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

I have read much of Judith Butler’s work (and sometimes have wished I had used the time I took to do so more fruitfully, but there you go). It has seemed to me – a view I have shared with students and colleagues – that her work, far from being difficult, is actually overly easy to produce. As Martha Nussbaum once pointed out, in Butler’s work, ‘… obscurity fills the void left by an absence of a real complexity of thought and argument. ’ (Reference below.)

This ease of production is one reason post-structuralist and postmodern bullshit generators proliferate as they do. And, as well as by such mindless bots, such bullshit has been (easily) produced and published by several real scholars with the explicit intent of showing it for what it is. Sokal and Bricmont’s Impostures Intellectuelles has a claim to precedence in this genre; or here, a more recent example (Boghossian and Lindsay), aimed at specifically Butlerian shit: conceptual penis hoax.

Reading this latest Guardian article, it strikes me there are two possibilities concerning Butler herself:

1. She understands the stuff she writes is bullshit, but keeps doing it as a career. This amounts to a serious – because in this case dangerous – example of trahison des clercs ; it is very sad if so.

1. She really does not understand how awful is the stuff she writes. This, if true, would entail she is very stupid, despite her wide postmodern/post-structuralist vocabulary; but as I said above, writing this bullshit is easy for anyone – even a mindless bot – to do.

Generally I have inclined to (1); Butler has something of a cynical air about her. But in the light of some of her recent outpourings, (2) begins to look more and more plausible. (Of course it is possible to be stupid and cynical.)

Either way, we should not take such bullshit seriously. The Guardian should be ashamed to publish it unedited and without commentary.

[For a more measured putdown of Butler in general, look at Martha Nussbaum’s (1999) The Professor of Parody, see Professor of Parody. Nussbaum (a real philosopher, unlike Butler), finishes by saying, ‘Judith Butler’s hip quietism …collaborates with evil. Feminism demands more and women deserve better.’]

@HoardingFloralBuntingInACervix

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 think this is why I feel a bit sceptical about the ‘tide is turning’ posts that show up at present. While I understand it feels that way in some respects, and I am greatly relieved we have the likes of d of e updated guidelines to point at with schools and EHRC clarifications and and Nolan investigates and so on, I also suspect the likes of JB heels in approach will also remain and still gain traction in ways that will still make it difficult for people to address the way gender ideology has infiltrated public institutions.

I think this is why I feel a bit sceptical about the ‘tide is turning’ posts that show up at present. While I understand it feels that way in some respects, and I am greatly relieved we have the likes of d of e updated guidelines to point at with schools and EHRC clarifications and and Nolan investigates and so on, I also suspect the likes of JB heels in approach will also remain and still gain traction in ways that will still make it difficult for people to address the way gender ideology has infiltrated public institutions.

I agree, and this is the clash of worldviews at the heart of this.

On the one hand you have feminists and others operating with the perspective that we make a well evidenced case, we persuade, and reasonable people, whom we assume most are, will form a critical mass and the ship will right itself, to mix metaphors.

The trouble is Butler et al don't function that way. They have no motivation or desire to make a convincing case, they do not care about persuading. The methods used are propagandist, relying on confusion, emotional manipulation, coercion and intimidation. That's why none of her arguments have evolved, and why it's plain she hasn't read or listened to any opposing viewpoints. She doesn't think she needs to. It's something we do in our model, in order to make a better case. She doesn't seek to make a better case.

She (and others like her) seek to draw as many naive acolytes and disciples as possible who don't think deeply, because this is basically an intellectual version of a war of attrition.

We look at her facile, incompetent work and are unpersuaded and unimpressed. But she's not trying to persuade us. She is proselytising her Gender gospel to as many as will gullibly gulp down her mystical revelations.

@NotTerfNorCis

Indeed, in attacking “gender” they oppose reproductive freedom for women and the rights of single parents; they oppose protections for women against rape and domestic violence;

Does she realise how wrong she is? If not, then she's surely not the great thinker she's made out to be.

I think she is deliberately ignoring the fact that in the UK gender critical arguments are made by left wing feminists, many of them lesbians, and they do not agree with the American religious right who are very much pro gender.

I don't think it's acceptable for an academic to write in this way, given that she appears to be critiquing something she hasn't bothered to investigate. The most charitable interpretation is that she is writing a book report without reading the book.

At this point, the lack of ability to engage with other opinions, whether deliberate or for some other reason, doesn't say anything good about Butler, or the people who decided to publish this piece, particularly given the call to action to anti-fascists.

JB displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the gender critical position. And The Gruniad is paying her to spread disinformation. I don't know why I'm surprised by this any more, perhaps it's my natural optimism that sense will prevail over toxicity.

@9toenails

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the conceptual penis hoax

We argued that climate change is “conceptually” caused by penises

Brilliant.

@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.

I've seen "gender critical" but not "gender ideology" as a term so I appreciate the clarification.

We look at her facile, incompetent work and are unpersuaded and unimpressed. But she's not trying to persuade us. She is proselytising her Gender gospel to as many as will gullibly gulp down her mystical revelations.

I strongly agree.

Vaclav Havel, 1978 has some prescient observations about mantras and the unthinking adoption of an ideology and the true cost of the absolution that it confers.

In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. To wandering humankind it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness vanish. Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the price is abdication of one’ s own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority.

hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-vaclav-havel-2011-12-23

Butler brings comfort and peace of mind to her communities and they idolise her for it because many of them don't understand the personal cost that Havel outlines.

[quote aliasundercover]@9toenails

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the conceptual penis hoax

We argued that climate change is “conceptually” caused by penises

Brilliant.[/quote]
You are more than welcome.

To be clear, and in fairness to Butler, we should also note that since it is above all a psychoanalytic argument that what is exteriorized or performed can only be understood through reference to what is barred from the signifier and from the domain of corporeal legibility, it follows, once the gap entailed by lack of any transcendental isomorphic signified is discursively filled, that climate change – trivially – is always already equally vulval , at least with regard to its physical performative essence.

How this relates to the causal nexus is, of course, and must remain, moot. But it may be indicative. Do we think?

@PermanentTemporary

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.

I don't think they do use gender critical arguments.

They agree that people can't change sex, which is a bit like saying the earth isn't flat, and they support the existence of single sex spaces, but then so do the Taliban. They definitely aren't suggesting women need them for consciousness raising, or to escape from abuse. (See also Putin). They are quite comfortable with the idea that men and women should conform to narrow expectations of masculinity and femininity.

Gender criticism is a specific feminist analysis, which Judith Butler apparently ignores, and American right wing groups deny.

I'm confused - are you more or less likely to get pregnant if you have PIV sex, but only understand the penis through reference to what is barred from the signifier within the domain of corporeal legibility???

I'm confused - are you more or less likely to get pregnant if you have PIV sex, but only understand the penis through reference to what is barred from the signifier within the domain of corporeal legibility???

I’m confused too, but I’m almost certain the answer to that is “more,” assuming pregnancy is not the desired outcome.

@allmywhat

I'm confused - are you more or less likely to get pregnant if you have PIV sex, but only understand the penis through reference to what is barred from the signifier within the domain of corporeal legibility???

I’m confused too, but I’m almost certain the answer to that is “more,” assuming pregnancy is not the desired outcome.

No. Deconstruct that binary!

With no transcendental signified around to help out, and only a Lacanian transcendental signifier () to play with, you will always already be both more and less likely.

This can be clarified, of course, once we avail ourselves of Butler's critique of Lacan's heteronormative identification of the transcendental signifier with our old friend 'P' ... which may or not (or both) find itself barred from a 'V' in (and/or out of) the domain of corporeal legibility.

No, we don't think. Her deliberate obfuscatory misrepresentation ensures that.

You, on the other foot , @9toenails, are an absolute delight. I've just read that perfect analysis three times and I'm still laughing my truncated socks off ten minutes later...!

Butler's academic career was forged at a time when their were basically two sides to the debate: those who were in favour of greater freedom of gender and sexual expression and thus who were favour in traditional sex roles. My impression is that she still simply doesn't recognise that things have moved on. Hence why she clearly doesn't understand the GC argument and can only conceptualise it is a manifestation of the trad conservative view of sex and gender.

I think Butler is trying to fill the gap left by Camille Paglia. Does anyone else remember her?

I got half way through. She's telling someone (who?) what "they" believe and yet she doesn't know what "they" believe. She just wants the someone to read the things that she thinks are bad are believed by bad people.

I met an academic that had worked in Hungary who told me the university at the centre of the ban had become a magnet for the most extreme gender ideological teaching possible with some very questionable people involved. It was ordinary people whose kids were affected that lobbied the government to do something.

No "fash" involved.

@PowerNap

I had the impression that JB is minded that it takes at least a PhD in a specific field to understand her work and arguments and that is why so many people find that her work lacks consistency or coherence.

Fwiw I do have an actual PhD (and an MA and a 1st class BA) in Critical Theory, have taught queer theory & gender studies at three UK universities, and I still think she's talking total bollocks.

I haven't R the rest of TFT.

Do I need to now this has been said?

Goodness me.

That's a very long way to go to say, "I have no idea how babies are made or how it's relevant to how women* are and have been treated by societies around the world."

*(the female kind, for the avoidance of any manufactured doubt)

In Germany and throughout eastern Europe “genderism” is likened to “communism” or to “totalitarianism”.

Strange that the area of Europe most recently subject to totalitarian communism should see Butler's ideology as so similar. Almost as if they remember how it starts.

We look at her facile, incompetent work and are unpersuaded and unimpressed. But she's not trying to persuade us. She is proselytising her Gender gospel to as many as will gullibly gulp down her mystical revelations.

I think there is a lot of truth to that. The simplistic, inconsistent arguments are a feature, not a bug. She doesn't need or want to persuade people by logic. Being able to debate her ideas constructively might attract the wrong sort of supporter.

Butler is providing justification so her followers can shout Nazi at anyone who disagrees. It needs to be fancily phased to fool the stupid but simple enough that bits can be repeated on twitter. Anything more is inefficient.

I ignore Butlers work when it’s on my reading list at uni these days. I know it’s wrong and I should take on board a variety of viewpoints, but really life is to short. I never have a bloody clue what she’s going on about. And it sounds like she doesn’t either, which is reassuring.

Butler is providing justification so her followers can shout Nazi at anyone who disagrees. It needs to be fancily phased to fool the stupid but simple enough that bits can be repeated on twitter. Anything more is inefficient.

In Hannah Arendt's 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem , she describes Adolf Eichmann as a pseudo-intellectual who used clichés and platitudes as sufficient explanation and justification of his actions. Among her interrogation of what this means for philosophy, she outlines that these pre-packaged phrases are offered up as a simulacrum of thought and indicate thoughtlessness as an absence of thought. Arendt wrote:

"When confronted with situations for which such routine procedures did not exist, he [Eichmann] was helpless, and his cliché-ridden language produced on the stand, as it had evidently done in his official life, a kind of macabre comedy. Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention that all events and facts make by their existence."

www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContAssy.htm

Given that JB has written about Arendt and Eichmann in the past, it feels very odd that she is not seeing the linguistic similarities for herself nor recognising just who it is who is nudging society towards mumbling clichés as a sufficient explanation and justification of authoritarianism.

Given that JB has written about Arendt and Eichmann in the past, it feels very odd that she is not seeing the linguistic similarities for herself

I always like to think the best of people so (until proven wrong) I shall assume she's a callous grifter who knows exactly what she's doing and doesn't believe a world of the drivel she spouts. The alternative is much worse.