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

Something brief about Butler and the notion of 'performative'.

Martha Nussbaum quietly took Butler apart way back in 1999. ( See The Professor of Parody.) Re the idea of 'performatives': Butler, as Nussbaum pointed out, "... denied that she was referring to quasi-theatrical performance, and associated her notion instead with Austin’s account of speech acts in How to Do Things with Words."

But Butler just gets JL Austin wrong. As Nussbaum gently says, "Austin’s thesis, which is restricted to a rather technical analysis of a certain class of sentences, is in fact not especially helpful to Butler in developing her ideas. ... Nor is Butler’s treatment of Austin very plausible."

And ... oh, and other stuff. Read the article if you are interested and have time.

Nussbaum is a serious philosopher in a way Judith Butler never could be. The conclusion of Nussbaum's article: "Judith Butler’s hip quietism ... collaborates with evil. Feminism demands more and women deserve better." True 25 years ago. Still true.

When it starts academics and writers will be able to dine out on it for years

I can’t wait

Feminism demands more and women deserve better. True 25 years ago. Still true.

This for me is the real issue.

• Firstly how did it ever get any credibility

• Secondly how has this "credibility" lasted for so long

• Thirdly in whose interest is it that it has.

@RoyalCorgi read Kathleen Stock's review of her book on UnHerd, it'll make you feel better

Oh, I already did! It was delicious.

I wasn't that much taken with the Kathleen Stock review, as I think she lacks the feminist historical perpsective, and goes along the academic line.

But found this quite interesting (as I asked up thread how did this nonsense ever got taken seriously). https://thecritic.co.uk/judith-butler-has-a-projection-problem/

Have long thought feminism should not be "taught" in universities as it just becomes a word game and people competing for tenure. Feminism always was about looking for actual solutions and practical work. These abstract meanderings are not actually relevant to feminism. Its just dilettante dabbling. But the danger is too many people are cowed into thinking that those with a so called higher education are the ones to be listened to. Rather than listening to actual experiences. Which of course was (is?) the building blocks of consciousness raising.

In fact FWR forum is probably the closest, in an online format, of the time when feminism was made up of women locally meeting and sharing experiences, and from that taken decisions about campaigning or practical work.

Can any think that in a setting where you are sharing common experiences with other women of discrimination because of our sex, the solution arrived at would be to pretend the basis of that discrimination could be identified away.

It was probably quite common that other women, not just Victoria Smith, felt that the men who took up Judith Butler so enthusiastically, must somehow understand it better, rather than think this isn't my lived reality. When the reality is men seized on it and still promote it because it denies sex, which means if there is not sex then men cant be held responsible for sexism and discriminating against women. The TRAs have the widespread foundation of a society filled with MRAs who deny the reality of women's lives.

it remains a mystery how and why butler ever gained any credibility, let alone esteem. its clear enough that in a lot of specialised areas that highly technical language is employed which the layman won't have a clue about, but butler is supposed to be writing in English for English speakers. sadly all she produces is complete word salad garbage which requires ten minutes per sentence to work out what the fuck she on about, and even then it turns out to be nonsensical rubbish, at best. is this really the best the koolaid gang have?