Judith Butler and Afghan women

[NonnyMouse1337]

Great blog post from a woman in Pakistan.

thefeministani.wordpress.com/2021/09/09/judith-butler-and-afghan-women/

What a brilliant rebuttal of Butler. I don't imagine for a minute she'll get a response from the Great Philosopher.

I'm so ruddy embarrassed that the woman who's brought much of this down upon our heads is a self-hating lesbian who's a traitor to her sex.

I liked that directness !

Thanks for posting this.

It really illustrates how Butler's ideas can only carry any kind of weight in an over-privileged society that is willing to pretend that misogyny and sexism no longer exist. It makes me so angry.

I liked that. Refreshing after the Guardian interview with Butler.

It really illustrates how Butler's ideas can only carry any kind of weight in an over-privileged society that is willing to pretend that misogyny and sexism no longer exist.

Or at least the over-privileged section of a society.

As Martha Nussbaum says:

newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody

Butlerian feminism is in many ways easier than the old feminism. It tells scores of talented young women that they need not work on changing the law, or feeding the hungry, or assailing power through theory harnessed to material politics. They can do politics in safety of their campuses, remaining on the symbolic level, making subversive gestures at power through speech and gesture. This, the theory says, is pretty much all that is available to us anyway, by way of political action, and isn’t it exciting and sexy?

I think its striking that American women don't have rights that women in other countries take for granted.

Somehow the internet has been spun the idea that America is a progressive country. People argue over who threw the first brick at Stonewall, but there is still no federal law that protects gay people from discrimination.

It's good to be challenged because it forces you to think harder about what it is that you truly believe

What a brilliantly written piece. Worth it for just that quote above, it's so rare to find anyone these days that welcomes a pushback and uses it as an opportunity to further consider and clarify their beliefs beyond their own immediate 'gut feel' for others.

Great piece but this is and always has been for anyone with even half a brain and any genuine care for women whatsoever.

Interestingly, Bina Shah wrote an essay in 2017 where she seemed to be entirely comfortable with the concept of redefining womanhood. I wonder if her thinking has changed since then, or if she feels the two essays are reconcilable with each other.

https://thefeministani.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/are-transwomen-real-women/?relatedpostshit=1&relatedpostssorigin=5081&relatedpostsposition=1

Oh good find! I shall have a read. Would be interesting if it was a change of mind and heart.

Bina Shah is being laid into on Twitter for being transphobic and a terf. Lots of lovely terfs are welcoming her to the wonderful world of rational biology-based feminism and congratulating her on her article.

Just reading recent Bina Shah Twitter.

A fair few responses that say

When JB talked about redefining womanhood forget exact phrase but that's the gist.

She wasn't talking about women in Afghanistan.

!!???!!

Wtf?

The total in your face hypocrisy is mind blowing.

So on the one hand women in the UK are told that excluding male people from the group women (the group female it's fast becoming) are akin to racists in a totally different country (USA) in the past.

But at the same time when JB says woman should be redefined it not NOT include female people in Afghanistan???

WTAF that's ridiculous.

'
Concerned Citizen
@shinyandnew70
·
8 Sep
Replying to
@BinaShah
Hey, Bina, did you know that apples and oranges aren't actually the same thing

Fucks sake.

Female people in 'West' and female people in Afghanistan are apples and oranges.

Males being considered female for sport prison etc etc on their say so is like with like and to say no is exclusionary.

Cripes.

@HarpyOwl

Interestingly, Bina Shah wrote an essay in 2017 where she seemed to be entirely comfortable with the concept of redefining womanhood. I wonder if her thinking has changed since then, or if she feels the two essays are reconcilable with each other.

[[https://thefeministani.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/are-transwomen-real-women/?relatedposts]]hit=1&relatedpostssorigin=5081&relatedpostsposition=1

In a very different cultural context to Shah, I've moved my thinking on this between 2017 and now. Well, partly I've moved my thinking and partly I think the argument has moved too (wrt self-ID and wrt single sex exemptions), so that perspectives that looked trans-supportive only a few years ago are now considered transphobic. I wonder if this was Bina Shah's experience also.

It was the same for me, NellWilsonsWhiteHair. In 2017, I was not questioning TWAW (I wasn't repeating it either, I simply didn't think about it). I heard talk of these vulnerable, marginalised people being bullied dreadfully, heard about this one poor youngster who wanted to be a women's officer for the Labour party, remember reading a Guardian article about how awful it all was. Didn't stop to think.

And then I heard about an assault on a woman at Speakers Corner in October 2017. I followed a lot of left Twitter accounts, organisations and individuals, who collectively agreed that she deserved it for her opinions.

That was the moment I took notice. What terrible, horrific things must that woman believe to deserve violence for mere thoughts? What monstrous ideas?

I looked, and I found Maria MacLachlan and a belief that women have rights and the right to stand up for them.

(And yes, what I believed then, what was good allyship then, would get me labelled transphobic today. But that's not what helped me see what was going on - although the goalshifting does show the totalitarian nature of the ideology and its proponents. It's increasingly obvious that only full submission will do.)

That's a really we'll argued piece. I really struggle to understand how anyone can read articles like that and still think simplistically chanting TWAW is the answer.

The Bina Shah article is a great read, as is the Rosario-Sanchez one.

I am black and have long thought that the trans/gender/bio sex debate was deeply flawed in that most people claimed to be defining universal, immutable realities and concepts while actually being narrowly focused on their own cultures and experiences.

I really dislike the practice of re-labelling people as "white" if their actions or politics are thought to align with the interest of powerful white people. There is something about it that obscures rather than reveals. Perhaps because it becomes personal and specific to the person criticised-oh look, self-hatred, identifies as white- at the precise moment when what is needed is a more political response about the interests, ideologies and power structures involved. But then, that kind of discussion is increasingly old hat, isn't it?

I suspect that part of the popularity of the horrid TERFS bandwagon is that gender critical feminists are still challenging people to think in a more conventional and political way about how the world works when navel-gazing identity politics post-modern style is just so much easier.

HighNetGirth navel gazing identity politics is definitely much easier. People get to signal to others how progressive they are by repeating the appropriate slogans, wearing badges and smearing those labelled as heretics. No actual work is required to bring about tangible change in people's lives. It's more fun coming up with dozens of flag designs instead of having to repeatedly plead with politicians to get funding for services that would genuinely make a difference to those who need it.