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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Judith Butler explains gender!

69 replies

ArthurbellaScott · 19/11/2023 15:03

At last, gang! It's the answers we've all been asking for!

<sits down with large cup of tea>

Berkeley professor explains gender theory | Judith Butler

Sex, gender, and the debate over identity explained by Berkeley professor Judith Butler.Subscribe to Big Think on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/channel/U...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD9IOllUR4k

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terryleather · 19/11/2023 17:49

I've had bowel movements that are more interesting than Judith Butler so I'll skip this and move straight to the gin if that's okay...

nonmerci99 · 19/11/2023 17:53

donquixotedelamancha · 19/11/2023 17:36

It's not a theory. A theory requires supporting evidence.

It's not even a hypothesis because nothing she says is precise enough to be falsifiable and it can't be used to make predictions.

She just has opinions.

No, that’s not true. Butler is very much producing critical theory, it’s just she’s a bit rubbish at it IMO.

Vegemiteandhoneyontoast · 19/11/2023 17:54

I simply cannot get past her smugness and find her too utterly repellent to watch any of this or to read any more of her smug writings.

ArthurbellaScott · 19/11/2023 19:12

Okay. Trying again.

'Performance is important to the extent that we do enact who we are, and anybody in performance studies actually knows that their performances that we do in our lives that are not mere performance, they're not fake.
When Performative was first coined as a word, the philosopher J.L. Austin was trying to understand legal utterances. So when a judge says, I declare you man and wife, you become man and wife, once that declaration has happened, that that's how fake that happened. Now, what if we were to say that in enacting our lives as a particular gender, we are actually realizing that gender?
No. We are making something real happen.'

She's suggesting a legal term being employed changes reality and that means that changing the word for our sex changes our biological sex? She can't really surely be that bloody stupid?

'Okay, so when we talk about performative, we're talking about an act that makes something come into being or an act that has real consequences. We're talking about the changing reality'

Okay, yes. Yes, she is.

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ArthurbellaScott · 19/11/2023 19:14

'One problem is that many people who refuse to allow trans people to define themselves is that they feel that their own self-definition is destabilized. The idea that we can change reality, transform reality to be more open, inclusive, just less violent.'

Changing the name of a violent man doesn't making him less violent, pet.

This woman is an actual bona fide idiot.

I've listened to her talk before and it was all so disjointed I couldn't make any sense of it. This talk is better, because she's putting it in very simple terms. Which makes it clear that it's utter twaddle.

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JustSpeculation · 19/11/2023 19:46

Thingybob · 19/11/2023 16:26

Well that's 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back. It was Judith Butler explaining absolutely nothing.

13 minutes, but I understand if it felt like 15.

UtopiaPlanitia · 19/11/2023 19:49

ArthurbellaScott · 19/11/2023 15:05

Since when did her pronouns become 'they'? Is that recent?

As far as I know she’s claimed to be non-binary for a couple of years. I blame the the Owen Jones interview - the adoration turned her head 🙄

popebishop · 19/11/2023 20:03

Look, it's perfectly clear, dumdums.

Sex isn't the same thing as gender, but gender is the same thing as sex.

Tinysoxxx · 19/11/2023 20:46

I went to a pet store today. I told the staff they’d got the sex of one of the guinea pigs wrong. They got a big defensive until they saw it in action.
Nature is a bugger like that. We’re just another animal species.
Invertebrates all the way up to other primates manage to cope with sex.
The only other species that try and disguise their sex are doing it to sneak sexual activity by deception or another resource (food).

ArthurbellaScott · 19/11/2023 20:50

popebishop · 19/11/2023 20:03

Look, it's perfectly clear, dumdums.

Sex isn't the same thing as gender, but gender is the same thing as sex.

It's honestly what she said!

The first part - fine. Explaining that sex and gender are not the same.

Then - if you change the word you use for your sex you have somehow changed your sex. Bag overturned, logic everywhere, a sprinkly of non-sequiturs and tadaa! We're all saved from violence by the magic genderwords! Hooray!

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Ingenieur · 19/11/2023 20:52

@ArthurbellaScott

'Performance is important to the extent that we do enact who we are, and anybody in performance studies actually knows that their performances that we do in our lives that are not mere performance, they're not fake.'

Hmm, so Butler is trying to conflate and dismantle the two meanings of "perform" in order to support her claims. Opacity again being the name of the game.

Judith really hates the English language, huh?

ArthurbellaScott · 19/11/2023 21:13

She appears to be trying to bamboozle it into submission. Surely it's obvious to everyone that she's talking mince, though?

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Ingenieur · 19/11/2023 21:15

Yes, absolute mince!

Winnading · 19/11/2023 21:21

'Performance is important to the extent that we do enact who we are, and anybody in performance studies actually knows that their performances that we do in our lives that are not mere performance, they're not fake.'

Yer what now?

I am not a distinguished scholarly type, but I know twaddle when I see it.

Is that the best she can manage? Seriously?

popebishop · 19/11/2023 21:57

It's honestly what she said!

Ahahaha, I didn't actually click on it, just reeled off what they always say without actually saying!

ArthurbellaScott · 19/11/2023 22:36

Winnading · 19/11/2023 21:21

'Performance is important to the extent that we do enact who we are, and anybody in performance studies actually knows that their performances that we do in our lives that are not mere performance, they're not fake.'

Yer what now?

I am not a distinguished scholarly type, but I know twaddle when I see it.

Is that the best she can manage? Seriously?

I'll give her the benefit of the doubt - she may have written that with a particular audience in mind.

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UnremarkableBeasts · 19/11/2023 22:40

I saw Judith butler give half a talk once. She just got up, talked for her allotted time slot and then stopped right in the middle. No resolution. No real argument (because you’d need to get to an actual point). Just ‘I’ll stop there’.

Cue utterly sycophantic questions and a bunch of academics going on about how amazing she was.

The emperor had no clothes though. I was utterly perplexed about the whole thing. She was objectively shit. She gave half a talk. If I’d done that, I’d have been pilloried. But apparently you just have to fawn over Judith butler.

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Agrona · 20/11/2023 04:49

Her writing lacks clarity, is verbose, smug and ultimately dull.

BonyPony · 20/11/2023 08:07

NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision · 19/11/2023 17:46

At least two years.

Judith Butler, in September 2021.

I still rather think that pronouns come to me from others, which I find interesting, since I receive an array of them – so I am always somewhat surprised and impressed when people decide their own pronouns or even when they ask me what pronouns I prefer. I don’t have an easy answer, though I am enjoying the world of “they”. When I wrote Gender Trouble, there was no category for “nonbinary” – but now I don’t see how I cannot be in that category.

I will note here that GC adult women also look at gender identity and think, 'I don’t see how I cannot be in that category' But then they travel further with that thought, and realise that the category of non-binary describes everyone, because they recognise that no-one is a two-dimensional cut-out of sex-role stereotypes. Otherwise known as realising that, 'I'm non-binary unique and so is everyone else.'

Judith Butler: ‘We need to rethink the category of woman’ | Life and style | The Guardian

Yes, absolutely, 1000% I am not a girly girl (except on occasions when I moan about it), I love sci-fi and swords and sorcery and I'm a loud, mouthy one! Definitely not a lady and definitely gender non-conforming!

But absolutely a very proud woman and mother, following my mothers, sisters and grandmothers through history.

negeme · 20/11/2023 10:04

ArthurbellaScott · 19/11/2023 22:43

That's a really good piece, by a really good philosopher who also writes extremely well - an anti-Butler, in so many ways. (One example: Nussbaum's 'The Fragility of Goodness'; Aristotle, Greek tragedy and how to live a life - and so much more. A wonderful book.)

If anything, she goes a little easy on Butler, I think. (Possibly strategically?) One example: "Nor is Butler’s treatment of Austin very plausible," says Nussbaum. Actually, Butler's treatment of Austin (on 'performatives') shows a lack of understanding that would shame a workshy first-year druggy undergrad. If Butler is as clever as people claim, this has to be wilful, and hence shameful, given her position and its obligations. More likely, we might think, especially in the light of myriad other expressed misapprehensions peppering her published work, is that she is not really all that smart after all.

Post-structuralism does offer bright clothing for certain ideas. Trouble is, the clothing in question is too often Imperial. Nussbaum quotes Butler:
"What does it mean for the agency of a subject to presuppose its own subordination? Is the act of presupposing the same as the act of reinstating, or is there a discontinuity between the power presupposed and the power reinstated? Consider that in the very act by which the subject reproduces the conditions of its own subordination, the subject exemplifies a temporally based vulnerability that belongs to those conditions, specifically, to the exigencies of their renewal."

"What does it mean ..."? We might well ask. We might well respond, "Fuck all". And we might well be right to do so.

TLDR Don't be taken in by Judith Butler.

SinnerBoy · 20/11/2023 10:50

ArthurbellaScott · Yesterday 16:08

Yeah, it's an American thing.

It seems to have shades of "real stable genius," doesn't it?

Tinysoxxx · 20/11/2023 12:12

The question is: is Butler an intelligent writer though she bamboozles everyone with her supposed intellectual gobbledegook, or an intelligent writer because she obscures the gobbledegook with her intellectual- sounding writing.

Tinysoxxx · 20/11/2023 12:12

…I think?!?!

ExpectantAsshole · 20/11/2023 13:23

I think butler identifies as an intelligent writer…