Judith Butler interview

[MotherofPearl]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/07/judith-butler-interview-gender?CMP=ShareiOSAppOther

Apologies if this has already been posted. I found this troubling to read. Am I misreading this or is Butler saying that GC feminism is fascist?

I don’t think the problem is her overly technical use of language.

Her use of ‘TERF’, suggests the opposite - lack of precision. She isn’t saying anything you couldn’t find on Twitter. The overall impression is of a deep lack of intellectual curiosity.

@CatherinaJTV

You forgot d) she is hiding the fact she is talking nonsense.

or maybe that's the lingo in her field and that's why a colleague has no problems reading it.

Hmm,do they tho?

newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody

So it seems the interviewer wanted to keep the answer but change the question(!)

The Guardian wanted a correction, but the interviewer refused to write one.

So it ended up deleted.

Not sure why the Guardian can't do its own correction though in that situation? Maybe figured it was too much effort. If the author doesn't care enough, just drop it.

twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1435674221586305027

When I wrote Gender Trouble, there was no category for “nonbinary” – but now I don’t see how I cannot be in that category.

This quote really doesn’t inspire confidence.

Gender Trouble was written in 1990, not 1880 or 1952.

The phrase ‘non binary’ might not have existed, but gender non conformity certainly did.

As much as it pains me to click on anything from Vice, their story includes a statement from the Guardian that confirms the 'developments' in question were around Wi Spa (tried to c&p but it didn't work).

What the 'developments' specifically were and the difference they made to what was published and then pulled, however, they don't have the stones to elaborate.

Vice further obfuscates things, like the Graun before it, by describing the charges relating to the perp of the Wi Spa incident without any gendered terms whatsoever. Ignoring this - because who the feck are they fooling by pretending not to see what's going on, or that it doesn't matter - is an absolute disgrace.

Whoever would be happy just to know a 'person' has been charged over this? Who would be so brain dead as not to follow up the implications of this and think about what it really means? It really is Orwellian.

Vice claims the cut was made to the Guardian piece in the face of reader complaints, which again gives them the excuse to blame t*s. This still doesn't really make sense. Why did the Guardian not stand by their writer and/ or how did it get published in the first place? They are far from off the hook.

This still doesn't really make sense.

More details in that Jesse Singal thread, via Jezebel.

So it seems the interviewer wanted to keep the answer but change the question(!)

I can’t decide if this solution is very on brand (queering the concept of an interview) or just the kind of thing you could imagine Country Life doing if publishing an interview with Prince Charles.

@NecessaryScene

This still doesn't really make sense.

More details in that Jesse Singal thread, via Jezebel.

Ah thanks, I assumed that was a previous thread from Jesse. Still the Guardian statement does not cover itself in glory. It had a chance to clearly explain the relevance of the Wi Spa incident and just like Vice, covered it all up again.

@BraveBananaBadge the Wikipedia page on Butler is similarly vague: reading the section on The Guardian, it's now an "unknown individual with a penis"!

[quote IvyTwines2]@BraveBananaBadge the Wikipedia page on Butler is similarly vague: reading the section on The Guardian, it's now an "unknown individual with a penis"![/quote]
It's so very sinister now. It's not 'being kind', it's turning a blind eye.

@merrymouse

So it seems the interviewer wanted to keep the answer but change the question(!)

I can’t decide if this solution is very on brand (queering the concept of an interview) or just the kind of thing you could imagine Country Life doing if publishing an interview with Prince Charles.

Dave Hewitt

@voidifremoved
Replying to

@jessesingal

What I love about this is the idea that Butler's answers are independent of the questions. Which is true, but hilarious

In the Vice interview:

“Habitual bigots online are going to do their thing, and usually respond to pieces without even reading them,” Gleeson wrote in a statement sent to Motherboard.

However, Gleeson thinks Butler’s response can be switched to answer a question that she hadn’t seen at the time.

If the Guardian feel unable to include a brief factual note acknowledging recent developments they are in trouble.

Whether or not we like what Butler said, it’s an interview not a news story or Guardian editorial, so there was no reason not to publish it. The Guardian’s key problem is that they are being prevented from reporting news.

This is what happens when you let "journalist activists" to write for your publication. Facts that don't fit into the approved ideological framework have to be suppressed.

I wonder if word of this is getting round the actual journalists at The Guardian?

I imagine it might come up at the cringey weekly staff meeting they apparently have at Guardian HQ.

In case it's not been link to already, here's some background:

grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-butler-did-it-the-mysterious

I wonder if word of this is getting round the actual journalists at The Guardian?

The remaining journalists still clinging on? Got to be getting harder for them to ignore it.

[[https://twitter.com/suzanne_moore/status/1435523992417406977
Suzanne Moore the other day:]]

Perhaps now you can see why I left a perfectly good job at a once respected newspaper. I was not silenced or cancelled or ever claimed to be. I was angry, hurt and appalled at what passed there for critical thinking/feminism/solidarity/basic journalistic standards. Its now a joke

thefeministani.wordpress.com/2021/09/09/judith-butler-and-afghan-women/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Has Owen Jones commented on this yet?

lanadelgrey

Thank you for posting that. It's a great piece, so clear. I'm not sure how anyone could argue that she doesn't have the right to say it.

Imagine a Muslim woman in the UK who escapes a violent marriage and threats of honor killing. She goes to a shelter where she feels safe because it is a female-only space. Not just because she is away from the realm of immediate male violence, but because as a Muslim woman she does not feel comfortable sharing intimate quarters with a person with a male body. This allows her to reconcile her awful situation as well as her need to feel she is acting in congruence with her identity and principles of modesty as a Muslim woman.
But if a trans woman with a penis is in the same space, then the Muslim woman will be in a terrible conflict about her actions in leaving her home. Suddenly, she is not able to remove her hijab or undress because she cannot do those things in front of a person with a male body who is not a family member. This not a hypothetical, there are Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu women who are now excluded from single sex-only spaces because the definition of woman has changed to include women with penises. To call that Muslim woman a TERF because she expresses discomfort is yet another abuse for her.
All this to say that we have yet to negotiate safety and freedom for women with female bodies and not ignore or override minority women in the West or women from my part of the world out of these negotiations. Afghan girls and women have in fact had to disguise themselves as boys and men in order to move outside the home, earn a living or perform vital chores during the rule of the Taliban. Would this be called “performing gender” as Judith Butler calls it, or a resourceful survival strategy that Afghan women adopted in order to be able to live?

Presumably publications like Vice haven’t specified the gender identity of the person charged in the WiSpa incident because they haven’t yet decided whether they are genuinely-trans or never-was-real-trans. I’m guessing the outcome will be judged on the result of the court case; it is a Schrodinger’s Cat type situation in which the true gender identity can only be known after the verdict.

And if the journalist involved thinks that it’s acceptable practice to retrospectively change the interview question which the interviewee is purported to have answered then I would not have much faith in the accuracy or reliability of the rest of the material they hand in for publication, if I was their editor.

Presumably publications like Vice haven’t specified the gender identity of the person charged in the WiSpa incident because they haven’t yet decided whether they are genuinely-trans or never-was-real-trans.

Either way they are in a bind that sets off massive alarm bells. In a sane world the jig would be up.

If the perp is what they say they are it becomes undeniable there's a conflict of rights, and a big issue here they have been refusing to truthfully acknowledge.

And if they judgement call that this trans woman isn't a 'real' trans woman, again their editorial line falls like a house of cards and they face the wrath of TRAs and death by social media.

All they can do is double down and keep denying the facts. We can only hope that can't stand in the long term?

I like the suggestion that a judge in a trial can give one of the verdicts:

1. this person is not guilty and is a transwoman; or
2. this person is guilty and is therefore a man.

Maybe the verdict could incorporate a process to immediately award a GRC in the event of "not guilty".

And if the journalist involved thinks that it’s acceptable practice to retrospectively change the interview question which the interviewee is purported to have answered then I would not have much faith in the accuracy or reliability of the rest of the material they hand in for publication, if I was their editor.

Seriously! That interview is appalling. So hard of thinking that they can’t think through the consequences if journalists are allowed to retroactively change the questions in a Q&A, or understand why the editors of a newspaper might balk at that. Slagging off their colleagues for having professional standards! Actually making a point that they didn’t charge any money for the lie. We can take it then that charging editors money for lies they made up is their usual practice. How is it even possible that they think they’re in the right? Other than being dumb as a box of blue and pink hammers.

This issue is, at some point, going to accelerate the public's confidence in the alleged impartiality and basic news reporting function of MSM.

The complaints about partial or partisan media from MSM sound hollow when egregious actions like this occur.

I think what they think is that Wi Spa is an embarrassing inconvenience but gender critical feminists are the baddies, defo so why can't they just change the question? Everyone hates us, who cares?