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.'

Here’s some rich fantasies for you Judith Butler, courtesy of a dedicated Twitter feminist.

It’s not nice content if you’re of delicate sensibility, but it’s all media reports.)

mobile.twitter.com/bunifoosh/status/1298389741637980165

mobile.twitter.com/bunifoosh/status/1290302407352545281

mobile.twitter.com/bunifoosh/status/1234230311564840960

I am not aware that terf is used as a slur

She's a liar. Nobody with even a cursory interest in this subject could be unaware that it's always used as a slur. Nobody self describes as a terf, and when it's used to describe women it's often accompanied by insults and threats. She knows this - why lie about it?

What a load of portentous shite. She writes like she’s delivering the sermon on the mount. In truth, its an overblown, long-winded version of Ruth Hunt’s breezy “women are going to get raped anyway” handwave.

In recent years Judith Butler has come to realise that ... yes, she actually does give a shit about causes like black lives matter and free Palestine. That’s great. Good on her. But it clashes somewhat terribly with her postmodernist stance which literally says there is no such thing as right or wrong. All one can do is cock a snook or “queer” ones oppression, after all.

Once you get behind her complex postmodern language she’s actually a shallow and dull thinker. Trans critical feminists aren’t really feminists. Yawnnnn.
Then we hear that male violence , perpetrated by the penis, is a “fantasy”.

"The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person"
Well, when a child is born with a penis, it is immediately subjected to male socialisation. So in a sense, yes the penis does define the person.

And for people who haven’t read it - in gender trouble Judith Butler doubted there was any such thing as “woman” which the feminist movement stood for. For her , the goal of feminism is not to free women (cos they don’t exist) but to debate endlessly what the term “woman” means and to constantly destabilise and “queer” it. This is why she is so mad at what she calls “biological essentialism “ (recognising that women are adult human females) because ultimately she thinks women don’t even exist.

My first reaction was yawn. My second a hearty giggle at terryleather's comment.

And now I've arrived at wondering if a) she's been sleeping through the last two years of intense debate, b) she reads any dissenting views to her own, ever and c) if she's always this badly informed?

This is some of the worst argued drivel I've seen. And I've seen a lot.

Like asking why we object to being called trans exclusionary since we do seek to exclude males who identify as trans from female-only spaces. Really? Virtually every argument I've ever read criticising the term has at a bare minimum mentioned the fact that we do not exclude on the basis of trans identity but on the basis of sex. And that's why the term is at the very least inaccurate, because females who identify as trans are not people we seek to exclude. So if we include some people who identify as trans and exclude others, we are not trans exclusionary. That is basic logic.

Unless, of course, she doesn't remember that females who identify as trans exist.

Or using my dad's favourite lazy argument against anything - I've never heard of it, so it cannot be true/exist/have happened. There's whole subbranches of philosophy devoted to debating whether things exist that aren't being observed. Whether observation changes the thing being observed. Whether there is such a thing as objective, observable reality. How we know things. About knowledge and belief. But she just goes, Meh, never heard of it. Can't be true.

And this gem:

It assumes that the penis is the threat

Give the woman a Nobel Peace prize. Right now. She's solved the biggest human rights issue on the planet. Male violence is an assumption. Yay, lets move on to more worthwhile endeavours.

This is How to Make Yourself Irrelevant 101. Accompanied by a workshop titled Being a Fool in Public Discourse.

When laws and social policies represent women, they make tacit decisions about who counts as a woman, and very often make presuppositions about what a woman is. We have seen this in the domain of reproductive rights. So the question I was asking then is: do we need to have a settled idea of women, or of any gender, in order to advance feminist goals?

Well, yes, we do need a definition of what a woman is. My definition is an adult female human (and a woman isn't a 'gender'). I wonder what Judith's definition of a woman is?

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark

How dare she appropriate the name of feminist for herself, that patriarchy-serving male supremacist.

There isn’t a single honest bone in her body.

She betrays women with every utterance. She can't really believe this: 'I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream.' She's pedalling snake oil, but it's made her famous so... The Wizard of Oz analogy is spot on.

I put the question that way… to remind us that feminists are committed to thinking about the diverse and historically shifting meanings of gender, and to the ideals of gender freedom.

Isn't feminism more about getting rid of the idea of 'gender'?

Many people who were assigned “female” at birth never felt at home with that assignment, and those people (including me) tell all of us something important about the constraints of traditional gender norms for many who fall outside its terms.

Does she think that feminists believe that everyone should stay in their traditional gender boxes? If so, she really hasn't been paying attention.

This is part of her first answer.

I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen.

So she wants us to shut up and is telling people to refuse to let women speak. Tough, we won't and guess what, what we are the mainstream. Missed that in your ivory tower didn't you.

Butler, like Naomi Wolfe, is trapped in a US "intellectual" bubble . Butler isn't qualified to talk about what is or isn't "mainstream" in the UK. She clearly doesn't read our press and isn't aware of all the out "GC" national columnists who are longstanding feminists.

Butler obviously isn't aware of the YouGov survey that showed the majority of Brits polled don't agree with giving bepenised persons access to women's spaces or allowing males to compete in womens' sports.

In the US these ivory tower neoliberal feminists would never be exposed to GC views in their national press or in the Academy as GC feminists are too scared to speak out, can be fired at will and have no workplace protections.

The US has a poor record on womens' rights and I don't see why we should be interested on the latest "hot take" of a male pandering neoliberal feminist like Butler.

Fortunately for me I had never heard of this person before today. I plan to never trouble myself with her opinions again.

@GreenUp

Butler, like Naomi Wolfe, is trapped in a US "intellectual" bubble . Butler isn't qualified to talk about what is or isn't "mainstream" in the UK. She clearly doesn't read our press and isn't aware of all the out "GC" national columnists who are longstanding feminists.

Butler obviously isn't aware of the YouGov survey that showed the majority of Brits polled don't agree with giving bepenised persons access to women's spaces or allowing males to compete in womens' sports.

In the US these ivory tower neoliberal feminists would never be exposed to GC views in their national press or in the Academy as GC feminists are too scared to speak out, can be fired at will and have no workplace protections.

The US has a poor record on womens' rights and I don't see why we should be interested on the latest "hot take" of a male pandering neoliberal feminist like Butler.

It's the same problem you see with Margaret Atwood, who does believe women exist. There is simply no progressive person or media coverage of this issue that is not 100% woke. To take a critical standpoint in those circles would elicit the same gasps of shock as saying you support Trump, or have worries about immigration, or you have qualms about the politics of BLM, or wearing masks.

It's incredible really, the narrowness, and many people who believe themselves to be well educated and informed are missing whole chunks of exposure that FWR posters will take for granted.

It's the same problem you see with Margaret Atwood, who does believe women exist. There is simply no progressive person or media coverage of this issue that is not 100% woke. To take a critical standpoint in those circles would elicit the same gasps of shock as saying you support Trump, or have worries about immigration, or you have qualms about the politics of BLM, or wearing masks.

This is so true. The one place I used to see US and Canadian GC women expressing themselves was on the subreddit gendercritical and since Reddit has banned that subreddit, where do these posters get their information or have a chance to convene with other feminist women?

Plus who in the US can speak out? If your healthcare depends on having employment - why would you jeopardise your health and future knowing that you could lose everything from being fired.

We are so fortunate here to have feminists like Janice Turner, Helen Lewis, Hadley Freedman, Julie Bindel, Helen Joyce, Suzanne Moore, Joan Smith and others speaking out in the mainstream press about these issues. That's before we even mention the fabulous JK Rowling - top author of our times.

This is so true. The one place I used to see US and Canadian GC women expressing themselves was on the subreddit gendercritical and since Reddit has banned that subreddit, where do these posters get their information or have a chance to convene with other feminist women?

Yup. And it's my experience that people the age of Butler or Atwood don't generally use platforms like Reddit, or even watch youtube videos, for their information. They may read some news sources online but often they are print media that is now online or something that is very similar. They are more attached to text and a lot of discussion on these issues has moved to other formats.

I'm sympathetic because in many ways I think text is a better communication tool for complex ideas. But in this case it means for women of that generation they are less likely to see that there is real disagreement, or they just aren't up on the debate.

That's what always strikes me, it's as if they haven't seen all the discussions of the last few years. And that's because they actually haven't.

Once you get behind her complex postmodern language word soup made of feces and men's tears she’s actually a shallow and dull thinker.

And terryleather thanks for the laugh!

Judith‘s Argument assumes that every man has a tendency to discriminate against and harrass transwomen in his bathroom, an argument which in itself is Butler also assumes that every single penis bearer who enters women‘s toilets in a dress genuinely does so believing they are a woman. Butler thus ascribes the power of ‚making a Person a woman and erasing malicious intent to a dress...
One can argue any sh*te by ignoring statistics and atomizing an issue to the individual level. ‚Not all xxx...‘ is a silly Argument in this context.

I had to read her work for a university class 20+ years ago. I thought it was shit then, but always had it my mind that I just didn't understand it. Now I know. I understood it. It was just shit.

This is some of the worst argued drivel I've seen. And I've seen a lot.

It's practically up there with Naomi Wolf in terms of total cluelessness about topic coupled with total confidence and assertiveness of view.

I'm going to suggest that this seems to be something of an American trait...

Oh, okay, I've just noticed some PP saying that more seriously - it being a culture problem more than a character/socialisation problem.

Can’t understand how her nonsense became so popular.

This.

She evades every question and just repeats her point that GC feminists are not real feminists.

She uses 1000 words where one would do, to make exactly the same simplistic arguments which every TRA trots out.

@BrandineDelRoy

I had to read her work for a university class 20+ years ago. I thought it was shit then, but always had it my mind that I just didn't understand it. Now I know. I understood it. It was just shit.

Ha, me too! I was forced to study some Butler at Uni in the early 90s. She wrote atrocious, meandering, impenetrable horses’ doo doo then, and nothing much has changed now, clearly 🤣 I did confess in a tutorial that I found her work such turgid bollocks that I’d fallen asleep in the library trying to read it and drooled on the book. Everyone pretended in the class that I was an utter philistine and Just Didn’t Get It, but it was a different story at the end of term party when everyone had had a drink and the truth came out!

Believing that humans are sexually dimorphic and that this matters isn’t a fringe belief, Judith, you banana. Try asking some people of your acquaintance who don’t live in your silly academic bubble.

What a load of illogical, deceitful cobblers.

Just complete rhubarb. How can she get away with writing such rubbish? If I published irrational crap like this in my field, I'd be shredded.

In so many ways, that piece seems to be a fetish of fantasising. She almost had a clear thought when she said males discriminated against tw in bathrooms but then lost it again when she put the onus back on the support women to allow those discriminated against people into the female loos.

I guess she lives very well protected in her fantasy bubble, as evidenced by the fact she hasn’t seen the term t**f used as a slur. It seems she has really taken to her new role of fiction writing.