Financial Times interview with Judith Butler

[RoyalCorgi]

The FT has carried a really rubbish interview with Judith Butler. The interview refers to her as "they" throughout and doesn't challenge her on any of her most ludicrous statements.

Take her statement that it's fine to put trans women into women's prisons because they [trans women] are "not uniquely risky" and that "male prison guards are a risk, so are other female inmates." Obviously absurd, but anyway. She then goes on to say (as summarised by the interviewer): "And if trans women are placed in male prisons, they 'will be raped and they will be hurt.'"

So having just spent most of the interview saying that biological differences between the sexes aren't important, and that female inmates can be as much of a risk to other female inmates as male inmates, she then claims that trans women would be raped in male prisons! She completely undermines her entire argument.

Why didn't the interviewer challenge that particularly glaring failure of logic? I'm enraged at the stupidity.

Unfortunately, comments are now closed otherwise I'd have said as much.

https://www.ft.com/content/cfe35ca1-9dbd-4a83-a3a9-372967ab5fac

I'm so sorry you had to go through those things. I think it is a commonality for all women (or almost all?) that we have experienced violence, harassment and/or discrimination from men. To be honest, I wish more of the dialogue around feminism focussed on solutions to these problems, which all women need.

I suppose it is hard to define women in any way except in a physical way but then this is biological sex, not gender. Is gender separate from biological sex? If it is, how could it be defined? We are all so different, and have that hard won freedom to be different and be ourselves because of feminism, which then equally it makes a woman's gender hard to define.

Could it be tied to a specific experience of the world (in antithesis to men) or perhaps as a championing of women from a personal perspective?

Being female comes down to having XX chromosomes. We are smaller and weaker than men, hence the news for separate sports, prisons, privacy when changing etc.

The vast majority of us, because we are smaller and weaker, suffer various forms of sexual harassment during our lives. This influences how we live our lives and how we react to men in certain situations. We are vulnerable: we know it and so do they. Fortunately most men are fairly decent about it, but a significant number are not.

We also bear the brunt of reproduction. Menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, mastitis, gynae issues. We need protection in law against discrimination because of our reproductive role.

None of this means that we have to think or behave in certain ways.

Is gender separate from biological sex? If it is, how could it be defined?

People have a sex, either male or female. People don't have a gender in the same sense. Gender is the set of social and cultural expectations which are placed on us because of our sex.

We are all so different, and have that hard won freedom to be different and be ourselves because of feminism, which then equally it makes a woman's gender hard to define.

What on earth is a "woman's gender"?

NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision

Absolutely fascinating article on bone strength, thank you.

Butler wouldn't care about that, of course, because once you insist that language has primacy over reality, then actual scientific research about the relative bone strength of prehistoric women and modern women is neither here nor there.

For Butler, this is all an intellectual game where the goal is to talk as much rubbish as you can while dressing it up in clever-sounding language. If you want, you can argue that black is white, that the Battle of Trafalgar never happened, and that men can be women.

And it's all good fun, isn't it? Because Butler knows that she is never going to be locked up in prison with a 20 stone rapist who claims he's a woman.

Exactly

It’s so removed from the ramifications of verbiage for gain that I wonder if they consider the actual real impact of what they’re saying

The solution is either men get locked up for this behavior ( which they aren't), society somehow successfully educates boys to be pacific (I wish) or women get fed up and illegally (in the UK) arm themselves & repel with violence their male attackers.

This is the burning issue; male violence. Not that cr*p about gender. It's just your personality.
I loathe Butler and her acolytes who presided over the mutilation of children and troubled adults with a passion.

I have now read the review by Sarah Ditum which is also available via https://archive.ph/5YTQI - I am no particular fan of Sarah Ditum but really appreciated her straight forward lets look at the real world.

From both article JB comes across as unconnected to the real world. her points of reference are and apparently still are her family. I am sure many of us have been impacted by our early years but they are hardly the position from which to analysise the whole world.

Has she really not heard of how the practice of trans ideology is impacting women, even in universities. If her topic wasn't "gender" she really would be the cliche of the air head academic. And yet the media want us to believe she is some how important.

Talk about the emporer's new clothes.

If Sarah Ditum all those years ago on first reading JB just thought this is complete BS (as I am sure many others did) how did this loony tune irrelevance take hold.

I suspect she is just the useful idiot for those who are in the front line of trans activism, as all this "academic" analysis backs up their actual strategy.

But also, which if true would be sad, is it the because of her family or whatever, she actually cant face accepting that she is a lesbian. I laughed out loud at the bit about getting registered as non conforming or whatever it was.

Sorry Judith, but you are just a day to day lesbian who thanks to earlier lesbian and gay activists can lead a remote and privileged life in the west. All your fancy words cant disguise that.

Maybe we could set up a thread like the Private Eye thing and post on it each work the most ridiculous event, saying, quote or whatever, that actually only ever happened because western media is now virtually useless.

She does not like herself and she does not like other women..this is her issue from the start.

My understanding of her logic is something like this:

1.I don't like the way people within the category 'women' are treated

2.Therefore I will fight the concept of category

3.Anyone wedded to the concept of 'category' for women is therefore a baddie.

As opposed to gender critical feminists:

1.I don't like the way people within the category 'women' are treated.

2.Therefore I will fight mistreatment of women.

3.Categories are necessary to do this as women are mistreated on the basis of their category.

So because, in Butler logic, we diverge on points 2 and 3, gender critical feminists are suddenly in the same 'category' (irony intended) as those doing the mistreatment like Orban etc.

This appears to be the argument of her latest book.

Why can't people at broadsheet newspapers (looking at you FT but also Guardian and BBC ) grasp this and engage critically with this somewhat eccentric logic more?

All critics of gender ideology, according to Butler, desire “the restoration of a patriarchal dream-order where a father is a father; a sexed identity never changes; women, conceived as ‘born female at birth’, resume their natural and ‘moral’ positions within the household; and white people hold uncontested racial supremacy”.'

Really? ALL critics of gender ideology desire this? is there some research to show that Butler has spoken to every one and canvassed their views?

No. No there isn't. This is a sweeping and ridiculous generalisation dressed up as intellectual (ye gods) argument. I wonder what JB is projecting here?

I think that's summed it up very succinctly.

It's entirely illogical. The rather depressing thing for me is that so many academics and other educated people cannot spot this glaring logical flaw. Why is that? Are they too stupid? Or simply too cowardly to say "this is nuts"?

IHaveNeverLivedintheCastle
You got a lot right about JB, but I don't agree that
There was a time when Butler's performativity notions were popular with radical feminists as they chimed with the idea of "performing femininity"

Radical feminism never sat well with academic feminism - too overtly political and awkwardly down-to-earth, too controversial/confrontative, too many lesbians/anti-men or something... echoes of how GC academics are treated these days.
Most (not all obvs) radical feminists tended to be marching or organising or doing stuff rather than reading JB.

Most of us radical feminists never heard of JB in her early days, and most of those who did read about 'performative femininity' probably thought 'hmmmmm.... okaaaaay.... She might have a point there, but....' and went back to doing practical stuff.

I think JB's popularity was always restricted to the mutual admiration society of academic word-tanglers☺

@MarieDeGournay :
Most (not all obvs) radical feminists tended to be marching or organising or doing stuff rather than reading JB.
Hard agree, who is tackling practical ways to punish, mitigate and end male violence to women?
Why don't men get off their lazy fat bottoms.

Point taken.

I swithered about using "radical" I was thinking more of on here when the "performativity" "performing femininity" ideas were being referenced.

Your point taken too, Ihave.. terminology and definitions are tricky. I have a definition of radical feminist = me - I've been one most of my adult life, but Other Definitions Are Available ☺

PS I love the way you [one] can say things on this thread and have friendly exchanges about slight differences without it inevitably turning into a fight😘

Agree with both:

So because, in Butler logic, we diverge on points 2 and 3, gender critical feminists are suddenly in the same 'category' (irony intended) as those doing the mistreatment like Orban etc.

and

Most of us radical feminists never heard of JB in her early days, and most of those who did read about 'performative femininity' probably thought 'hmmmmm.... okaaaaay.... She might have a point there, but....' and went back to doing practical stuff.

Here's Finn Mackay on Butler: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/13/whos-afraid-of-gender-by-judith-butler-review-the-gender-theorist-goes-mainstream

God that 'they' pronoun makes the article difficult to read. I think that may be partly the point. The whole project seems to be an exercise in obfuscation.

Anyway, Finn apparently thinks all 'gc' feminists are right wing, Christian, and heterosexual.

Finn maybe needs to read a bit more widely.

The question actually is was Finn misrepresenting her political identity when presenting as a radical feminist on the London Feminist Network founder that then gave the feminist "credentials" that support her current job.

Or is Finn misrepresenting her current political identity as a queer non binary advocate with a nice job in a University, because that makes her more attractive as a current architype to show her employer is very woke?

Either way her review does not review the book but is just being used to promote herself.

Not unlike Kathleen Stock's review.

You know feminism is in danger when it is just focused on academics flinging words at each other.

Best option is just to ignore Judith Butler and if any tries to insert her into a discussion, just laugh and say surely not, everyone nows it was just a passing trend in the early 2000s!

"More than 30 years after Gender Trouble, Butler is still having to explain that they never said sex doesn’t matter, as they do again here: “What if, in fact, no one has said that sex is not real, even as some people have asked what its reality consists of?"

Since when has asking a nonsensical question cluttered with commas and double negatives counted as 'explaining' something?

Or just watch an episode of call the midwife, and ponder the fact that the difference between life then and now is healthcare and legislation, none of which can be taken for granted.

I said the same thing to my friend last night. The unravelling of how we got here will be fascinating and there’s such a wealth of contemporary discourse out there. 🤞 mutant AI doesn’t scrub it all from the internet before the historians have their fun.

Much of what she writes looks like mutant AI got there first.