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.'

@mintyfreshh

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

Not really minty. They're the (relatively) quieter majority. Most people understand the difference between male and female and are accepting of differences of expression.

There's a reason why Self-ID wasn't accepted and a large part of that has been due to the hard work of the women here.

They're doing a stellar job or getting the wider community to notice the problematic policies the TRAs keep advocating for.

So thank you FWR

[quote Quaagars]@mintyfreshh
I'm with Judith

Same
Thought it was a good article.[/quote]

Please, please quote just one bit of the article that you thought was "good".

Thank you xx

@SaucyHorse

I used to quite enjoy postmodernism for a while as an undergraduate back in the day. It's quite fun to play around with ideas and pretend that nothing is real, when you are privileged enough (which I fully admit I was). It's also very silly and I imagine most teenagers grow out of it as I did.

I worked in academia for a time. I loathed post modernism. I originally came from a discipline that has complex concepts explained in particularly dense literature. I am used to complicated sometimes arduous texts and I actually enjoy getting to the bottom of them. I always hated Butler, it isn't that her ideas are so tricky mere plebs cannot grasp them, it is the way she twists about adding extraneous words to make what she is saying look more intellectual once you dig beyond that it is flimsy and she frequently contradicts herself. It wasn't just her, I was never a fan of Foucault either but his writing wasn't as needlessly incomprehensible as hers. I had and still have issues with academics making subjects more dense and difficult to understand rather than simplifying difficult concepts. I believe it maintains the 'ivory tower' at the expense of teaching well. It isn't something all academics do but there is a certain cohort who thrive on this approach as it maintains their 'intellectual superiority'.

The whole post-modern idea of 'queering' irritated me and the fact it was so encouraged in writing and teaching when that wasn't really what I wanted to say or use was one (there were others) of the reasons I left academia, I thought it wasn't for me. Years later I realise it possibly was for me but post modernism wasn't.

@SophocIestheFox

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!

This made me smile.

I also apologise as I see the discussion had moved on to biscuits and such. Bafflegab is now my word of the day it is perfect.

@merrymouse

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'.

It really is, isn’t it.

Denying the reality of male VAWG is effectively propping up and enabling that male violence to continue.

It’s as profoundly unfeminist as it’s possible to be.

I had and still have issues with academics making subjects more dense and difficult to understand rather than simplifying difficult concepts.

This sums it up for me. I spent the majority of my career as a science teacher and viewed students not understanding what I was trying to get across as a failing of my teaching rather than a demonstration of my superior intellect.

James Lindsay talked about this in his excellent podcast on 2+2=4. He describes the difference between a teacher as a facilitator who equips the students with tools and a guru who builds a sense of dependence on them for their ‘wisdom’.

If we are the minority then we are the brave folk breaking down norms and the Judy supporters are the majority and, therefore, oppressors

@TheRealMcKenna

I had and still have issues with academics making subjects more dense and difficult to understand rather than simplifying difficult concepts.

This sums it up for me. I spent the majority of my career as a science teacher and viewed students not understanding what I was trying to get across as a failing of my teaching rather than a demonstration of my superior intellect.

James Lindsay talked about this in his excellent podcast on 2+2=4. He describes the difference between a teacher as a facilitator who equips the students with tools and a guru who builds a sense of dependence on them for their ‘wisdom’.

I think there is something of a difference between teaching, especially of students not yet at the university level, and conversations among academics. I can read the academic stuff relevant to my husband's area, but I don't really understand it because it uses a lot of technical language but also because I have very little understanding of the foundational concepts or the academic literature. And I wouldn't expect academic literature to try and make that simple for me.

Not all academics are equally good at making their ideas easy for readers or listeners either which doesn't necessarily mean they are bad ideas. We don't really complain when a cutting edge thinker in mathematics can't explain his new discoveries or insights in plain language nor do we assume that they must be bafflegab, but we don't always give the same leeway to the humanities.

But all of this is why people like Butler can get away with writing what is truly complete bafflegab. It's very emperor's new clothes, everyone things maybe they just don't get it.

I'm minded of the punchline to a recent JesusAndMo cartoon "honestly I don't think you're stupid ... but sometimes I think you might as well be".

https://www.jesusandmo.net/comic/lots/

(You might like the next one in the series too, BTW. Spoiler... the barmaid believes in reality.)

I suspect the reason people make the error around the idea that the argument is "all trans people must be dangerous, all males must be dangerous" is probably that they have been told that in other contexts, it is not ok to discriminate against, or treat differently, a group on the basis of the actions of some members of the group.

There are two ways pop culture analysis deals with questions of treating people differently on the basis of group characteristics, at least at the moment. One is to deny that the difference exists. The other is saying that we can't treat the group differently based on the behaviour of some members. Discussions about profiling often use both, for example. Both in some cases are true arguments but they aren't always as some would like to believe.

Not all academics are equally good at making their ideas easy for readers or listeners either which doesn't necessarily mean they are bad ideas. We don't really complain when a cutting edge thinker in mathematics can't explain his new discoveries or insights in plain language nor do we assume that they must be bafflegab, but we don't always give the same leeway to the humanities.

Perhaps the difference is that, with the STEM subjects, there is objectivity. We may not understand it, but a subject matter expert should be able to reproduce an experiment. We may not understand it, but (in many cases) subject matter experts will be able to apply the findings in tangible ways. Eg a mathematical discovery re prime numbers might have an application in cryptography.

And, there's also the basic principle of falsification. If a theory is disproved, it's out. If a theory is not falsifiable, it's suspect. That presumably applies in some 'humanities' fields eg history - fields where there is evidence, and some use of the scientific method as an underpinning. But others - there doesn't seem to be sufficient bedrock, and postmodernists seem to want to deny that there should be any.

I think there is something of a difference between teaching, especially of students not yet at the university level, and conversations among academics.

That's fair enough, but I've read a lot of academic texts and while I may not fully understand a subject I can certainly get the point attempting to be communicated and identify the specialist terms I'm not familiar with if I wanted to look them up.

JB does something else. She discusses subjects I am familiar with in a way that obfuscates her meaning.

Genuinely clever people use specialist language to convery meaning more clearly and precisely. They may pitch to different audiences but someone will know exactly what they mean and how their argument is supported.

Butler is dealing with ideas about Gender and human society, not abstract models like electron clouds- if you can't make that inteligable and link it to the reality you are describing, what is the basis for your argument?

We have lots of feminist scholars on here. I challenge anyone to explain how all the big words being used here (sometimes in quite tortured ways) convey any level of precision to the fairly simple point being made.

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations 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.

In my experience, some people in humanities subjects are so goddamn defensive about their work not being scientific enough that they go overboard to try and sound clever instead.

So whenever someone talks nonsense I assume its from a position of insecurity, rather than certainty and knowledge.

‘Genuinely clever people use specialist language to convery meaning more clearly and precisely. They may pitch to different audiences but someone will know exactly what they mean and how their argument is supported.’

This. If you don’t understand a particular word in Science you can go and look it up and it will have a precise meaning.

The whole point of postmodernism is to make meaning and boundaries unstable. It is deliberately attempting to be as confusing as possible.

I love Jesus and Mo, Errol. For those who haven't seen it, the next one in the series that Errol mentions is very apposite:

www.jesusandmo.net/comic/odds/

Judith Butler wasn't really on my radar so went a-googling and found out (on the Wikipedia page) that she was awarded first prize in a bad writing contest for this gibberish (apologies if this has already been reproduced in this lengthy thread):

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations 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.

If anyone has the expertise, or the time (or the willpower) to translate this I'd be mildly interested..

If you don’t understand a particular word in Science you can go and look it up and it will have a precise meaning.

But that's true of all human intellectual endevour- even the subjective stuff. Even post-modernism didn't really want to rip everything up.

The post-post-modernism of people like Butler is something new and I don't think its wearing any clothes.

Ah! raddled got there before me. Apols.

The key to understanding Judith Butler‘s lack of concern with women’s safety (it’s just “fantasies”) is because, unsurprisingly she doesn’t identify with women and doesn’t really regard herself as a woman. There’s a very telling anecdote. Butler went to give a talk in Brazil and was greeted with angry protestors (Brazil hates the postmodern gender stuff). The protestors had constructed an effigy of her which they burned. But they also dressed the effigy up in a pink bra and stockings.

To me it’s clear why they did this. It was to bring butler down a peg and to mock her as a woman. “You May be an influential academic” they seemed to say “but we can sexualise you, turn you into a mere woman, a sex object , an thing of ridicule.” Making something feminine is a way to humiliate it.

What did Butler make of this? “Well the protestors see me as trans”, she said in an interview. How do? “They put the effigy in a pink bra”. Eh? She’s a woman. How is putting her in a bra making her “trans”? She continues: “the idea was that the bra would be incongruent with who I am, so they were assuming a more masculine core, and the pink bra would have been a way to portray me in drag“

It’s actually a fascinating insight into how her mind works. She has projected her view of herself onto the protestors. They see her as having a masculine core , so a bra is incongruent with that ? No, Butler, YOU are the one who sees yourself as having the masculine core. THEY see you as just a silly woman who can be degraded by being turned into a sex object. They weren’t dressing you in drag - they were putting you in your place. Because they see you as a woman. And because you are a woman.

I think that Judith Butler doesn’t identify with women or empathise with them because she doesn’t really associate herself as a woman. When she encounters bog standard misogyny she can’t see it for what it is - it’s because they think I’m trans , or queer! I think the idea of her as a woman is actually very painful for her - the idea she could be treated like one of “those”. With that in mind it’s not surprising she has retreated to a fantasy world where rape and male violence isn’t real.

YetAnotherSpartacus apologies. That’ll learn me to read the text more closely.

If anyone has the expertise, or the time (or the willpower) to translate this I'd be mildly interested

My main problem in translating it is that even if you understand it (which I kind of do - enough to dissect it at least) is that it does not make sense. She skips between three different but related ways of understanding 'structure' in a way that (to me) fundamentally compares oranges, apples and bananas - it can't be done (at least in the way she does it). If she was to have said, Marx understood structure as deriving from Capital and the social relations that Capital produces, Gramsci introduced the idea of hegemony to expand on Marx's idea about the link between Capital and the ruling ideas (and expanded on this) and then explained Althusser (I don't have the stamina to revisit Althusser, he's almost as bad as Butler), but none consider the aspect of temporality and the related question of how structural relations are reproduced through time then it might have made a little more sense. At least, I think this is what she is saying (and I don't quite agree with her critique).

Sam Leith

"The intellectual shabbiness of Judith Butler

Rather than bring helpful clarity to the trans debate, the revered professor engaged in wilful obtuseness and whataboutery"

unherd.com/2020/09/the-intellectual-shabbiness-of-judith-butler/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3

Emma - please don't apologise - it's an excellent essay and the link did bear repeating :)

I think the idea of her as a woman is actually very painful for her - the idea she could be treated like one of “those”.

I suspect that's spot on.

More than that she explicitly says she doesn't think she's a woman on any level (she's NB, uses They prounouns)- she rejects the notion of a physical basis for 'Gender' and thinks that it's entirely performed.

Now that's damn close to a GC viewpoint except she rejects any basis for physical sex and thinks that 'Gender' is intrinsic, involuntary and 'real' (as far as anything is).

In her view she's not a woman because she says so, has short hair and doesn't wear makeup.