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?

This is one tiny real world example of a conflict between the gender identity ideology and reality and how one of the stalwarts of the MSM has damaged itself to a remarkable degree by adhering to the ideology.

The plan is for the gender identity ideology to spread out from its strongholds and be applied right across society, to all areas, and for there to be no possibility of any challenge.

Look at the mess The Guardian is in. Then imagine that chaos being spread everywhere.

Look at the mess The Guardian is in. Then imagine that chaos being spread everywhere.

And the mess the BBC got into during the Olympics on some topics. Plus, every time one of their news reports is in line with ideology rather than the facts of the news this will cement that they're willing to misinform or disinform us in greater service of an ideology that not everyone accepts.

Gleason is not a journalist. She's an academic who is a massive fangirl of Butler

www.patreon.com/posts/23689989

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.

Gleeson is so far from being a proper journalist that they don't even understand why it's not acceptable practice to change the question afterwards. Gleeson even seems to feel that they are the wronged party in all this. It speaks volumes that the Guardian would hire such a person to do an interview with Judith Butler. But again, this seems to be the US Guardian (even though it appeared in the life and style section, which is normally UK stuff) and, as their two reports on Wi Spa show, the US Guardian doesn't seem to have any interest in employing people who understand basic journalistic practice. (Odd, too, because we're constantly told that US publications have an obsession with factual accuracy.)

We even have a quote from Sam Levin, who did all the Wi Spa reports, and summed up the US Guardian's priorities thus in the article mentioned in the Vice piece:

The spirit of the Guardian is something we deeply believe in – it’s about fairness and equality. We should work to hire trans people on staff. And our journalism should be grounded in the principle that trans women are women, and that trans people should have the right to feel safe to live as themselves.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/02/guardian-editorial-response-transgender-rights-uk

And this was their astonishingly arrogant take on a piece about our law, which had nothing to do with them.

The Guardian in the US is committed to covering this important civil rights fight, but when the time came for us to report on Trump’s attacks, we encountered problems. Some trans people wouldn’t talk to us.
That’s because, days earlier, the Guardian published an editoriall^ that we believe promoted transphobic viewpoints, including some of the same assertions about gender that US politicians are citing in their push to eliminate trans rights. Guardian journalists in the US had no input in the editorial, which we felt was misplaced and misguided, and nearly all reporters and editors from our New York, Washington DC and California offices wrote to UK editors with our concerns.
The editorial was an attempt to make sense of a growing debate about trans rights in the UK. While focused on the Gender Recognition Act, the editorial and resulting conversations have exposed some of the fundamental divides between American and British feminism and progressive politics – and highlighted for us an alarming intolerance of trans viewpoints in mainstream UK discourse.
The editorial used a UK legal debate about IDs to argue that trans rights “collide” with cis women’s rights; that equality for trans women “could adversely affect other women”; and that allowing trans women to access public spaces threatens cis women’s “safety”. These arguments were met with particular dismay in the US as they echo the position of anti-trans legislators who have pushed overtly transphobic bathroom billss^.

Do we think Hadley Freeman and Sonia Sodha should ask for editorial input into US Politics editorials? Arguably the California offfice should have consulted the U.K. journalists before they wrote spiteful, defamatory bollocks about the Wi Spa complainant?

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Do we think Hadley Freeman and Sonia Sodha should ask for editorial input into US Politics editorials? Arguably the California offfice should have consulted the U.K. journalists before they wrote spiteful, defamatory bollocks about the Wi Spa complainant?

No, that isn’t their job.

The Guardian employs editors who should be on top of this.

Gobsmacked at the Vice stuff. Gleeson's suggestion of keeping the answer yet changing the question is actually hilarious if it wasn't so depressing. Particularly so given that Gleeson specifically says bigots respond to things without reading them - clearly trying to paint Butler as a bigot.

.“However with all this said, I can see why the new developments took Wi Spa from a weak example to a counter-productive one,” Gleeson said.

What's that rule of misogyny? The worst thing about male violence is that it makes a weak example counter-productive.

"Counter-productive" is a euphemism for "false" or "incorrect", I guess?

Does show the mind-set. He knows beforehand what he wants to produce, and examples are either are "productive" in that they support it or "counter-productive" in that they don't.

This isn't journalism...

America is a fundamentally very different country that by a quirk of history happens to have English as its main language. If the Guardian business wants to make money in the US by competing with Vice, they should create a different publication and not confuse the two.

If you look on twitter the ire being directed at The Guardian seems to be coming mostly from trans activists because The Guardian has committed the worst sin in the world: cancelling the words of our Blessed Lady of Gender St Judith.

Oh Guardian, what have you done?

And they think that "transphobes" want to silence Judith Butler.

Because we're terrified people will hear her incredibly coherent arguments?

No, please, let her talk as much as possible. Preferably in a proper debate.

No, that isn’t their job.

The Guardian employs editors who should be on top of this.

I agree, just pointing out the disparity.

If you look on twitter the ire being directed at The Guardian seems to be coming mostly from trans activists because The Guardian has committed the worst sin in the world: cancelling the words of our Blessed Lady of Gender St Judith.

It's really quite hilarious.

What's that rule of misogyny? The worst thing about male violence is that it makes a weak example counter-productive.

Perfect.

Jo Maugham has eagerly retweeted someone who quoted from the butler interview and said “this will blow t**f minds!” Now I read the interview and it didn’t blow my mind. It was a curious mixture of banality and batshit insanity. But it was interesting to see what this individual thought would blow my mind because it belies a misunderstanding of the gender critical position. Apparently I’m supposed to be shocked into silence by butler saying something like “sex is assigned at birth and then a gender is assigned after that. But assignment doesn’t stop there. The rest of our lives are a constant stream of gender assignments “

Well I disagree with sex being assigned. But the bit about gender being constantly assigned to us … that’s just what de Beauvoir thinks in the second sex. Or to be more precise , our gender is assigned by society at birth and then constantly reinforced and reified over our life times. I think it’s linguistically clumsy to talk about something being assigned more than once.but this is what I imagine most gender critical feminists believe - that gender is an oppressive system imposed from outside throughout a woman’s life.

I guess I would love to know exactly what is supposed to have blown my mind and why. It seems there is just a massive disconnect about what gender critical feminists are supposed to believe. And I just find it funny that we are supposedly gnashing our teeth in rage that Judy has bested us.

Or to be more precise , our gender is assigned by society at birth and then constantly reinforced and reified over our life times.

Quite.

I long for any indication of an understanding of the issues at the heart of this from any of the self-appointed experts such as JM. As Helen Joyce commented in her book, it would be so much easier to have a useful public discussion if there were a coherent intellectual case that can be scrutinised using familiar evidence-based tools and procedures that are available (I paraphrase).

The narrative being pushed by trans activists is that The Guardian decide to censor the words of our Blessed Lady of Gender St Judith because of pressure applied by T*s.

While the reality is that on the gender critical side there was delight at what the article contained and given the choice the gender critical side would have wanted the particular question and answer to have remained.

One way that The Guardian could escape some of the ire of the trans activists would be to go along with the trans activist narrative. Having tried everything else, I wonder whether they'll try that too?

@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?

The interviewer certainly did. "It seems that some within feminist movements are becoming sympathetic to these far-right campaigns."

The thinking seems to be that it couldnt possibly be the other way round (or no way round) as important campaigns must originate with male groups.

They're only women after all.

It was a curious mixture of banality and batshit insanity

Yes. This is largely why I have been hanging around this board for the past year. The Hines, Phipps and Butlers of this world are producing stunningly unremarkable ideas, superficial, trivial and fuller of holes than very holey things indeed. And what I really don't understand is that they never, ever, ever present a case. Just assertions. I've read Pluckrose and Linsay's book, but I still can't quite believe that intelligent people can fall for this.

I guess I would love to know exactly what is supposed to have blown my mind and why.

Personally I’m surprised that Butler appears to have the same level of intellectual curiosity as Nigel Farage. That blows my mind.

The Hines, Phipps and Butlers of this world are producing stunningly unremarkable ideas, superficial, trivial and fuller of holes than very holey things indeed.

And also available for free on twitter from people with much more exciting avatars.

And I just find it funny that we are supposedly gnashing our teeth in rage that Judy has bested us.

She’d be hopeless on a parking thread. Would probably refuse to provide a diagram.

The only mind-blowing thing is that she's getting away with it and people are falling for it. (Or claiming to fall for it).

I'm not convinced she could hold her own in a debate on an FWR thread. Too many actually knowledgeable and coherent people here. She'd be ripped to shreds.