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?

At the end she says that the reason everyone doesn’t agree with her is because she isn’t able to express her position in language of sufficient clarity.

She doesn't answer questions when asked to clarify her positions either.

I recall a very neutral but actually probing interview with the new statesman in which she just called them transphobes for asking questions and ranted about how GC feminist cause all the world's ills.

She says that changing sex is also possible because naming your sex makes it so. This is the realm of pure theory and thought games which is all well and good until you apply it to real life.

Nah!

I mean, yes, that's exactly what she says (IMO, again, it's Butler, so ... who the fuck knows?). But also:

This is PRECISELY where it leaves the territory of "scientific" or even "philosophy" and wanders off into the space of "unfalsifiable woowoo".

Someone, anyone, pray, do tell me (genuinely interested here!), where precisely to draw the line between a philosophical take on "reality happens because you think it" and New Age bullshit like the "Law of Attraction", which, basically makes the same claims.

Except, of course, it all gets messed up and inhumane and positively awful when you take the whole situation from the abstract into the concrete.

And, no, I GENUINELY don't get if there's a definite boundary between Butler and Chopra and, if so, where!

I GENUINELY don't get if there's a definite boundary between Butler and Chopra and, if so, where!

One of them is a callous grifter motivated only by their own fame and fortune who uses big words to hide the self-conflicting vacuousness of their ideas and doesn't care about how their bullshit harms the vulnerable as long as they keep making money.

The other is Deepak Chopra.

@donquixotedelamancha, I think I love you!

@FloralBunting

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

When I dribbled impenetrable cobblers into book form before, I missed a fucking trick by not coining 'non-binary' didn't it? Never mind, I am still the grateful recipient of adulatory hagiographies from all these pricks, and since 'non-binary' seems to be top of the apex right now, I think I will be having some of that, thenkyewverymuch.

Fluent in Butler Bullshit!

HOW did this person acheive academic success? I'd be suprised if she could tie her own shoelaces.

"
At the end she says that the reason everyone doesn’t agree with her is because she isn’t able to express her position in language of sufficient clarity. Considering she’s had 30+ years to try and nail it I’d suggest it ain’t going to be happening any time soon."

Only she has THE TRUTH. She doesn't have the words to describe her own profundity. It flows through her like a modern day Messiah.

She is the chosen one!

CircularReasoning, to be perfectly fair, there's a novel take on the classical Fantasy Epic in there somewhere: "Chosen One - but their fatal flaw is: nobody gets it!"

Commercial potential arguably contingent on the author steering well clear of too much dialogue.

Will she be writing the screen play?

@NoWireHangersEver

I've been thinking about this for a little while anyway, but thought I might take it here - after seeing what Butler had to say about us 'never reading any gender studies'.

We should all start systematically reading gender studies, and start 'listening to trans women'! See exactly what the best and brightest of them have to say, so we can refute it exactly as it's written and argue on their level. We need to know the enemy! Every GC feminist should start getting very familiar with the foundational arguments and literature of contemporary trans ideology.

I'm going through Serano's Whipping Girl right now (very important book, whose arguments are constantly reused online) and seeing so much that's just ridiculously easy to refute. Also reading Andrea Long Chu's Females with a friend. Is there any scope for starting a thread on this forum where we can read, pick apart and discuss notable books by the opposition?

This is why we'll probably win tbh - they don't read books we write, but we read books that they write. Even though their ideology falls apart in a long-form book format.

I have read quite a lot of gender studies and queer theory and listened to Trans Activists. That's why I'm GC.

I read some JB in the 90's and it put me off feminism for 2 decades. I thought, if that's the standard of modern feminist thought, I think it might have peaked and got on with my career grateful to 2nd wave feminists for enabling it.

I haven't self described as a feminist until the last few years and that is mainly down to disagreeing on every conceivabl level with her mind vomit. So I guess she did eventually inspire me into feminism.

I tried to read but it was too convoluted to even try engaging with. Just a load of "blah blah blah" bullshit. Academic my arse, these people would not last a day in the real world.

Judith Chauffeur.

@donquixotedelamancha

I GENUINELY don't get if there's a definite boundary between Butler and Chopra and, if so, where!

One of them is a callous grifter motivated only by their own fame and fortune who uses big words to hide the self-conflicting vacuousness of their ideas and doesn't care about how their bullshit harms the vulnerable as long as they keep making money.

The other is Deepak Chopra.

It's funny because it's true.

It seems that some within feminist movements are becoming sympathetic to these far-right campaigns. This year’s furore around Wi Spa in Los Angeles saw an online outrage by transphobes followed by bloody protests organised by the Proud Boys. Can we expect this alliance to continue?

This kind of thinking, if the far right are interested in a cause we have to back away from it, led those with responsibility in Rochdale and other places to see that a scandal would attract the far right and as a result inaction and continuing to let children get gang raped was the best course.

Is there any scope for starting a thread on this forum where we can read, pick apart and discuss notable books by the opposition?

I would definitely be up for this, but I fear Genderist Book Group would be deleted either because it would be inevitably trolled and derailed into a bunfight by bad actors, or our "picking apart" of their texts, low hanging fruit that it is, would be targeted and deleted as "not in the spirit".

This kind of thinking, if the far right are interested in a cause we have to back away from it, led those with responsibility in Rochdale and other places to see that a scandal would attract the far right and as a result inaction and continuing to let children get gang raped was the best course.

As I recall it the Guardian weren't overly concerned about that outcome either.

This kind of thinking, if the far right are interested in a cause we have to back away from it, led those with responsibility in Rochdale and other places to see that a scandal would attract the far right and as a result inaction and continuing to let children get gang raped was the best course.
Same with the Guardian's lack of reporting on the Cologne NYE rapes.

It's a childish polarisation that means some grim real life consequences are acceptable so the party line isn't challenged.

@IvyTwines2

Judith Chauffeur.

Judith Scullerymaid.

And right now there's an actual American far right terrorist in the process of self-IDing into a lighter sentence and a women's prison.

This is the person who signed both the petition for and the petition against the antisemitic Bristol Uni lecturer last year, so basic understanding of issues and attention to detail obviously not her thing anymore, if they ever were.

And I'll take no lectures about equality or solidarity from someone who, when asked to come and speak at an academic event in the UK (budget fuck all, as usual with these things) demanded both a first class plane ticket and that the organisation pay for her dogs to be kennelled.

Someone, anyone, pray, do tell me (genuinely interested here!), where precisely to draw the line between a philosophical take on "reality happens because you think it" and New Age bullshit like the "Law of Attraction", which, basically makes the same claims

The philosophical take isn't so much 'reality happens becuase you think it'...but more language, discourses and accepted knowledges (e.g. things we take to be facts without questioning them) are the main sources of 'power' in society....so much so that labelling and classification actually creates things and objects by defining them and making them seem significant. For example, Butler's argument would be that the two categories of biological sex only exist -and are only seen as meaningful- because of the bulk of scientific knowledge and language that exists to describe and demarcate them. Society could, just as equally, have been structured around humans with blue vs brown eyes but it isn't because we dont have a whole field of knowledge and language around these two categories, to the same extent that we do biological sex. She would also argue that the reason knowledge exists around biological sex is to enforce compulsory heterosexuality and by doing so uphold the patriarchy.

@IvyTwines2

And right now there's an actual American far right terrorist in the process of self-IDing into a lighter sentence and a women's prison.

You're being inconvenient with such observations.

JB and acolytes have no difficulty observing such cases because [I shall leave them to fill the credibility gap with something appropriate and a black hole density of evidence].

Not read the whole thread but wanted to comment before forgot what I was going to say!

JB is a major and long term proponent of queer theory. Her work and publications etc have been fundamental to the whole concept of gender > sex.

It's amazing how in most of academia you get bollocked for a lack of clarity of spew word salad everywhere. Yet somehow in social science it's normal.

I can't get over the thinly veiled 'all three plebs are too thick to understand my books'. I know I am far from thick, and I just can't be bothered to sit there unravelling bollocks. I did it quite enough when I was studying, and used to reduce a side and a half to three sentences.

God, I hate my phone. Let's try again....get bollocked for lack of clarity if you spew word salad...

I read the thing and as usual from JB it's word salad, unrelated points being linked because why not.

The main things for me in that piece are:

The idea (fact) that biological sex is in any way important in humans is wrong oppressive and bad.

Anyone who thinks that biological sex us relevant to anything at all is either a religious fundamentalist, t*RF or some other sort of baddy.

Strangely the fact that 99.9999% of the world knows exactly how important sex is and what it means for how people are treated/ expected to behave is... As usual not even slightly alluded to. The ONLY people who are the worst of the worse for saying sex matters are t*rfs aka women.

It's very interesting that.

Anyway. There you have it from one of the most famous long term proponents of this philosopher.

And JB is a philosopher. As such it's their job to think about all sorts of things. In the end it's a highly intellectual and academic discipline that is not to do with being grounded in the day to day.

So her theories and arguments. Perfectly more than fine as a point for consideration, debate. To provoke questions and challenge attitudes etc.

The fact that what should have been interesting thought experiments and challenging concepts got consumed by the criminal justice system etc.

Well that's another question entirely. It wasn't her having behind closed doors meetings with govt etc. Or somehow getting the department of health to tell NHS to have single gender wards but LIE to the public about it bloody years and years ago.