Judith Butler has spoken

[lionheart]

Damn.

www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times

'If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life. The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. The fact that such fantasies pass as public argument is itself cause for worry.'

Goddess, I love a jammy dodger.

Are we now summoning someone? Dr Haddock? Butler?

Dunno, but if you post 3 at a time then the meaning becomes 'Eccentrica Gallumbits"

I have never posted a biscuit because I think they look like mediaeval boils

Sunflowers.

@mintyfreshh

I'm with Judith. You're in the minority, Mumsnet folks. Soz.

Oh blimey, how does anyone get to this conclusion?

Altered reality?

Poor old Judy, I bet she pays into her pension scheme and has car insurance and pays for utilities and puts her bins out and has water coming out of her taps and all the rest of the material reality. So un queer.

'If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life.

Dear oh dear. About that 'domain of fantasy' which seems to be your area of expertise...so women's fear of male violence is imagined rather than 'any actually existing' - clunketty clunk clunk- male experience? Just unevidenced, woolly ridiculousness to prioritise men then. #BoreOffButler

Can see where Hines gets her nonsense from.

@ArabellaScott

Personally, I've not had a biscuit since March. But sadly I'm not seeing much benefit. [prods belly]

I think we are allowed consolatory biscuits. But not aggressive, sarcastic or rude biscuits.

I think that if you are accusing biscuits of having an attitude you should be more specific here. Which are aggressive, which sarcastic and which rude?

Jammy Dodgers are innocent imho.

Absolutely agree that Judy is just everywhere in mainstream thought. I saw this written on the bus stop yesterday.

“The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relationships in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power”

And in my team meeting yesterday, my MD said “ "If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo -scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classification can be seen as the desperate effort to 'normalize' formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality”

You just can’t get away from her, she really does speak to the universal experience. It gets you right in the gut.

🤣🤣🤣

If only the posters agreeing with Butler could explain why they agree with Butler.

There is nothing new about

"If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life."

It's just 'women, stop being hysterical'.

Sophoclesthe🦊 😂

I have found my people!

I’m always impressed by JB’s total obliviousness to the threat of rape that overshadows most women’s lives as soon as they are old enough to grasp what it means. It’s a risk that mostly women face and that is connected to our biology (physical stature & risk of forced pregnancy). How has JB got through life as a she/they pronoun person and remained so oblivious to it? It really doesn’t ever cross her mind that males pose a threat to women? Really? Any woman who feels threatened by a male presence is just delusional and engaging in wild fantasy?

It’s a truly impressive stage of zen-like indifference to one’s own and others’ safety.

I was idly trawling through the inter webs to find some more examples of Butlers magnificent oeuvre (because alas, I did lie when I said I saw that quote written on a bus stop 😬) and on a website describing the Philosophy Society’s Bad Writing Contest, which gives out awards for terrible writing that Judy has swept the board at on more than one occasion I saw her work described as “bafflegab”. This word is hands down the best thing I’ve ever learned while reading about Butler and I’m keeping it!

Thought this was the same, tired old arguments - just using long words. Usual technique of gender ideologues is to misrepresent the arguments against. The commonest example - used by Butler but embellished with academic blablabla is that anyone - who is concerned about women’s safety in single sex spaces if people with penises saying they identify as women, are admitted, -is actually saying that ALL trans women are predators. It’s an illogical, lazy, disingenuous argument.
What is needed is someone calling her out. Asking questions that translate to real life. And implying that the gender critical are just stupid. Thing is, it can take a measure of intelligence to convince people to believe in absurd statements. But probably a little more to see that those statements are, despite the long words and academic speak, actually still absurd. And it doesn’t take a university degree to do that.

"Bafflegab" Love it.

"Chatting shit"

"Bafflegab"

The commonest example - used by Butler but embellished with academic blablabla is that anyone - who is concerned about women’s safety in single sex spaces if people with penises saying they identify as women, are admitted, -is actually saying that ALL trans women are predators.

I had done an entire step-by-step breakdown of that entire section/response yesterday, but deleted it. The whole thing is an outline of Butler’s wholesale misunderstanding (possibly deliberate misinterpretation, but that gives her credit for a level of intelligence that is not demonstrated here) of the GC position. It’s one of the most classic strawmen examples I’ve come across.

I think someone upthread has already quoted part of this essay, but I’m too lazy to go back and look.

If the essay link has been posted I can only apologise and hope to do better in the future. In my defence I’ll say that it’s a wonderful essay and I feel cleverer just having read it, so worth linking again. It is long, but well worth the effort.

I found it via Twitter, referenced by someone much smarter than me.

“Finally there is despair at the heart of the cheerful Butlerian enterprise. The big hope, the hope for a world of real justice, where laws and institutions protect the equality and the dignity of all citizens, has been banished, even perhaps mocked as sexually tedious. Judith Butler’s hip quietism is a comprehensible response to the difficulty of realizing justice in America. But it is a bad response. It collaborates with evil. Feminism demands more and women deserve better.”

Martha C Nussbaum; New Republic; 1999

newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody?fbclid=IwAR3qvRmsFbjKLxocVTg3t8Y8iHj-e-WVeNky-XyVNlBCn_DArjR9OEjLSWU

Yeah, I posted it, but it is worth posting again!

Re: Judith and her gender theories. I don't know much about theology, but her explanations of gender actually sound a bit like what I've heard of some explanations of God - constantly creating/upholding/recreating the universe.
EG:
"Likewise, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, views God as a process. To aid in this transition in language, he uses the term “godding,” which encapsulates God as a process, as the process that the universe is doing, has been doing, and will continue to do.[28] This term means that God is emerging, growing, adapting, and evolving with creation. Despite this, conventional God-language is still useful in nurturing spiritual experiences and can be a tool to relate to the infinite, although it should not be confused with the real thing.[29]"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Judaism
(In Butler's terms, replace God with Gender and the universe with Society)
If it is actually a bit similar, then no wonder the Butlerian construction of "Gender" (or "Gendering" as a "performative act") looks so much like a religion.