Tavistock staff and Foucault

[MNadactyl]

In the Telegraph. A whistleblower is also quoted:

“The identity politics that is colonising our public services is only causing further division and distrust which I cannot condone.”

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/05/nhs-child-gender-clinic-forced-u-turn-bombardment-wokery/

"Another series of emails last year saw the Tavistock’s LGBTQI+ staff network write a glowing profile of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, whose theories have underpinned woke ideologies but who posthumously faced allegations he abused boys in Tunisia in the 1960s.
Appearing to dismiss these claims, the Tavistock staff email said: “After his death, Foucault’s life and work were subject to a series of salacious attacks that focused on his sexual preferences."
Queer theory
The group also encouraged Tavistock staff to embrace “queer theory”, including studying identities “in which gender does not follow from sex and those in which the practices of desire do not ‘follow’ from either sex or gender”, as well as “anti-porn politics” and “butch-femme erotics”.
Another profile by the staff group cited the queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s view that "‘many people have their richest mental/emotional involvement with sexual acts that they don't do, or even don't want to do”."

“After his death, Foucault’s life and work were subject to a series of salacious attacks that focused on his sexual preferences."

They are calling paedophilia (alleged or otherwise) a 'sexual preference'?

And these people are treating children?

The pissed off woman in me says these are people so stupid that their brains have fallen out. My safeguarding knowledge tells me that people so in thrall to queer theory and espousing predatory values should be nowhere near vulnerable children.

Foucault was the founder of a school or a methodology, not of queer theory per se. This is a drastic oversimplification of what queer theory is and not remotely helpful in understanding current identity politics, which draws its roots as much from civil rights movements or aspects of medical biological essentialism (and a range of other theories) as from any part of Foucauldian historicism.

In fact Foucault’s work is actually far closer to a gender critical understanding of the trans phenomenon than anything else. A Foucauldian study of gender ideology would see it as a transient historical phenomenon produced by the medical establishment and social contagion, rather than the reverse.

Eve Sedgwick’s work is also dramatically misrepresented here.

I’m very radfem/gender critical, but this kind of stuff only promotes poor misunderstandings of what are complex forms of thought and often the exact opposite of what is claimed.

That may be, nightwaking, but it doesn't explain these people describing paedophilia as a 'sexual preference'.

Not sure I'd agree nightwaking but in any case, it's obvious these are all political acts in a workplace that treats vulnerable people. Politics shouldn't be part of it.

@DomesticatedZombie Oh yes. Here is a 4 part series that explains how paedophilia is INTEGRAL to queer theory.

(Foucault in an interview stated with others that all age restrictions needed to be removed and that all children are capable of consent.)

The Trojan Unicorn: Queer Theory and Paedophilia 4-parts

1 - Post Modern Foundations of queer theory
uncommongroundmedia.com/the-trojan-unicorn-queer-theory-and-paedophilia-part-i-%ef%bb%bf-dr-em/

2 Gayle Rubin, Influential queer theorist
uncommongroundmedia.com/the-trojan-unicorn-qt-and-paedophilia-part-ii-dr-em/

3 Pat Califia - Titan of queer theory
uncommongroundmedia.com/the-trojan-unicorn-qt-and-paedophilia-part-iii-dr-em/

4 Judith Butler
The Trojan Unicorn: QT and Paedophilia, Part IV. | Dr Em

@MNadactyl

Not sure I'd agree nightwaking but in any case, it's obvious these are all political acts in a workplace that treats vulnerable people. Politics shouldn't be part of it.

What's a political act? Critical theory is part of academic psychology and psychoanalysis, both of which are part of the Tavistock (it's not just a clinic). Both of those are academic fields. If anything, what has motivated the trans juggernaut is forms of medicine that don't take either psychology or psychoanalysis into account. If they'd read more Foucault they'd be more suspicious of it.

I'm no fan of identity politics. But Foucaudian historicism is essentially Marxist and psychoanalytic - both of which are directly opposed to identity politics. In fact Foucault explicitly critiques identity politics as a delusion - a false manifestation of underlying social forces.

The rise of trans ideology has far more to do with the rise of cosmetic surgery, social media and widespread porn than it could ever possibly have with some seminars on Foucault, I'm afraid.

It's been routine for male paedophiles to talk of paedophilia as a "sexual preference" since the 1960s and 1970s, way before "queer theory". Eve Sedgwick's work is on the history of gay rights - the old style kind which wasn't dominated by "trans" - and wasn't even published until the 1990s. This Telegraph article is way off base, I'm afraid. By all means critique identity politics, but it's important to aim at the correct targets. Tumblr has more to do with it than Foucault ever did!

@DomesticatedZombie

link to the 4th part (Judith Butler) who is on the record condoning incest and generational sex

uncommongroundmedia.com/the-trojan-unicorn-qt-and-paedophilia-part-iv-dr-em/

If you are like me who up until very recently didn't have a solid grasp on what queer theory entails (ie paedophilia), I highly recommend this interview with feminist and philosopher, Susan Cox who btw is highly critical of it.

[quote DontLikeCrumpets]@DomesticatedZombie Oh yes. Here is a 4 part series that explains how paedophilia is INTEGRAL to queer theory.

(Foucault in an interview stated with others that all age restrictions needed to be removed and that all children are capable of consent.)

The Trojan Unicorn: Queer Theory and Paedophilia 4-parts

1 - Post Modern Foundations of queer theory
uncommongroundmedia.com/the-trojan-unicorn-queer-theory-and-paedophilia-part-i-%ef%bb%bf-dr-em/

2 Gayle Rubin, Influential queer theorist
uncommongroundmedia.com/the-trojan-unicorn-qt-and-paedophilia-part-ii-dr-em/

3 Pat Califia - Titan of queer theory
uncommongroundmedia.com/the-trojan-unicorn-qt-and-paedophilia-part-iii-dr-em/

4 Judith Butler
The Trojan Unicorn: QT and Paedophilia, Part IV. | Dr Em[/quote]
Those are just media articles, not academic articles, and they really don't understand much of the actual theory - which takes a decade or more of study to read and understand to be honest. (They totally misunderstand postmodernism, as well, which isn't remotely what they seem to think it is.)

If you really want to understand Foucault, it might be worth reading some of his work, perhaps starting with Madness and Civilisation. (He may well have been a horrible person. Many philosophers were/are.) But the work itself just isn't what these articles characterise it as.

It's been routine for male paedophiles to talk of paedophilia as a "sexual preference" since the 1960s and 1970s, way before "queer theory"

And routine for NHS clinicians to also use this term?

@nightwakingmoon

Queer theory believes among other things that all oppression is due to people dividing everything into binaries such as man/woman, gay/straight, adult/child etc. They believe that to get rid of all oppression boundaries need to be blurred which is what they call queering.

Susan Cox, a feminist and philosophy lecturer brilliantly explains Queer Theory in the following interview. It is a must see to get a clear understanding of it and why it undermines women and undermines child-safe-guarding.

youtu.be/DWXHbrt3kvU

• my point here is about the NHS staff/HCPs using the term 'sexual preference' wrt paedophilia. Foucault's academic theory is really neither here nor there.

Although it would also be interesting to discuss Foucault and postmodernism and queer theory, and hear your perspectives on it. Although I'm not realistically going to dedicate a decade of my life to it ... Perhaps a new thread?

If you want to understand any philosophy or critical theory, my number one advice is to actually read it. Not watch Youtube videos or read non-academic media pieces about it by people who don't really understand it themselves. Just read some of the actual work. It's never been easier to read texts in their original form than it is today with online texts and cheap paperback editions all over the place.

You can read opinion pieces all day long, but you'll never understand the work unless you read it yourself.

@DomesticatedZombie

- my point here is about the NHS staff/HCPs using the term 'sexual preference' wrt paedophilia. Foucault's academic theory is really neither here nor there.

Although it would also be interesting to discuss Foucault and postmodernism and queer theory, and hear your perspectives on it. Although I'm not realistically going to dedicate a decade of my life to it ... Perhaps a new thread?

That dates way back, from early male gay rights activism in the late 60s and throughout the 70s. Stonewall flirted with some of this discourse early on, before abandoning it. But you find this routinely all over current identity politics, mostly originating in the US. (In the 90s, for example, some men interested in bestiality in the US started lobbying to rebrand "zoophilia" as a "sexual preference"!)

Nightwakingmoon - yes and no. Have you read Foucault or Butler. Not as simple as read them and understand them, is it?

@nightwakingmoon "Those are just media articles, not academic articles, and they really don't understand much of the actual theory.."

Utter bollocks.You didn't even glance at them. If you did you would know by the depth and breadth of knowledge that the author is highly qualified to comment on this subject, something made even more apparent by the footnotes she provides.

@WorkingItOutAsIGo

Nightwakingmoon - yes and no. Have you read Foucault or Butler. Not as simple as read them and understand them, is it?

Yes - I've read the vast majority of both of their work. I dislike Butler, who by training is a mediocre Hegelian; but her mid-career work on Greek philosophy and poststructuralism is good. She is, however, a terrible bore in person, and her fashionable gender / performativity work is slight and some of the least good of her output. These days she is a terrible old fraud who is happy to say things that are the direct opposite of her earlier work as long as it keeps her in with the genderists.

Foucault - his work is expansive and very complex. But he is more readable than Butler. Some of the best works to start with are Madness and Civilisation, and Discipline and Punish. Or it might be good to look at a good introductory academic discussion of them - but in a good textbook, not an opinion piece written for the internet. His work has shaped most historical methodology in cultural and intellectual history for the last forty years. He isn't a "queer theorist" and in any case, the "queer theory" of the late 80s to the early 2000s is a very different beast to what is thought of as "queer theory" today (much of it during that period argues pretty much the exact reverse of gender ideology today).

[quote DontLikeCrumpets]@nightwakingmoon "Those are just media articles, not academic articles, and they really don't understand much of the actual theory.."

Utter bollocks.You didn't even glance at them. If you did you would know by the depth and breadth of knowledge that the author is highly qualified to comment on this subject, something made even more apparent by the footnotes she provides.[/quote]
I've read them before - they've been posted on here several times.

@DontLikeCrumpets also, I've been a historian in this field for 20 years, so I think I'm pretty able to comment on the breadth and depth of knowledge displayed in the footnotes

Sorry just so you know that's me - just name changed to reflect what I currently spend my time doing re Ukraine

@DomesticatedZombie

- my point here is about the NHS staff/HCPs using the term 'sexual preference' wrt paedophilia. Foucault's academic theory is really neither here nor there.

Although it would also be interesting to discuss Foucault and postmodernism and queer theory, and hear your perspectives on it. Although I'm not realistically going to dedicate a decade of my life to it ... Perhaps a new thread?

I actually took them to be saying that critics who disapproved of homosexuality were making baseless accusations about him abusing boys.

Which has become a common way that any such claim is dismissed in the last few years. They just say it's a homophobic dog-whistle.

The article is not linking trans ideology with Foucault. And I definitely don't need schooling in Foucault.

The point is that critical thinking skills are not being deployed if you're being told at work to promote BLM or pronouns or anything like that.

The further point is that if that a work environment fosters a culture where staff leap to the defence of Foucault at work - and they can't or won't see that doing so is not remotely appropriate given the concerns about child abuse AND a key part of their job is protecting children then that's a ginormous red flag.

It also points to there being much more to those story than is published. It's in the public interest that we all know that safe, evidence based care is being provided. And that we know workplaces are fostering cultures that do the right thing by children and vulnerable adults.

@nightwakingmoon

Foucault was the founder of a school or a methodology, not of queer theory per se. This is a drastic oversimplification of what queer theory is and not remotely helpful in understanding current identity politics, which draws its roots as much from civil rights movements or aspects of medical biological essentialism (and a range of other theories) as from any part of Foucauldian historicism.

In fact Foucault’s work is actually far closer to a gender critical understanding of the trans phenomenon than anything else. A Foucauldian study of gender ideology would see it as a transient historical phenomenon produced by the medical establishment and social contagion, rather than the reverse.

Eve Sedgwick’s work is also dramatically misrepresented here.

I’m very radfem/gender critical, but this kind of stuff only promotes poor misunderstandings of what are complex forms of thought and often the exact opposite of what is claimed.

Absolutely.

In fact, taking a foucauldian approach, I am increasingly certain that contemporary identity politics is one of the hugely negative side effects of the expansion of higher education since the 90s. That should have been a good thing, but what actually happened was that enormous numbers of people learned just enough to misinterpret and misrepresent a whole range of theory in ways that appear to be extremely well informed. This then feeds into and shapes the whole field in really problematic ways.

And I thought Dr Em's 4-parter was very good. They're not to be dismissed as just media articles and I think for those who've not studied it, are useful (yes I have studied it in depth).

The other aspect of creating all this has been the internet and social media. That’s really helped superficial to the point of totally missing the point reading of all sorts of concepts to really spread and become the dominant discourse in some areas.