Writers and gender theory

[Emmags0309]

I’d be really grateful if anyone has who has read books by Judith Butler (feminist academic) can give their opinion of her books before I buy any of them.

I am frustrated by gender theory. I first learned about it on MN, then learned more by looking at the Mermaids, GIRES and Stonewall websites. From this, I realised I was ‘gender critical’. I’m a woman because of my body, but I can’t believe that I have a gender. Using society’s view of gender behaviour as a yardstick against which we assess our personality to decide whether we feel manly or womanly could be quite dangerous and I’m quite concerned that those promoting gender theory seem to be saying that having a gender is the norm.

My sister, an academic who has lectured gender theory said I was talking nonsense when I said that I don’t have a gender. I tried to explain that I don’t believe in gender, and it’s similar to being an atheist who doesn’t have a religion. She said that I do have a gender; my gender is female because I wear skirts and makeup. She said I shouldn’t be “getting my feminism from mumsnet” and I should read works by Judith Butler.

To quote a phrase I’ve learned from MN, I think she drank some Kool Aid, but if posters think Judith Butler might be worth reading I’ll order some of her books.

And surely, if a person is free to have a gender, a person is equally free to reject the concept of gender and say they don’t have one? Is it not socially acceptable to say this?

Thanks for any replies

Because I am a high school drop out rather than an academic I am not entitled to have an opinion on Butler, but I am entitled to laugh at her prolixity in an attempt to distract from a flawed premise.

I honestly think that people only believe they have a gender once they have been ‘sold’ the concept.

This is an interesting paper about what happened to "gender"
213ou636sh0ptphd141fqei1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/gender/wp-content/uploads/publications/55cc9d92cdc0e_Gender%20mainstreaming%20critiques.pdf

A quote:
For example, at a KIT conference organised to
critically review the achievements of gender training
it was emphasised that the terminology of ‘gender’
quickly became separated from its feminist roots and
emptied of its social transformatory content. Gender
knowledge in the mainstreaming processes became
disconnected from its change implications, obscuring
thereby the political nature of the change sought by
feminists. Gender work became disconnected from
any personal commitment to feminism and has been
allowed to become a ‘performance’ (KIT 2007).

I like this section. This is Mumsnet.

Nevertheless, the reality of governance feminism
calls for a reinvention of strategies of engagement
that are able to expose the workings of power that
make us complicit with ways of working, thinking,
and reviewing development that are inappropriate
and harmful. The important thing is to remember
that projects of government are never complete. The
most well thought out programmes never actually
reach fruition and have unplanned unintended
consequences. Thus, governing does not have a
totalising effect and there are always insurrections
undoing the perfect governmental project. Taking this
cue, future feminist engagement has to be both about
the politics of refusal, and of knowledge production
that is subversive which ‘defies reinscription in the
mainstream’ (Mukhopadhyay 2014: 316).

I’m going to go back to lurking but I will keep looking back to this thread and I will get through all of the links. After 2 chapters of Butler I have given up - I’m not patient enough.

Whenever my mother feels like she’s losing an argument she’ll change the conversation and start talking about coleslaw. I think Judith Butler is my sister’s version of coleslaw.

Gender is so confusing, mainly because there are so many meanings for the word gender. I thought that there would be just one meaning but there’s so much more to it.

Don't give up! I mean, give up on Butler if you hate it, but if you feel confused about the idea of gender, that's because it's confusing. Its meaning is contested and that's why there are all these debates.

But if you're looking for something to say to your sister, you could try: "I've read some Butler and I'm intrigued by her view that gender is performative, but I don't think feminism can do without the category of women." Then see if she joins your mother in the great coleslaw debate.

Emma This video (which someone else posted below as well) is brill. Takes the heavy lifting out of JB.
I know who I'm backing in the grudge match btw JB and coleslaw.
.
Back to watch the rest of the video.

I watched the Susan Cox/Derrick Jensen interview and I sent the link to my sister. I had decided not to further my conversation with her, but she posted a picture of Foucault books (artfully arranged with soya lattes) on social media and red mist descended on me. I should have just left it...

I won’t go into detail but apparently I was wrong in saying that a bonkers theory is influencing public policy and law making. Apparently law reflects society and critical theory is largely absent from law making.

But surely if theories are promoted by universities, society will change. If law reflects society then of course it is being indirectly influenced by whatever theory is being promoted. I have a strong feeling that theory is influencing law makers in a more direct way too. Am I right in thinking this?

Discussion has now been officially shut down by her (after me being reminded that I don’t even have an MA). I think I might have been gaslighted and it’s definitely best not to bring it up again.

Emma - this one's on a slight tangent, but if you are reading around. The below is a paper called Mapping the Margins by Kimberle Crenshaw. It expands on her original concept of intersectionality by describing the services and institutions women - especially black women, but also working class women - carved out for themselves because society's laws and institutional structures did not protect them in these intersections of gender (by which she means sex), race and class.

The first thing you'll note is that Crenshaw writes with clarity. What she is saying is practical and rooted in material reality. It is not the impenetrable and pointless guff of the kind Butler writes. It actually applies to the day-to-day realities of women's lives.

The second thing you'll note is how warped this concept of intersectionality has become now it is in the hands of SJWs and transactivists. The way it is used by them on social media bears no relation to what Crenshaw is writing about.

Hope you read and enjoy it!

www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mapping-margins.pdf

I have a strong feeling that theory is influencing law makers in a more direct way too. Am I right in thinking this?

Well, while we have career routes that involve bathing in queer and critical theory at university, then moving on to jobs in the mediating classes of politics, media, think tanks and policy research, I think that this link would be pretty obvious, even to your sister!

Thanks. I’ll read the Crenshaw link at the weekend. I know the answer to my question was obvious but my brain was in knots.

@Emmags0309

That sucks massively! You were brave to try though. As I said in an earlier comment, gender theory went very wrong a while ago and those proudly involved in teaching or studying it, cannot see that at all. Btw, what your sister did to you is what gender theory lecturers also do to their students. Judging from the accounts of gender theory students who decided to quit, gaslighting is a tool they use with relish.

But do you know, I can't discuss a certain subject with my in-laws whose politics have directly negatively affected me (they don't know and/or don't understand and/or refuse to believe it). DH has basically vetoed me ever bringing it up even though I really really want to.

But the reason I don't is that I'm unlikely to make them see sense and it wouldn't change much other than our feelings towards each other (and if the usual things come up from their side of the argument I could end up a lot more hurt than them). So I'm biting my tongue.

I know the answer to my question was obvious but my brain was in knots.

Sorry, I wasn't meaning should be obvious to you, but should be obvious to your sister but she'll pretend she doesn't get it.

I think you are doing a brilliant job of thinking things through on this thread.

And as Sashkin says above, she's the opposite of a gender essentialist

OK. I get this. I've read Butler and got the scars to prove it and I have a PhD in feminist theory (too old to be useful these days) more scars to prove it, but my critique is that Butler seems to go too far the other way and lapse into choice feminism. She does not seem to have (to me) enough of an understanding of exactly how hard it is to break free from a performance that is (as earlier socialisation theorists and second ave rad fems as well as feminists such as de Beauvoir explained) drilled into us almost from the moment of birth. She also does not seem to have much of a comprehension of the debilitating nature of this or of the structural limitations of the female body (yes, I recognise that the lived experiences of these are shaped by the social) - such as the lived fear of rape, the reality of being an object of the male gaze, the reproductive reality that women suffer the consequences of birth, etc. Like so many queer theorists it is all about image, performance, desire and sex and not about some of the other lived realities of being born female.