Judith Butler in The New Statesman

[ScreamingMeMe]

twitter.com/NewStatesman/status/1550765835144364040?t=q1JBabwoM_zR2lp91Fml0A&s=19

What does the overturning of Roe vs Wade mean for progress? And where does feminism go next?

@paperdispatch spoke with the philosopher and gender theorist, Judith Butler, about Roe vs Wade, trans rights, and the war on education.

t.co/sQXh7virgB

🔴On the reaction to Roe vs Wade: "I don’t agree with analysts who lay the blame for the repeal on feminists or trans people or the deceased Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg."

"That way of turning against ourselves is too easy and wrong-headed and it keeps us from doing what is most necessary – analysing and defeating the hard right."

"When some feminists now make claims like, “the patriarchal oppression of women is heavily rooted in our reproductive systems”, it can sound like those reproductive systems are the cause of the oppression. That is muddled thinking, wrong, and does not advance feminist aims."

🔴Is the ruling a backlash to progress?

"I think we are witnessing something more serious and dangerous than a backlash. This is a “restoration project” that has as its final aim the reconstruction of an order that some feel has been dismantled by progressive legislation." t.co/j9Pv5lTsqj

"Under this “restoration project”, not only is patriarchy to be restored, protected against its dismantling, but white supremacy, and exclusively heterosexual marriage."

"White supremacists and Maga Republicans are also waging a war against educational institutions from K-12 [primary and secondary school] through higher education, accusing leftists of inculcating ideology."

"We have to understand the attack on movements for racial justice, abortion rights, healthcare justice and legal protections for migrants, support for the gun lobby and the arms industry, as linked with the repeal of Roe." t.co/e9h2uc1qg7

🔴Where do you see hope when you think about what’s next?

"We have to fight for abortion rights, but it is one of many rights that belong to reproductive justice, and that reproductive justice is part of the complex and dynamic struggle for justice."

"Once we realise that, then we are on our way toward imagining a transformative force that would equal and overcome those who promote hatred and inequality."

"We are gathered as targets by a well-coordinated Right, so perhaps we should decide how we want to gather, and for what aim."

Read the full interview here:

t.co/sQXh7virgB

Thanks for the share. She is such a forward thinker and seeing through what is happening right now. We border on fascism. Its scary.

Read another Judith butler article? Not whilst the option of driving six inch nails into my bollocks remains available.

😁

"We have to fight for abortion rights, but it is one of many rights that belong to reproductive justice, and that reproductive justice is part of the complex and dynamic struggle for justice."

What are the others? And whose rights? Even “abortion rights” is a slippery term. Abortion rights for men is a concept that’s been bandied about by MRAs. And I’m quite certain Butler includes surrogacy in her concept of “reproductive justice.”

Fuck Butler, screw this slippery and malleable “reproductive justice”, and no thank you to this alternative road to Gilead. Women’s liberation > “reproductive justice.”

Sounds like obfuscating rubbish to me. Political campaigning needs clear goals, not waffle.

Was just thinking that

Some great victim blaming in that bit about reproductive systems. Denying the additional vulnerability during and after pregnancy is an abject lesson in futility, or being stood on a step too high to see reality.

Being divorced from an issue doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

"When some feminists now make claims like, “the patriarchal oppression of women is heavily rooted in our reproductive systems”, it can sound like those reproductive systems are the cause of the oppression. That is muddled thinking, wrong, and does not advance feminist aims."

What is women's oppression rooted in then Judy, if not in our sex you absolute melt.

On the reaction to Roe vs Wade: "I don’t agree with analysts who lay the blame for the repeal on feminists or trans people or the deceased Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg."

Blimey, butler said something comprehensible that I pretty much agree with.

Butler never uses ten words when one hundred and fifty four will do.

‘The exchange has been edited for length and clarity.’

LOL.

When some feminists now make claims like, “the patriarchal oppression of women is heavily rooted in our reproductive systems”, it can sound like those reproductive systems are the cause of the oppression

Has anyone actually heard feminists saying exactly that? Because what I've heard feminists say is much more that patriarchal oppression of women is heavily rooted in mens wish to control our reproductive systems.

Perhaps she doesn't listen to other women very carefully.

So abortion rights for men as in they can insist on a woman having an abortion when she doesn’t want to as well insist on her having a baby when she doesn’t want to?

So what is the source of women’s oppression then, wearing dresses? But what about women who wear trousers do they never suffer male oppression?

Alexa, give example of 'forced teaming:

'We are gathered as targets by a well-coordinated Right, so perhaps we should decide how we want to gather, and for what aim'

It’s true that the female reproductive system doesn’t automatically produce male dominance. Society has to create the assumptions about the female reproductive role, and other aspects of being female, before the system we call ‘patriarchy’ is produced. But the female body is still, while the not the cause, the reality that enables that oppression: we’re not as strong as men, so they can (if enabled) dominate us.

Anyway, this is just Butler trying to hitch queer theory on the back of the struggles of other groups, like they do with racism. Abortion is a political issue that affects women, and not only those women who can become pregnant, but all women, because its denial is a symptom of the systemic oppression of all women. It’s the same oppressive force that means people don’t want to hear us when we say no, those are our words and you can’t have them; no, we don’t want to be naked in front of males: no, we don’t want to share our sports with males. It’s about people thinking women are less fully realised as people than men.

It's one of the very few comprehensible articles I've read by her

That is muddled thinking, wrong, and does not advance feminist aims.

Pretty much describes most of what I have read by JB.

Exactly

She's an academic of literature and fiction. Her grasp of reality let alone contemporary social theories of how the world work is questionable. She certainly has no serious intellectual training in feminism.

Gender trouble, her book, pretty on silky shows how little previous feminist writing she has read. And in it she explicitly says she's not interested in women vs. Men as a Power dynamic - only in internal interpretations of gender roles (for which read sexist stereotypes). How anyone could have the arrogance to think her uninformed opinions are of any use to anyone else...

I'm not interested in anything Butler has to say.

I wonder where they thinks it is rooted? Presumably clothing and make-up.

Has she ever clarified?

Found this great takedown of Butler via twitter. Old but still good and relevant.

www.google.com/amp/s/newrepublic.com/amp/article/150687/professor-parody

I think it's our soft, fluffy hair?