Judith Butler in The Guardian

[generaljake]

Goodness. Not sure what I’m allowed to say without being banned but this is … interesting.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2021/oct/23/judith-butler-gender-ideology-backlash

Never read anything by her before. Read a few paragraphs of this weird contradictory gibberish. Never again.

Honestly, she sounds unhinged.

I think it's an interesting piece. I certainly agree that right wing groups can and do use gender critical arguments for ends I don't agree with. It's a major problem.

I still think that making gender into a thing that supersedes sex in law is an indefensible approach, and telling me that I need to shut up about that because I will empower Orban won't work.

Read it twice, I think this is what I got: ‘I can’t really explain to you (general reader) what “gender” is because it’s far too difficult and complicated. Only a specialist academic such as myself can really grasp what “gender” means and therefore speak with any authority about it. Know this, however: if you are in any way ‘anti-gender’, then you are definitely a white supremacist/fascist.’

My main conclusion is that the author of that lump of gobbledygook was being paid per word rather than being paid to write a coherent article.

One of the worst pieces of journalism I've ever read, and the vast majority of it simply untrue. How is she still in a job?

How on earth does she get the idea that GC people want to remove protections for women? It's the total opposite. Very badly written and thought through, ranty and intellectually dishonest.

Urgh, I couldn't make sense of "that" - all the words that are "in inverted commas" are just too "irritating". Like croutons in the "word salad".

Do writers not have to use actual quotes etc when they refer to the opinions they’re opposing or labelling as transphobes? It was all generalising and probables with no actual evidence!

It's just baffling nonsense. She's trying to sound very intelligent whilst saying next to nothing and the people who agree with her stance are just all "Oh yes, yes, she's right you know, absolutely" on twitter when you know they don't understand it either. How on earth did she work out that GC feminists want to remove protections for women? I don't understand why UK Guardian is letting US Guardian publish such rubbish.

Very badly written and thought through, ranty and intellectually dishonest.

And it goes on, and on, and on, crying out for a sub editor all the while. I don't know how on earth it was published except maybe to appease a certain readership.

Can you imagine if someone like Sonia Sodha, Susanna Rustin or Hadley Freeman submitted something that absurd from a GC perspective?

The only thing that I take from that article is that DAVRO is still going strong and only a moron would believe in her bs

There is a lot going on in that article and it makes for interesting reading.

I suppose my first point is what gender is being taken to mean here, and that may be why she has it in inverted commas. But more broadly, I think there is something in what she says about a concept becoming many things to many people, whether they are arguing for or against it.

I mean, if you took apart the layers of her argument and the ways different groups are using the concept of gender, it would lack consistency - therefore it is not surprising that she says ‘anti-gender’ activism lacks consistency. There are many layers of what is going on here.

I have long thought there are at least five different ways people use the word gender - legal gender which can be changed, gender identity which is seen as internal to the individual, as a synonym for biological sex, as a way of coding masculine and feminine, and as a way of describing the power hierarchies which operate along sexed based lines. These are distinct but not mutually exclusive and often overlap. So the very foundations of discourse about gender are confusing, and this lends it to being used by groups in contradictory ways, for or against. (I just realised she is possibly using gender in another way, as the force which has pushed against the power hierarchies which operate along sex-based lines (whereas I would have called that feminism and gay right’s activism)).

But in her argument, it seems to me that gender has also almost become a proxy for post-colonial (neo?)liberal (or libertarian?) democracy, if that makes sense. Individual freedoms and autonomy have become bound up with the concept of gender, and that is why any attempt to put boundaries around what is appropriate are seen as fascist or authoritarian in her argument. (To accept this, you also have to accept that gay and women’s rights have also been won and upheld through ‘gender’ and not activism). But then it also makes sense why she argues that ‘gender critical’ people should pull together with trans, non-binary or gender queer people to uphold these freedoms against authoritarian governments who threaten individual freedoms and autonomy for all minority groups, including women.

That is how I understand what she is saying.

@KimikosNightmare

Life is too short to read all of that.

Interestingly , although although her arguments are incoherent, muddled, illogical and littered with statements that are just downright not true it's the most comprehensible piece of writing I've seen from Butler.

Actually the last piece of hers I read, which was supposedly a take down of gender critical arguments, was much more readable and I understood fully what she was saying. The only problem, from her point of view, was that she wasted her only coherent argument on a straw man misrepresentation of the gender critical view that she’d obviously taken from transactivists, having apparently failed to listen to any women on the topic.

This article is much more a return to her normal, incoherent style. This paragraph, that others have picked out, is pure projection, in my opinion.

It is not easy to fully reconstruct the arguments used by the anti-gender ideology movement because they do not hold themselves to standards of consistency or coherence.

Perhaps that links to the earlier essay, of course. It seems to me, she either isn’t bright enough to understand the gender critical position, or simply has such a closed mind that she is unable to hear it.

A lot of protest and defence (including insulting people who are religious, traditional, working class etc).

The arrogance of suggesting people are not educated enough to understand her theoretical ideas is so insulting and evidences the fragility of Butler's arguments. The philosophical arguments that underpin Butler's writing are interesting but not workable in society. You cannot deny biology. That is the entirety of the problem.

I think one of the worrying things about this piece from JB is that there is no way back for her.

People who didn’t understand the harm of gender ideology can say fuck I didn’t get that part and move on to understanding more. People who didn’t know enough about it can say fuck there’s a lot more to this than I realised. People who were young and clamped on to the trend can grow up and think shit the gc women knew what they were talking about. Politicians can reevaluate and admit they were listening to the wrong groups in an attempt to be inclusive and didn’t grasp the full implications for other groups. Organisations can say they had their hands tied by sw et al & their members/employees were afraid for their jobs. Parents can realise that it’s very different when your own children are teens and victims of this ideology, it’s no longer some hypothetical thing that might happen to other people.

Lots and lots of people can easily move towards understanding the harm of gender ideology without loosing face, without being horrified at how they weren’t in fact on the ‘right side of history’, without that realisation dismantling their sense of self.

I can’t see how JB, given her ‘I’m the expert and you all aren’t smart enough to understand’ ego, will ever be able to find a way back from her stance and understand rational arguments about the real impact of gender ideology. She will be arguing her stance until the grave. And that quixotic megalomania tends to pull followers.

I think if she is claiming gender as a proxy for free and equal society, that does a disservice to the many, many people who have fought for the freedoms we hold dear (and is myopic to the ways in which those freedoms are threatened). It also does not seem to recognise that with freedom comes responsibility and it is possible to hold things in tension, whilst not letting go of the foundations of freedom (indeed, freedom recognises and accepts dissent).

I can’t see how JB, given her ‘I’m the expert and you all aren’t smart enough to understand’ ego, will ever be able to find a way back from her stance and understand rational arguments about the real impact of gender ideology. She will be arguing her stance until the grave. And that quixotic megalomania tends to pull followers.

Quite. She's functioning, front and centre, as a c**t leader at this point. That's an article for the faithful. That's why it ends with that bizarre rallying cry.

I read Butler's piece and understood it, regrettably. It is full of logical fallacies. Interestingly, at no point does she address what "gender ideology" (a term I have never heard) means or how it is applies. She cherry picks examples to prove her point and engages in ad hominem attacks.

Interestingly, at no point does she address what "gender ideology" (a term I have never heard) means or how it is applies.

'Gender ideology' is used on here to mean the ideology behind the idea that we all have a gender identity.

Some right wingers use 'gender ideology' to mean anything to do with feminism, gay rights and trans rights.

www.newstatesman.com/world/2019/09/why-far-right-obsessed-gender-ideology

Butler is conflating these two meanings to imply that when we say 'gender ideology', we are using it with the far right meaning, making us anti gay rights and anti women.

It is not easy to fully reconstruct the arguments used by the anti-gender ideology movement because they do not hold themselves to standards of consistency or coherence.

You have to almost admire the audacity of this, particularly as she then says that her own ideas are so clever they can't be expressed in a way that mere mortals understand.

We have all noted, Judy, that you don't address the specific arguments made by Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce, both of whom have written books which are logical, consistent and use language that is crystal clear.

Can’t even be arsed to read it. Scanned and it’s gobbledegook

@OldCrone

Interestingly, at no point does she address what "gender ideology" (a term I have never heard) means or how it is applies.

'Gender ideology' is used on here to mean the ideology behind the idea that we all have a gender identity.

Some right wingers use 'gender ideology' to mean anything to do with feminism, gay rights and trans rights.

www.newstatesman.com/world/2019/09/why-far-right-obsessed-gender-ideology

Butler is conflating these two meanings to imply that when we say 'gender ideology', we are using it with the far right meaning, making us anti gay rights and anti women.

Thank you that is really helpful, it is like a missing bit of the jigsaw..

I hadn't made it to the end before. Just saw this:

As a fascist trend, the anti-gender movement supports ever strengthening forms of authoritarianism. [...] It threatens violence against those, including migrants, who have become cast as demonic forces and whose suppression or expulsion promises to restore a national order under duress.

Gender critical feminism supports violence against migrants?!

I know, it's the TRA trick of conflating feminism with fascism. But I've never seen it taken this far.

@KohlaParasaurus

My main conclusion is that the author of that lump of gobbledygook was being paid per word rather than being paid to write a coherent article.