Baudrillard or bollox - is "gender" a simulacrum?

[AmaryllisNightAndDay]

Relating to the discussion an another thread about losing the word "woman"....

Does anyone else think that Baudrillard's idea of the "simulacrum" could have a lot going for it in the context of sex and gender? It occurred to me through smiling at a Facebook meme on "diving" in football as a Baudrillard "simulacrum" of injury - players act out an injury in a way that gets the ref's attention and a penalty, and they even have to overcome their natural expression of genuine pain to promote the performance. The simulacrum replaces the real thing. In the same way artificial "fruit" flavourings become what people expect from or prefer to real fruit.

So is gender the simulacrum for sex? Men act a version of womanhood, and they transform their bodies to have some approximation of the physical characteristics of womanhood. Which replaces our idea of womanhood and our idea of the physical characteristics of womanhood. And men didn't altogether start this, women ourselves act some bits of womahood, most of us do exaggerate or even fake some bits, and suppress or change others. Like breast enhancement. Only when men enact womanhood they don't base it on the real thing at all because they can't. They're non-injured players who (perhaps) believe they've been injured when they take a dive.

And at first we accept some people as "transwomen" the same way we accepted "strawberry flavouring" but then people claim it's just different kinds of strawberry and deny that anyone can taste the difference and anyway aren't natural strawberries a bit bland nowadays and maybe some of them need a boost of artificial E-numbers.

And "gender" really does get to replace "sex".

I think "simulacrum" works better for gender than Kathleen Stock's "fiction". She doesn't give any other examples of "fiction" that apply in the real world outside of theatre film etc. If "fiction" were a common psychological mechanism then there would be many more examples in the real world, and there aren't. But there are loads of "simulacra".

Anyone else think so? And any any philosophers out there - is this Baudrillard? Or bollox?

Pure Baudrillard. We are living in a simulation, most people prefer it and reality is now put into service of this.

Well, Judith Butler would agree.

'Queer theorist Judith Butler argues that gender is a simulacrum because it is an elaborate construct that is not embodied in any person in its totality. The concepts of masculine and feminine instead serve as ideal models of behavior, appearance, and desire. These norms do not exist in the real world of imperfect bodies and unruly minds; rather, they flourish in hyperreality, blissfully detached of all referents, free to exert their intimate, nuclear control.'

Also:

www.academia.edu/38184154/Gender_As_Hyperreality_Butlers_Gender_Through_Baudrillards_Simulacrum_and_the_Case_of_David_Reimer_pdf

Oh no! Does this mean I am at one with Judith Butler? My head just exploded!

She might be right that gender is but sex isn't. So if you believe in gender ideology then you have accepted a simulacrum and you're going to be living in a simulation. Ain't gonnae dae that!

Surely the simulacrum is the transgender identity adopted by the individuals. If gender is a set of stereotypes (and beliefs?) associated with a sex, then adopting stereotypes contrary to your sex is creating a simulacrum of the order sex. If, as a woman, I embrace the steppes associated with being female, I do not create any simulacrum - I continue being a woman in reality.

All trans identities are simulacra (ATIAS): TWASOW. TMASOM. NBAS. FASOA.

adopting stereotypes contrary to your sex is creating a simulacrum of the order sex.

What about adopting artificial stereotypes that fit your sex? Like having a breast enhancement if you're a woman with small breasts, isn't that also creating a simulacrum of order sex? Like if most women had "enhanced" boobs like Lolo Ferrari. Or is that a different thing?

btw I could figure out the others but not FASOA!

Order was a typo for other. Ditto steppes for stereotypes.

No, I don't think enhancing or exaggerating anything to do with your own sex creates a simulacrum of your own sex. Simulacra are not real. Your sex is real. That's why the concept of simulacra looks to be a really good way of describing what trans people create.

FASOA: Furries Are Simulacra Of Animals.

It's the queer theory leap that therefore sex doesnt exist in any meaningful way that is the mad bit.

It's not gender which is the simulacrum in baurillard's scheme but sex - as it is expressed in gender theory. The referential object is the sexed body - the (new) 'truth' is generated in narrative of 'biological authenticity' cobbled together from a subverted but -'more real'- logic which supplants the flesh and blood experience of women.

It's not gender which is the simulacrum in baurillard's scheme but sex - as it is expressed in gender theory.

Ah right. I didn't know if that was Baudrillard or just a mess made by people who came after Baudrillard. Pity to take a good idea and then screw it up.

So my question "Baudrillard or bollox" might be too binary - I should also have considered "Baudrillard and bollox"

It's the queer theory leap that therefore sex doesnt exist in any meaningful way that is the mad bit.

Yes, I can see the representation stuff in a media studies kind of way, it's when people start insisting it's the only thing that exists that it all goes to shite. I think that Lolo was objectively a women (female etc) and that she was also a simulacrum of womanhood and it killed her. Being too much of a simulacrum killed her objectively, in the real world, where you can't avoid physical consequences. No matter what story you tell yourself.

I'm showing my age by thinking of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”

I'm sure there is a mess somewhere, I'm just thinking about his essays on the gulf war and the notion of a hyper-reality as it is served up for consumption.

Gender as performance isn't anything new. I think even while gender norms were strictly enforced and bound to sex, the sheer amount of effort in playing or subverting the role means that it is understood to be an expression.

But I think that what we are seeing, and Butler lays it out -I was going to say plainly 🙄 - explicitly - is a concerted effort to put sex up for grabs in queer theory. What was thought to be the truth - a object reality beyond language fuckery - is remodelled as a discursive event - and this is why I think sex more neatly fits Baurillard's notion of simulcra. It represents a closed feedback loop in which the object truth of sex is re-stylised and fed back via the media in such a way that the original object is lost. So the equivalent of Transwomen are Women is The Gulf War didn't Happen.

But I am not making any bold claims about knowing I'm right - it's been literal decades since I read all this stuff and not much more on it after - but that's my best shot.

You might find a 1994 essay by a woman under the pseudonym Humdog of interest. It is spookily prescient given the date it was written and looks at cyberspace and some of Baudrillards ideas. I think it's called Pandora's Vox

Yes, although Baudrillard’s work (along with Lyotard’s) is actually a critique of this. His essay on the first Gulf War is widely misunderstood - he is critiquing the dominance of the simulacrum, not advocating for it.

The early “postmodern” philosophers saw themselves as diagnostic of the condition of living in a postmodern world, and largely came from a cultural materialist or post-Althusserian French Marxist lens. They were not advocating the condition of the postmodern, but diagnosing it as a problem. Later writers like Butler or Deleuze/Guattari were more interested in the postmodern as a form of possibility, but even Butler’s work isn’t really postmodernism.