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!

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

YY, she does say we can construct sex different ways from a binary. I think she's going to get into intersex conditions in a minute.

I think she thinks sex is recognised as a separate category from gender, but that it shouldn't be, because if it's produced by gender, we could really see them as being the same thing.

I am not at all sure about this TBH.

[caroldecker]

I think (although she seems bloody hard work) she is saying that having 2 sexes (as in different organs) is innate and on this we have added gender (feminine). Society conflates the two, so sex and gender are equivilent.
We need to understand that gender is not entirely cultural.
I think this obsession with language comes from Wittgenstein, who basically said (i think) we could not discuss anything without fully understanding the meaning of words.

[caroldecker]

Cross posted - I think she is saying sex and gender should be seperated but cannot be because sex is innate.
On trans reactions, would there be the impact of:

1. the person thinking they were trans, so not reacting as they would to a 'natural' woman
   
2. I would imagine a trans person's behaviour/attitude would change because they were no longer hiding (for want of a better word)

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

No, she's definitely not saying that having two sexes is innate.

She says even the body is a 'construction' really.

I get that there is post-structuralist obsession with language and I can very happily accept that the ways we understand things like sex, or 'the female body' are shaped by the fact we're using language, and language is a form of cultural conditioning.

I'm quite happy to accept that I, personally, will always understand a word like 'woman' or 'vagina' or 'penis' in the context of all my cultural and linguistic hang-ups.

But I'm lost as to why that should change how I act as a feminist, and how I relate to things like rape, which is a reality whether or not I use language to describe it.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Simone de Beauvoir suggests in The Second Sex that "one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one." For Beauvoir, gender is "constructed," but implied in her formulation is an agent, a 'cogito', who somehow takes on or appropriates that gender and could, in principle, take on some other gender. Is gender as variable and volitional as Beauvoir's account seems to suggest? Can "construction" in such a case be reduced to a form of choice? Beauvoir is clear that one "becomes" a woman, but always under a cultural compulsion to become one. And clearly, the compulsion does not come from "sex". Thereis nothing in her account that guarantees that the "one" who becomes a woman is necessarily female.

(Here I thought, WTF?)

If "the body is a situation," as she claims, there is no recourse to a body that has not always already been interpreted by cultural meanings; hence, sex could not qualify as a prediscursive anatomical facticity. Indeed, sex, by definition, will be shown to have been gender all along.

[scallopsrgreat]

I don't understand how bio sex can be produced through gender so I am fighting a losing battle on this I think . Bio sex just is a fact. It is innate. It isn't a construct (how can she even suggest that??) Gender is a construct. How can a construct produce something tangible? Surely it just produces perceptions?

Is this all about how we just shouldn't categorise people according to biological sex?

[scallopsrgreat]

"a prediscursive anatomical facticity."

I will mainly be not reading Butler . I can't even begin to understand those words. Hopefully someone else can help

[PetulaGordino]

this thread is making me feel incredibly stupid (not difficult, but still)

does "prediscursive anatomical facticity" mean "it is what it is without any socially-constructed meaning placed on it"?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

YY, I think she means it does produce perceptions, and she means that the way we perceive sex can't ever be completely unbiased and unconditioned.

I mean, fine - fair enough. But does that really matter? Because it's exactly the same situation with every single other tangible thing in the world, isn't it?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

petula - yes, that's what it means (I think). She likes 'prediscursive'. I think it means existing before you've sorted out language, so something that just is, no matter how you talk about it.

I feel incredibly stupid too, but at some point the tide might turn and I'll start nodding along and using bizarre sentence structure.

[PetulaGordino]

there are some purely biological assumptions we can make on looking at a baby's genitals when they are born (the indication we use to work out their sex)

e.g. this baby with a penis and testicles will eventually produce semen; this baby with a vulva will eventually menstruate

it won't be true for every single one based on appearance (genetic and health differences for example) but i would call those fact-based

but i'm not sure how relevant that is

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I think it's relevant.

Because these experiences are really important, aren't they? And they continue to be important whatever you choose to call the babies born with penises/vulvas.

[PetulaGordino]

this rather reminds me of an article i read by friend about "the paradox of opera". admittedly i knew even less about that subject, but the way the language was used was just completely beyond my intellectual reach!

[gincamparidryvermouth]

She says even the body is a 'construction' really

I don't really see how she could mean this literally. Even if we had no consciousness, and lived out our days without experiencing anything, like automatons, female bodies would still do what female bodies do. Biology is not contingent upon observation.

[caroldecker]

it is already clear that one way the internal stability and binary frame for sex is effectively secured is by casting the duality of sex in a prediscursive domain. This production of sex as the prediscursive ought to be understood as the effect of the apparatus of cultural construction designated by gender.

I (now) think she is saying that the cultural creation of gender makes us think dividing by sex is innate. This enables the man/woman divide to remain in place.

[almondcakes]

Scallops, many people categorise bio sex as a binary. Examples on this thread - people who have penises, people who don't, people who bear children and people who don't.

The queer theory response seems to me to mention intersex people and argue bio sex shouldn't be used as a social category at all. But not changing something and saying it doesn't matter does not make the construction of it go away.

We could construct it differently. It isinnate that there are people who can impregnate, people who can become pregnant and people who can do neither. As someone who can do neither, I could be socially constructed into a third group (and would be in some societies). But queer theory seems keen to not take apart the two sexes, but just add more groups.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I (now) think she is saying that the cultural creation of gender makes us think dividing by sex is innate. This enables the man/woman divide to remain in place.

Yes, I think that's it.

But I don't quite get the use of endlessly adding more groups, because it seems to me all that does it obscure the fact women are oppressed.

[gincamparidryvermouth]

For Beauvoir, gender is "constructed," but implied in her formulation is an agent, a 'cogito', who somehow takes on or appropriates that gender and could, in principle, take on some other gender... There is nothing in her account that guarantees that the "one" who becomes a woman is necessarily female.

How's this for bold: I've never read Beauvoir but I reckon Butler's misinterepreted her.

There IS an "agent" in Beauvoir's formulation but it's not the female person, it's (?) patriarchy; and women do not "take on" gender actively, they are saddled with it whether they like it or not.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Yes, I agree it rings galse gin. I really don't see how you can claim there's nothing in what Beauvoir says to guarantee that the one that becomes a woman is female. Of course she didn't bloody say so, cos it's obvious.

I dunno how much Beauvoir thinks we have agency to take on gender and how much we don't, but that bit really made no sense to me.

[andiewithanie]

i'm wary of attributing an evolutionary advantage to everything, but i do think gender is helpful in terms of increasing reproduction. or if not helpful - an inevitable consequence of reproduction.

[caroldecker]

But if gender and sex are cultural constructs, then anyone could become the woman.
If we follow this through, the only thing that links 'women' is that they have 'chosen' to be so.
Society decides that ownership of a vagina pushes you to 'choose' woman.

Leading on from this, if you add enough groups then it becomes harder to split and discriminate between them, particularly if the differences are not easily obvious.

This lessens discrimination as you do not know who to discriminate against.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

How is it helpful, andie?

I can believe it might be, but it's a chilling thought, isn't it? Because it's gender than designates women as the class to be raped/impregnated. I would like to think we don't need gender in order to feel a need to reproduce.

carol - oh, but I think she thinks that - that anyone could become a woman. I've not got far enough to be certain, but I think so.

I don't think extra groups lessens discrimination. I think it makes it harder to fight back, because you've no sense of common cause.

[almondcakes]

One of the main ways we discriminate against people is by not recognising their differences and thus fail to meet their needs, either individually or in the way we construct society.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

True, but I am not convinced that this means we need lots of different groups.

Precisely because patriarchy treats all women as the same, we need to be together to fight back.

[PetulaGordino]

andie do you mean in terms of being able to identify who an individual can reproduce with given the sex organs they have? possibly, but much of that is society's construct because we cover our genitals most of the time, and (while i have no evidence to hand to support this beyond my knowledge of art history and what has been considered attractive in different centuries/cultures all over the world) that which is considered to be most desirable in terms of appearance in the opposite sex also often has a cultural/learned aspect to it