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?

JB wiki

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler

'Judith Pamela Butler[2] (born February 24, 1956) is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory,[3] and literary theory.[4] In 1993, Butler began teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, where they have served, beginning in 1998, as the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory. They are also the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School.[5]'

Went to Yale.
Around for years.
Groundbreaking and very interesting ideas which as a philosopher is kind of the thing.

I focus my ire on the MRAs, misogynists, govt depts etc who are and having been pushing this in real life, as it were.

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

@Redyellowpink, did she actually say that, or is that an example of the sort of thing she might have said?

Let's be blunt about this. It's just bollocks from beginning to end. It's like someone advocating astrology but dressed up in fancy language. I don't have any patience with it and find it depressing that any self-respecting human being does. Nobody actually believes that biological sex isn't important. I don't suppose she even believes it herself. She's just made a living for so long out of peddling gender woo that she feels obliged to continue with it.

Philosophy is full of weird ideas to ponder.

Nihilism anyone? Just off the top of my head I'm no philosopher!

The problem with this is it's escape from that domain.

Philosophy should be of use to ordinary people. It will always escape from its domain.

It’s entirely unclear who the fascists are, which would be a starting point in her making a sensible argument.

Clarity is a dominant western concept. JB is queering it.

Not criticising you RedYellowPink, just responding to some of the philosophical points in your excellent translation.

The scientific method does question.  It is a constant cycle of questioning and revision of knowledge and has been since the enlightenment.  

Since Postmodernism is the dominant narrative now, it IS the "power" in society, it should be turning that finely honed perception on itself round about now.

Society is structured around sex because it is the prime driver of any species, in a way that eye colour never will. Unless blue and brown eyes have some function in gene propogation.

It seems that "Western Knowledge" is not challenged in areas that don't threaten the power of the people getting power and position by decrying it. It also presupposes that other humans have developed in any other way, which they have not in any significant way.

It also ignores the fact that all concepts have to at some point be anchored to something universal. Physics, maths, biology, evolution.

Any biological dimorphism we have as a species is BECAUSE of the sex binary. The binary drives specialisation of reproductive role. Evolution in action.

The power that one sex as a group has over the other sex as a group exists in populations that are non verbal. Primates, Wolf packs because that is what propagates genes.

Non western societies reach the same mathematical solutions and scientific understandings given the same set of variables.

For all the inequality, we are still living in the least violent, healthiest, wealthiest time ever known. I suspect this is how it stalls. Human progress sidelined by identity politics dissapearing up its own spoilt , second rate philosophical arse.

I care less about the environment these days, I don't think we really deserve to persist as a species. Postmodernism makes me feel nihilistic.

What edits did the Guardian make? It says at the end -

This article was edited on 7 September 2021 to reflect developments which occurred after the interview took place

That's today, so did they get a lot of complaints or something?

I'm reasonably intelligent and am capable of understanding difficult stuff but when I read JB's:

The anti-gender ideology movement, a global movement, insists that sex is biological and real, or that sex is divinely ordained, and that gender is a destructive fiction, taking down both “man” and “civilization” and “God”. Anti-gender politics have been bolstered by the Vatican and the more conservative evangelical and apostolic churches on several continents, but also by neoliberals in France and elsewhere who need the normative family to absorb the decimation of social welfare.

I find it so full of tricks, strawmen, and misleading terminology that it doesn't really say anything, it's such a mess it's effectively meaningless. Beyond word soup signifying a cat's bum mouth, that is.

@StrangeLookingParasite

She's an ambulant sack of every cliché about the social 'sciences'.

Love it.

@Eyesofdisarray

Cba to read it all- bull Why the need to expand the category of women? Why not expand the category of men??? Somebody tell her Terf is a slur. Outrageous

That Alex person - you know, the one with the beard and the jangly jewellery - has already expanded the category of woman. Get with the programme, Butler!

@NoYOUbekind

More than a little bit disingenous to publish this today with JB's account of the Wi Spa incidents and a link to the Guardian's account of the Wi Spa incidents when we now know what we know about the Wi Spa.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that is fake news...

They have decided to wheel out a reliable fart machine to distract from their own stink.

Just checked the Guardian comments on Twitter. It's overwhelmingly sceptical or negative. Why aren't they listening to that? Is click-bait trolling women too irresistible maybe?

@RoyalCorgi

Let's be blunt about this. It's just bollocks from beginning to end. It's like someone advocating astrology but dressed up in fancy language. I don't have any patience with it and find it depressing that any self-respecting human being does. Nobody actually believes that biological sex isn't important. I don't suppose she even believes it herself. She's just made a living for so long out of peddling gender woo that she feels obliged to continue with it.

See I've been trawling through this thread trying to make sense of Butler, I'm no academic and I'm certainly not a philsopher. The thread has been helpful and so very informative posts, but when it comes down to it this is the one I agree with most.

Me too the wee donkey

How come she never says let’s define the word men

Absolutely a tube she is

Butler threads often make people head down rabbit holes. Here's one of the mainly eyebrow-raising things I've found:

In recent years, the professor has become one of the most prominent supporters in academe of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement against Israel. In her latest book, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, she explicitly calls for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While Butler’s anti-Zionism is of a piece with a wide swath of the left-wing professoriate, hers is notorious for a set of comments uttered at a September 2006 Berkeley Teach-In against Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon, in which Butler responded to a question from a member of the audience frustrated with the “hesitation” of some on the left to fully embrace Hamas and Hezbollah due to their use of violence. “Understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important,” she said. “That does not stop us from being critical of certain dimensions of both movements. It doesn’t stop those of us who are interested in nonviolent politics from raising the question of whether there are other options besides violence.”

@justSpeculation no she didn't actually say that! Sorry for any confusion...she does say that the importance we place on binary biological sex as one of the most significant thing about humans is arbitrary and only done to reinforce 'compulsory heterosexuality'....I used to teach her and I would use the example of eye colour to try and illustrate the point she was making.

Did anyone archive the original version of the piece?

I hope someone's archived it, lanadelgrey. Looking at it again, they've removed the reference to the Wi spa incident and the comparison of gender-critical feminism to fascism. To say they've removed those references in the light of things that happened since the interview took place is disingenuous: either she believes that feminists who care about safeguarding are fascists, or she doesn't.

They don't even apologise.

[quote Redyellowpink]@justSpeculation no she didn't actually say that! Sorry for any confusion...she does say that the importance we place on binary biological sex as one of the most significant thing about humans is arbitrary and only done to reinforce 'compulsory heterosexuality'....I used to teach her and I would use the example of eye colour to try and illustrate the point she was making.[/quote]
Great! Thanks for clearing that up. What interested me was that sex is obviously a significant feature in all contexts, for material reasons that depend on the different levels of investment men and women have in reproduction biologically. But it's difficult to think of one in which eye colour would be significant. Not impossible, but difficult. Is Butler really claiming that something as redundant as eye colour could be as significant a classing factor as sex and in the same way, across cultures and across history? And all by declaring it so?

I hope so too. If anyone can link to the archived one I’d be ever so grateful

I read JB in her own words for the first time last year. Then, as now in both the Guardian interview and the New Statesman one someone linked, I was really surprised. I’d expected something complex and nuanced.

Instead, there are obvious, crude misrepresentations - GC feminists think all TW are predators (see the part in the NS about ‘any person’ with a penis who identifies as a woman being viewed as deceitful), there is a single anti-trans movement - and sweeping statements that aren’t backed up. The category of ‘woman’ should be expanded (why?), GC feminism is fringe and probably not actually feminism at all (evidence? what makes it unfeminist?), radical feminism didn’t used to have anything to do with trans issues... The latter two are interesting to me as I got interested in feminism in the 90s reading the Ms forums. There were definitely different strands of feminism evident on that site (can’t imagine that happening now) and radfems were most definitely interested in trans issues. I realise the 90s hardly represents the distant past, but these ideas and debates are not nearly as new as is made out. It’s just out in the mainstream now.

Did anyone archive the original version of the piece?

Yes I'm pretty sure I saw someone did.

Tweet here showing the previous version compared with edited version.
twitter.com/robin__craig/status/1435326601290452993