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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Judith Butler interview

414 replies

MotherofPearl · 07/09/2021 12:27

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?

OP posts:
NiceGerbil · 07/09/2021 22:00

Why is it being altered?

Is there a note on to say edited and why?

OldCrone · 07/09/2021 22:01

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Did anyone archive the original version of the piece?

Yes I'm pretty sure I saw someone did.

It has been archived, but MN won't let me post a link to it. Here's the missing question and answer.

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?

It is very appalling and sometimes quite frightening to see how trans-exclusionary feminists have allied with rightwing attacks on gender. The anti-gender ideology movement is not opposing a specific account of gender, but seeking to eradicate “gender” as a concept or discourse, a field of study, an approach to social power. Sometimes they claim that “sex” alone has scientific standing, but other times they appeal to divine mandates for masculine domination and difference. They don’t seem to mind contradicting themselves.

The Terfs (trans exclusionary radical feminists) and the so-called gender critical writers have also rejected the important work in feminist philosophy of science showing how culture and nature interact (such as Karen Barad, Donna Haraway, EM Hammonds or Anne Fausto-Sterling) in favor of a regressive and spurious form of biological essentialism. So they will not be part of the coalition that seeks to fight the anti-gender movement. The anti-gender ideology is one of the dominant strains of fascism in our times. So the Terfs will not be part of the contemporary struggle against fascism, one that requires a coalition guided by struggles against racism, nationalism, xenophobia and carceral violence, one that is mindful of the high rates of femicide throughout the world, which include high rates of attacks on trans and genderqueer people.

The anti-gender movement circulates a spectre of “gender” as a force of destruction, but they never actually read any works in gender studies. Quick and fearful conclusions take the place of considered judgments. Yes, some work on gender is difficult and not everyone can read it, so we have to do better in reaching a broader public. As important as it is, however, to make complex concepts available to a popular audience, it is equally important to encourage intellectual inquiry as part of public life. Unfortunately, we are living in anti-intellectual times, and neo-fascism is becoming more normalized.

NiceGerbil · 07/09/2021 22:09

Ah yes that was there when I read it earlier.

nauticant · 07/09/2021 22:11

Here are the normal places to check for archived versions:

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.fo/www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/07/judith-butler-interview-gender" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">archive.fo/www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/07/judith-butler-interview-gender

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web//www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/07/judith-butler-interview-gender" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web//www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/07/judith-butler-interview-gender

You can see the individual timestamps of the times the archived versions were created.

KaycePollard · 07/09/2021 22:18

@MotherofPearl

Grin

I just got so confused. I thought JB was one of the people who firmly believed gender is a construct. But here she seems to be saying it's sacrosanct? Mystifying.

I don’t think you’re the one who is confused. Prof. Butler seems to confuse sex and gender throughout that interview.
OldCrone · 07/09/2021 22:19

I found it on the archive site ending in .is but I couldn't post a link. I'm sure we used to be able to post links to that site.

NiceGerbil · 07/09/2021 22:21

This comment at end-

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

Massive issues with this.

  1. Usually they say what has been edited and specifically why. This is substandard in terms of a mainstream newspaper altering a published piece.
  1. JB whatever you think of her IS a long-standing academic. Area philosophy. And certainly her ideas arguments views on this started something massive. What she says should be respected by the outlet that interviewed her and wrote it up.
  • Did they ask her approval of the (massive) changes?
  • If not. Who the fuck do they think they are.
  • If they did. Then the edited note at end needs to be more informative.
  • I would put money on them not advising her before cutting a massive chunk of the interview which may have been the reason she did the interview in the first place.

And finally. Why? They published it happily. What incident? No one is named so can't be too do with libel etc. What's the actual problem? To the extent they just chopped out a massive chunk of a high profile interview on this topic?

Journalism?

Journalism is not about updating your articles, esp interviews. Because something happens and you think oh shit that looks bad.

Where's the strength of conviction?
Publishing interviews so people can consider and see what they think?

Where is the integrity?

It's fucked is where.

So many learnt from trump.

NiceGerbil · 07/09/2021 22:23

Lol sorry

'As important as it is, however, to make complex concepts available to a popular audience, it is equally important to encourage intellectual inquiry as part of public life. Unfortunately, we are living in anti-intellectual times, and neo-fascism is becoming more normalized.'

If you don't get why sex is irrelevant then you're just thick innit.

Dickhead.

irresistibleoverwhelm · 07/09/2021 22:33

Sorry, haven’t managed to read all the (v good!) thread, but just wanted to post Nussbaum’s famous essay on Butler which is just as good now as when it came out:

newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody

Or link here:

perso.uclouvain.be/mylene.botbol/Recherche/GenreBioethique/Nussbaum_NRO.htm

GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman · 07/09/2021 22:36

Is she saying that fascist = accepting the biological reality of sex?

I'm not thick, I just can't be arsed wasting my time deconstructing word salad into tomatoes, and lettuce, and feta, and olives, and cucumber, and all the rest.

NiceGerbil · 07/09/2021 22:47

Yes

However.

And I'll look it up. Was she involved in taking her ideas out of the academic and into govt policy etc etc including all those years ago with NHS wards?

I suspect not.

Now of course she can get publicity and ££ out of it.

But when she published about this originally. Did she go out and push it/ get others on board to push it?
Or was it just an idea, something to think about. Which as a philosopher is her job.

I don't know tbh.

Wyatt I suspect is that her rather esoterical ideas have been picked up and pushed by others who saw it would serve their interests.

I am willing to accept I that I am totally wrong by the way! And obv don't agree with her view on this.

BUT as a thought experiment. Fine. Interesting.
In real life. Not good.

But did she personally push it out at the beginning or did others take her arguments and run with them.

Whatiswrongwithmyknee · 07/09/2021 22:55

@NotDavidTennant

Exactly! Me too! I thought she was one of the key people who argued that gender was a construction and a performance.

GC feminists see the performative nature of gender as indicating its inauthenticity as a concept, and therefore they want to deconstruct gender for the purposes of getting rid of it (or at least stripping it of social significance).

Queer theorists like Butler see gender perfromance as an expression of idenitity, and therefore want to deconstruct traditional gender categories not to get rid of gender as a concept but to give people greater freedom in how they perfrom it.

Very helpful summary. I wonder which position offers the most actual (performative??) freedom. I think it is the former as the latter relies on the continuation of an initial, at least, link between sex and gender. Meaning there will always be expectations on a person which will feel more or less helpful.
IvyTwines2 · 07/09/2021 22:56

Interesting development. This morning with this piece it looked like the Guardian were doubling down, despite the Wi Spa news. Has the penny finally dropped with them, "Hans, are we the baddies?"

LobsterNapkin · 07/09/2021 23:07

I did study philosophy and I think she is a sloppy fraud. They are not difficult to find in some parts of academia.

But it's very naive to think that what philosophers do stays within academia. It's true that philosophers may think about specific ideas and scenarios that will never matter to most people, but the underlying assumptions about reality and knowing that they develop and accept do tend to leak out. Postmodernism leaked out into the public consciousness and we are now seeing the effects, just as we say logical positivism leak out, and although it's no longer very dominant in academia a version of it is one of the most common approaches among non-religious westerners - again, in academia first and then in the general public. Similarly critical theory had its start in academia and now is being dispersed through political institutions and the public.

IvyTwines2 · 07/09/2021 23:09

@IvyTwines2

Interesting development. This morning with this piece it looked like the Guardian were doubling down, despite the Wi Spa news. Has the penny finally dropped with them, "Hans, are we the baddies?"
That, or lawyers have seen it and had a word.
EmbarrassingAdmissions · 07/09/2021 23:14

On back of the Guardian article, TERFs is trending: twitter.com/search?q=TERFs&src=trend_click&f=live&vertical=trends

Jane Clare Jones discussing the retrospective cuts to the piece:

twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1435357430217646086

NiceGerbil · 07/09/2021 23:15

Well the ideas get picked up and pushed by those they are useful to.

I honestly don't understand the reason that part was redacted. They've got the interview they've published her words.

Does she know they cut it?

Because in the end it's not THEIR words that have been cut. But the person who said them.

Why? And people say all sorts of stuff. Publishing people's answers to questions. The taleban are on the telly a lot at the mo answering questions.

So why have they cut her answers?

NiceGerbil · 07/09/2021 23:18

In the end the main question is. Who was involved in decision to cut?

That is really important imo.

NiceGerbil · 07/09/2021 23:20

Either way it's cowardly and pathetic. And not even effective because it's been read by plenty of people and archived.

I just have a massive feeling that it was the guardians decision. And did they run it past her.

Bottom line is that trump's attitude has won a lot of fans. Its delete delete delete. They know nothing is ever really gone on the net which makes it even more brazen.

IvyTwines2 · 07/09/2021 23:22

Legal issues as it's a live case?

BraveBananaBadge · 07/09/2021 23:22

V good post about the Guardian retraction NiceGerbil, what an absolute mess they've made of this.

If you look at the Facebook comments people are apoplectic that you can't even call t*s fascists anymore without The Man censoring you. On the other side, we see the implications of, like you said, making such a major change to a piece of journalism without explaining why and even looking as if it's in response to some kind of feedback or backlash. This is the latest in a long line of very silly (nay, spineless) editorial decisions from the Graun and I totally despair.

FloralBunting · 07/09/2021 23:27

I am in need of distraction, so I will spend a little time translating this paragraph to try and make sense of her argument.

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”.

She is making a number of claims here, the first being that there is one identifiable, global 'Anti-gender ideology movement'. She immediately contradicts herself by claiming that this movement believes that sex is biological and real or that sex is divinely ordained. These are two separate beliefs, neither of which follows from the other.

She suggests that this one movement believes that 'gender is a destructive fiction' which is 'taking down' (I presume this is 'attacking') 'man' (by which I am guessing she means humanity - not a terrifically feminist styling there, but she is setting up a straw man, so I suppose she is caricaturing her opponents here) 'Civilization' and 'God'.

Butler is very keen to tie anyone questioning gender ideology to religion, which I personally find extremely amusing, as most of the genderist zealots I know personally are members of the progressive parts of the Christian church.

Anti-gender politics have been bolstered by the Vatican and the more conservative evangelical and apostolic churches on several continents,

This claim is fascinating. The influence of the Vatican is pretty much confined to Roman Catholics, and from my admittedly somewhat remote perspective of catholicism these days, there's rather more liberalism that you might expect. Most of the conservative catholics are just cockahoop about the Texan heartbeat bill anyway, so bolstering the campaigns of feminist women seems pretty low priority, really.

Conservative evangelical? Maybe some. But please, look up Kimberley Shappley and Brandon Boulware, two conservative Christians in the US who now have influenced US policy towards gender confused children like their own, who were GNC male children that they both attempted to force into male stereotypes before relenting and accepting that their children were in fact girls after all.

I've no idea what she means by apostolic. I suspect she is referring to pentecostal style churches, which often use 'apostolic' in the individual church name, but apostolic simply means 'a messenger sent', and in fact, is often used of the Catholic church she's already referenced. So she's basically just using a few religious technical terms she doesn't understand to make herself sound like she knows what she's talking about.

but also by neoliberals in France and elsewhere who need the normative family to absorb the decimation of social welfare.

Sharp pivot here from the religious into French and other Europeans worried about sustaining the welfare state and therefore opposing gender ideology because they need a 'normative family' structure. I am guessing her idea here is that a normative family functions as a primary care set up for children and the elderly.

I think that's an interesting shift of focus, because she's clearly setting up straw men opponents here, so the question she should really be answering then is - why is the normative family a problem?

I might even agree that relying on a normative family structure to cover the decimation of social welfare is a bad thing, but from a feminist perspective, the issue is because the bulk of that cover and care of the young and old will fall on WOMEN, the female sex that she is spending all her time and effort trying to pretend don't exist.

None of her pretentious wordplay helps those women. They will still be shouldering the burden of a gendered system, because everyone will still know the group which is expected to do all this, even if we don't call them women any more.

TL;DR Butler thinks that there is one global anti-gender ideology movement that is conservative religious in character and believes sex actually exists, and is ordained by god, and is being pushed so that governments can cut welfare and rely on traditional family set ups instead.

There's so much question begging and strawmanning it's almost impossible to get to the heart of it, but she is basically suggesting we are traditional fascists in the Italian Fascist Party/Nazi party milieu of 'kinder, kuche, kirche', but she's based that on paranoid fantasy rather than actually engaging with any of the feminist critiques.

This is what I meant - her arguments are shite, even when you boil away all the egotistical dross, because she hasn't tested them against the actual opposing view, so all she's doing is shadow-boxing an imaginary fascist.

KimikosNightmare · 07/09/2021 23:34

so all she's doing is shadow-boxing an imaginary fascist

And "fascist" has lost any meaning.

What a pile of codswallop.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 07/09/2021 23:38

This claim is fascinating. The influence of the Vatican is pretty much confined to Roman Catholics

She's tried to push the bullshit that feminists are in league with the Catholic Church before - it seems her go to argument, based on common use of the term "gender ideology", because it's of course really unlikely that two sets of people with diametrically opposed beliefs on most things would call an ideology based on reifying gender stereotypes and identity "gender ideology" Confused

NiceGerbil · 07/09/2021 23:43

She says global and that is interesting.

Usually saying what about Saudi etc gets panic and run.

I know I sound like I'm defending her. I'm not. I'm not that interested in what she says. I stick to the point that her ideas would have been interesting discussion point in a thought experiment etc way.

No doubt she's capitalising on it all.

But was it get that went and convinced UK govt to do wards on gender not sex all those years ago and males in women's prisons etc. I'm guessing not.

Her arguments and ideas were picked up and used by others to do all this.

She says globally. That's pretty out of step with anything I've read from those who talk about the topic that I've seen.

And IF the guardian cut her words out of their own cowardice. Then that is unethical, cowardly and disrespectful.

Whether you think she is deserving of respect or not.

They got the interview with this major figure.
They printed it.
And then they just... Cut a chunk out?

Appalling behaviour from a mainstream news source.

The usual behaviour would be to leave what she said. And let readers come to their own conclusions.

Unless she asked it to be chopped but I just have a feeling that's not what happened. Could be wrong obv.