agree Beach and I think this is the real sticking point between Butler and radical feminists. She simply doesn't see gender as brutal arrangement of power in the way she is clearly able to conceive of, say, colonialism as such. If she did, she wouldn't go on endlessly about 'playing' with it, etc. To anyone who understands that gender is about the actual ugly oppression of women (to paraphrase Sheila Jeffreys), there is something obscene about a person who sees it as primarily a site of playfulness and performance.

That is the tenet of Butlerism that has been taken up by queer theory, and it also explains her wide appeal, IMO. Talking about gender as a corrupt system of power in which men deliberately oppress women makes most people (including most feminists) extremely uncomfortable. They would rather talk about literally anything else and Butler's endless obscurities and sophistry gives them the excuse to do so. For men, it lets them off the hook completely, and for women, it is very appealing to imagine that we can eliminate sex-based oppression simply by thinking or talking about it differently.

Lierre Keith outlines the difference between radical and postmodern/queer conceptions of gender very clearly in her talk 'Patriarchy versus Planet Earth':

It’s become popular in some activist circles to embrace notions from postmodernism, and that includes the idea that gender is somehow a binary. Gender is not a binary. It is a hierarchy. It is global in its reach, it is sadistic in its practice, and it is murderous in its completion. Just like race, and just like class. Gender demarcates the geopolitical boundaries of the patriarchy—which is to say, it divides us in half. That half is not horizontal—it is vertical. And in case you missed this part, men are always on top. Gender is not some cosmic yin/yang; it’s a fist, and the flesh that bruises. It is the mouth crushed shut, and the little girl who will never be the same. Gender is who gets to be human, and who gets hurt.

smashesthep.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/lierre-keith-speaks-on-patriarchy-and-gender-at-the-radfem-reboot-2012-conference/

Re: violence against the subject, see I don't think describing it as 'structural violence' does it justice, because it sort of suggests that women are whole and complete but sustain injury. When I'm saying violence against my subject position I'm trying to describe the way that I am acting from a place of damage at all times relative to male subjectivities. I haven't been allowed to be whole and complete, for example my adult body has been artificially weakened and my subject position is permanently damaged by this, in the way I can not take up agency in the way that a male subject feels himself entitled to without a second thought, or that when I speak, the very body producing my voice is interpreted as a way to frame that voice as irrational. So even if people stopped perpetrating structural violence, I would still be marked by the violence that has been done to my subject position. My whole subjectivity has been delimited by the deployment of gender against it.

I'm struck by the idea that it is obscene to do thought experiments on gender. I honestly think that utopia is a proper strategy of critique, I honestly see the value in thinking, what if these things weren't what we believed or how we organised our social relationships? This isn't because I'm having a fun intellectual game with people's lives but because I see those lives and feel convinced that they do not have to be that way, I feel convinced that there is some intellectual fault that allows us to produce actual lived violence against whole swathes of the population. How can we allow the world to be this way? Why do societies accept inequity as natural order? People must believe those rationales, why do they have such tenacity?

I was trying to think through the whole 'there's no such thing as women' thing which is really not the take home message of Butler as I read her. It seems to me that Butler has not claimed that women do not exist but instead said that we should regard 'women' as a discursive category rather than an objective basis for ordering society. Yes, we are discriminated against "because" of our biological sex, but that is not a fact of the body itself, it arises because our oppressors have taken our biology to be innately meaningful. No part of my anatomy is responsible for the subject position given to me, in the final analysis. None of what is objectively happening to my body necessitates my removal (or placement at the centre of) a subject position. All of those impacts and discriminations happen because we are acting as if we agreed on innate qualities of bodies and those qualities necessitate an inequitable distribution of power.

Judith Butler's suggestion is that we stop agreeing to that, not that we don't have bodies which are markedly different in biology. Or, that the oppressor's argument is, because of your biological sex... and we should not accept that basic argument. So for example, when we believe that it is actually our vaginas that make us targets for rape, rather than our system of belief about vaginas and male sexuality (and the corollary invisibility of female subjectivity), we are agreeing to the basic rationale of oppression that is used against us. I actually think it is liberating to think in this way because if I believe my vagina causes my oppression, then I foreclose the possibility of liberation because whatsoever I do about my gender role I can't get rid of my vagina. So, when Butler "criticised feminism", she did not criticise the project of intervening to end the oppression of women, she warned against accepting the oppressor's term and basis for what constitutes a woman, arguing that it is not women as a material reality that provides the rationale for oppression but women as a discursive category.

^And while discussing how different claims are believed or not believed due to power structures is important, it is actually only one small part of why people believe what they believe, as far as most people are concerned.

And the other parts of how we know things to be true are just as valuable and complex^

When you write this it sounds as if you perceive the argument for Butler to be an argument for Butler-style thinking or projects to be an argument only for Butler-style thinking or arguments. So I just want to be clear that for me, Butler-style thinking is only a part - but to my mind a valid part - of the feminist project. I do not think that there is only one way to bring about the end of women's oppression. I do not view taking up Mackinnon means there is no room for Butler or vice versa.