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've been out this evening; looks like I have some catching up to do.

So the Guardian piece from today has been amended? To remove the stuff about likening GC feminism to fascism? Am going to have a proper read through now.

The development that occurred after the interview would be what has been published about the Wispa incident in the last few days.

My big question is who decided to edit.

And how is it ok to ditch parts of an interview.

The part which has been removed had a link to this article.
www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/28/anti-trans-video-los-angeles-protest-wi-spa

I suppose the removal of that whole section of the interview is the Guardian's way of saying that they know they got that wrong (even though it's only the question that contains a reference to the Wi Spa, not the answer).

They could have just removed the link to the earlier article, but maybe they're also telling us that they know the women protesting were not 'transphobes' who support the far right.

@Goannaforanna

The development that occurred after the interview would be what has been published about the Wispa incident in the last few days.

But this was only published today (well yesterday now)? All the WiSpa stuff was out there.

A few weeks ago they put a strange correction about Eddie Izzard's pronouns after a feature, saying something about becoming aware of 'reports' of Eddie's preference after initial publication. This was presumably the massive 'coming out' interview Eddie had given to the...Guardian... a couple of weeks before that nobody could gave missed. They tied themselves up in knots while confirming EI will accept he or she - so ultimately what does it matter anyway?

I digress, but where is the courage of the Guardian's convictions these days? It's pretty unfathomable.

Who knows what they're doing or why.

Trump redaction style though.

In the end whatever you think of her. JB is a serious academic who has been in the queer theory/ gender topic for years.

Her past work underpins a lot of what is going on.

The Guardian got an interview with a very famous and pivotal philosopher/ author etc around gender politics.

They asked questions she answered. Her own words.

They printed and then. Just cut a big chunk of it?

I can't imagine that she requested that somehow. Just a gut feel.

This is really important.

Because IF they chopped that part out. Of an already published interview with JB. When it's her words but theirs.

It's just bizarre.

I'm sure JB would be more than happy to get that picked up talked about etc etc.

So why is it gone?

I really want to know who decided it should go and who was consulted etc.

IF it was guardian just did it without checking with JB.

Note that she is female and they have censored her own words.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

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"

I think there's a really clear refusal to engage embedded in this.

There is a straightforward reason that Roman Catholics and materialists have some ideas in common on this. They both believe in the physical world, that it is real, that it is in some sense rational and organised by some sort of underlying principles or nature. The same reason that materialists and Catholics both tend to accept the idea of scientific knowledge and reasoning from evidence.

Butler and those like her can only see some organisation like "the Vatican" and I suspect any other group as well as an entity pushing a viewpoint with the goal of asserting power, with no intrinsic attempt to rationality or coherence or anything else.

Therefor, if two groups seem to agree on something, they are in league for reasons related to power. It's not because both really agree about some kind of truth proposition about the real world. even if they may disagree about other things about the real world. claims to believe in true things is really just the fascist will to power.

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

Well yes absolutely.. we’re all of us in that ‘non binary’ category. Each human alive is because nobody totally conforms to the rigid requirements of gender. Gender thoughts, our own or other people’s, are completely irrelevant to the unchangeable reality of biological sex, though, obviously!

@NiceGerbil

IF it was guardian just did it without checking with JB.

Note that she is female and they have censored her own words.

They wouldn't have to check anything with her, though, they can do what they like, publish and be damned and all that. An editorial decision is just that. They're just not being transparent about why.

Any kind of copy approval situation in this or any other instance would be dubious beyond words.

I love your posts so much, Floral.

This bit of Butler, though:
neoliberals in France and elsewhere who need the normative family to absorb the decimation of social welfare

Decimation of social welfare? In France?
She's never been here, obviously and knows two-fifths of fuck all about it, too.

I imagine it's just too ghastly to publish a massive diatribe against people when your reason for doing this has turned out to be a defence of serial sex offender and you are aiming all of your criticism at the people who quite reasonably and in fact legally object to the facilitation of this crime.

I expect Butler herself demanded the edit.

I missed the Vatican bit.

The fact that very different people have the same view on something but for totally opposing reasons. Means they are somehow in cahoots. Is just such a hopelessly pathetic idea.

newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody

@FloralBunting, you are far more patient than I am. Thank you for articulating just what is so batshit about JB's comments.

It's that split between material reality and PoMo. In PoMo, as I understand it (and I probably don't, to be fair, understand it much at all, I lost patience with it) we mediate our experiences and the world through words and words mean what we say they do. So if you say you are a woman, you are indeed a woman.

Have I got that sort-of right?

@Redyellowpink

Queer theorists like Butler see gender perfromance as an expression of idenitity

I think you need to be careful saying this, this isn't quite right. Butler doesn't say that gender is a performance but rather is 'performative'. What this means is that there are a series of culturally informed behaviours and acts that, from a very young age we learn and then enact (e.g. ways of walking or speaking that are stereotypically 'female' or 'male')....it is these repetitive acts, which everyone is engaged in, that themselves produce the 'illusion' of two stable genders. In other words the culturally learned gendered behaviours constitute, rather than express, any apparently stable gender identity.

Where she gets more into performance is when she talks about things like drag- she says drag- which is an overexagerated and self conscious performance of gender- reveals the illusion of gender and, through that, can subvert rigid gender binaries

All bullshit of course but worth getting the finer details ironed out for engaging in arguments about her

I wonder where she thinks babies come from?

There's a ceremony where you go into a hospital and the person who's been designated as a doctor says the magic words "it's a boy", and there it is.

But society has to agree that he's a doctor, or it doesn't work.

@CaptSkippy

We are assigned a sex at birth and then a slew of expectations follow which continue to “assign” gender to us.

For crying out loud, nobody is "assigned" a sex at birth. Sex is determined way before birth and simply observed at birth. She can't even get this right. Seems to me like another has drunk the Coolaid.

Anyways, that's about all I needed to know. I wonder if she just does this because she hopes she won;t be canceled.

She cooked up the recipie for the coolaid.

She is the canceller, never the cancellee.

Utterly despicable woman.

I dropped out of the queer theory module after one lecture, as did two other females.
It was awful.

JB is the queen of queer and she is worshipped as such.
Everything said here is exactly what I experienced, the class was full of superior, self important assholes who believe that JB is elevated and that thickos that can’t understand her is anyone who disagrees with her.
They are all better than you.

I've just been flicking through YouTube and an interview with LOJ and Judith Butler popped up as a recommendation!😱

Do I hate myself enough to watch it?

@nauticant

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.”

Im a big supporter of Palestinian rights, but to describe Hamas and Hezbollah as 'progressive' and 'on the left' is just plain barking, they would not in a million years describe themselvs in those terms.

She is astonishingly ignorant and seems to apply no actual critical thought to any of her positions.
Isent Postmodernism all about critical thinking?

This is why people describe her as a con artist.

I think you need to be careful saying this, this isn't quite right. Butler doesn't say that gender is a performance but rather is 'performative'. What this means is that there are a series of culturally informed behaviours and acts that, from a very young age we learn and then enact (e.g. ways of walking or speaking that are stereotypically 'female' or 'male')....it is these repetitive acts, which everyone is engaged in, that themselves produce the 'illusion' of two stable genders. In other words the culturally learned gendered behaviours constitute, rather than express, any apparently stable gender identity

Which works for 'gender' (the way that men and women express themselves, culturally coded as 'masculine' or 'feminine') but not for sex - because having sperm or egg is not 'cultural'.

Why on earth did MN delete my comment? It's getting ridiculous.

Here's the archived version of the original interview for anyone who wants it:

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210907102452/www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/07/judith-butler-interview-gender" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20210907102452/www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/07/judith-butler-interview-gender