Penises don't rape people, rapists do

[BeLemonNow]

Penises don't rape people, rapists do
I read it in Judith Butler's 'Gender Woo'.

There were suggestions in another thread we are (i) poorly read and and (ii) obsessed with penises

So I read Judith Butler's "Who's Afraid of Gender" and was asked for a summary. That's probably the best bit, I've summarised for clarity and set it to a tune oc.

Has anyone else read it who would like to share their thoughts?

But the person needs a penis to commit rape with.

It makes it sound like either / or, when it is both.

Are there “penisi” wandering around the countryside by themselves?

I better watch out oo er.

Dogs don't kill people, rabbits do...

Sorry it's been ages since I read Butler (I've probably still got a copy of something she wrote upstairs) and I can't remember much about what she said other than thinking she made no sense at all and it was all just very convincing rhetoric built on a series of logical fallacies and highly selective examples.

hm, that phrase resonates…does anyone happen to know her stance on gun control?

Well in terms of the actus reus of rape, it is the penis which makes the difference between rape and sexual assault. Self evidently it has to be a person using said penis, because the criminal law only applies to human beings, but that doesnt really add anything, other than perhaps an esoteric point for criminal law academics about whether penetration with a cut-off penis rather than a non-penile object like a bottle is more equivalent to rape than it is to sexual assault.
So whilst I see the point that Butler is trying to make, it doesnt add any value to anything.

I too am slightly nervous at this idea. Not what I want to see when out having a nice stroll - an unaccompanied penis.

On a serious note of course it’s people men. An unaccompanied penis couldn’t have sufficient mens rea (guilty mind not tea thank you autocorrect).

Unfortunately Butler and publishers wrote a chapter on the UK without realising that as a matter of UK law rape is penetration by a penis.

"The reason for this domination is not biological; the body, rather, is organized and suffused by the operative relations of power at work. Yes, rape is unwanted penetration, and that can be from a penis, a fist, or anything else that can serve as a blunt instrument. The instrument does not give rise to rape, though it makes it happen. Strangulation requires the hands, but the hands themselves are not the reason why someone is strangling someone else. The activity of the penis or, indeed, a blunt instrument to execute a rape is surely not the cause of rape, but one of its possible instruments."

Of course in other jurisdictions ‘rape’ can include other penetrative sexual assaults.
So, ‘people’ …but weirdly enough, overwhelmingly it’s those people who have, or had, a penis.

what (if anything) is supposed to be the point of that trite little phrase?

Meh, you and your facts.

perhaps a third line for your rhyme?
….’and therefore it is postmodern true’

Ha ha my favourite dragon @ErrolTheDragon .

She summarises Kathleen's Stocks argument against transwomen with penises being in women's spaces as that is women will object to the presence of a penis. We do say that sort of thing.

So "Therefore any transwomen can share my loo" is also a contender...

"Are feminists not inflicting a form of psychic violence on trans people by projecting in this way, associating them with rape when they are themselves struggling to get free of myriad forms of social violence as well?"

Erm no. I am starting to understand what Dr. Upton was on about when he decided Sandie mentioning prisons was comparing him to a rapist. Probably read this.

Yes Errol I realise I was looking at this from a UK law perspective. I wish that these people would be more rigorous though in the way they use legal language rather than bandying about words in UK publications which dont actually mean what they pretend they mean or what they mean in other jurisdictions.

Definitely.
But a lot of people wouldn't agree and claim that (a) men can be raped and (b) that we can rape men.

I could go on and on about my beliefs on the subject, but I always get told off for it, so........ 🙄

Men can be- and are-raped. By other men.

Rain doesn't make rainbows sunlight does.

It's fair to say though that @soupycustard that I similarly face palmed. I appreciate she's American but it was a chapter specifically on the UK and our GC arguments. A quick read through by a British editor could sorted it out.

As such I feel she just didn't get the British viewpoint. And did the usual you claim to care about X, but if you care about X you must care about Y and as I've seen you haven't written about Y you must not really care about X. You evil transphobe you just hate trans.

For a supposed philosopher in particular I was disappointed by the staggering logical fallacies and straw men. I wouldn't even go so far too say it was truly post modern. Although it tries.

There was one point where she was arguing about how transwomen should be referred to as women, and mentioned the what if you were telling a black women she was white how awful would that be?

I was so disappointed she didn't consider the TERF argument about a white woman claiming she's a black woman and joining a group for black women. Ah well.

Imagine being inside the head that can come out with such guff. On second thoughts, don’t.

Strangulation requires the hands

Strangulation actually requires a neck. Next have recalled some clothing today that poses a strangulation risk. Children have been strangled by blind cords. Hands are not a requirement. In Britain a penis is required for rape to be committed.

I have a sudden urge to re-watch Dinnerladies episode in which the canteen ended up with the box of Xmas decorations belonging to Big Willie from packing.

Splitting hairs? Bullshit dogma? Rapist apologist? Or my personal favourite just plain bat shit crazy to make those claims and to what end?

Who's Afraid of Gender and Gender Trouble bookend Butler's career and are very different books for very different times. I have a grudging respect for Gender Trouble, even though it's effects have been pernicious. It's a work of cultural criticism and in particular tries to understand the significance of sex as represented in popular entertainment, and deviant and and outsider art. In that way it's a continuation of Sontag's 60s literary criticism and her 70s criticism on photography - the breakdown of serious art and its replacement with popular entertainment: especially rock&roll and TV, which presented a totally reorganized way in which men, women and sex were depicted. Surely this phenomena must be correlated to subterranean changes in the modern psyche, a Nietzschian transvaluation of values. Gender then becomes the intellectual instrument with which to investigate that phenomenon. My grudging respect came from her ability to integrate disparate cultural trends, e.g. Water's Female trouble and the drag queen Divine's exaggerated performance, into a feminist theory.

Who's Afraid of Gender on the other hand seeks to defend trans ('trans' appears over 600 times) rights using a set of conventional arguments that we're all familiar with. All the intersections are present: climate change, capitalism, colonialism, Palestine, fascism, Trumpism, right-wing Christian conservatism, transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, class... Trans rights is the spear head of women's rights because trans individuals most directly challenge gender conformity which is the great evil to be fought, blah blah blah.

There are countess instances of: <X> is against trans rights and also against <Y just cause> therefore we must support trans rights to oppose X (Putin, Meloni, Xi, Trump, DeSantos, Alito, Orbán, etc.) The number of straw men arguments is particularly exhausting, e.g. you don't need 'gender' to formulate an argument against Ratzinger's condemnation of homosexuality. Though, it must be said that the right's own formulation of the cause of the breakdown in traditional sex roles being the result of gender ideology helps her cause.

I do think that it's worthwhile pointing out Butler's poor treatment of the TERF position, limiting their arguments to a single chapter. Greer isn't mentioned, nor is Bindel. Shockingly, Joyce isn't mentioned, either. Butler takes a wack at Stock in a way that shows her unwilling to engage in a serious attempt to understand her arguments.

• Is sex a material reality - "As a result, she argued, to help children understand that someone assigned one sex at birth can elect for another sex assignment on the basis of their lived experience of gender is, in her view, to potentially distort children’s perception of the facts, or true reality—it is to harm children! "

• Are TERF saying trans people don't exist - "But one reason that better conversation is difficult to have is that TERFs <like Stock> are denying the existence of people who have had quite a hard time gaining social recognition, legal protection from discrimination, and adequate and affirming health care. "

• Transwomen in prison - "When Kathleen Stock focuses on a few instances in which trans women are transferred to women’s prisons and commit sexual violence, she is careful to add that not all trans women would do such a thing. And yet she does, along with J. K. Rowling, use such examples to explain her opposition to trans identity."

• Why is this the problem of women? - "And if her concern is only with women, she might consider that women belong to all those categories, are better served by joining into alliance with all those who suffer from harassment, abuse, rape, and violence within prisons and detention centers and seek to put an end to that mode of violence. With a bit of research, Stock could see that in the United Kingdom, it is reported that a trans prisoner is assaulted every month."

• Of course having single sex spaces is like race segregation - "Stock uses only one example from a prison setting to make a generalization. In calling for sex segregation where sex is equated with the sex assigned at birth, she rejects the idea that sex segregation is like race segregation, and imagines that women will be protected under such circumstances. But are trans women protected under that rubric? Or is their exposure to violence and harassment in men’s prisons of no concern?"

• But, what about the men - "Stock’s valid concern is that no woman should be subject to possible rape, and I agree that everyone should share that concern. And yet, if securing women against rape in prison were her main focus, should she not first consult the statistics on male prison guards engaging in precisely that activity, which, given their magnitude, should, according to her logic, lead to a policy in which no man ever works as a prison guard in any women’s prison? Perhaps she has signed petitions to this effect or written on this policy, but I am not finding it in my research."

• Genital inspection trope - "Stock’s argument for not letting trans women into women’s spaces—an overtly discriminatory position—seems based on the notion that women will feel unsafe if there is a penis in the room. Where does that idea come from? What power is given to the penis in such a scenario, and what does it actually represent? Is the penis always threatening? What if it is limp or simply in the way, or the last thing on anyone’s mind? When we raise our sons, do we recoil from their penises as if they were always and only potential threats to women? I am sure that is not the case, or perhaps I should more fervently hope that is not the case. Calling for segregation and discrimination can only seem “reasonable” when this phantasmatic construal of the penis as weapon is organizing reality. But that view cannot withstand the critical scrutiny of how analogy and generalization work in this position. If we were to find evidence, for example, that two Black people have committed crimes, do we then demand social policies that would make the entire Black community pay for those crimes? Or if one Jewish person overcharges for a transaction, are we then free to generalize about the avaricious character of Jews as a class? Clearly, we are not justified in doing so."

• The truly radical feminist is the one who accepts males as females - "It may be that the organ per se rarely appears in this scene apart from a phantasmatic investment of some kind, for if men understand that violating a woman is an entitlement, that entitlement comes from somewhere, and it is internalized, if not incorporated, as a capacity and power. Call me a radical feminist, if you must, but this social power was surely what earlier generations of feminists were clear about. In fact, the descriptions offered by both Rowling and Stock testify to this power. The trans-exclusionary feminist approach to banning those with penises from the bathroom or changing room, or mandating sex-segregated prisons, makes no sense without understanding the powers of fantasy that seize upon the organ (including those brought by penis-bearing men themselves), even when the organ is not a matter for concern or, indeed, as it is for many trans women, when it is put out of play. "

Good grief - thanks for helpful breakdown.

I did laugh at "penis-bearing man" - imagining them walking around with it on a fancy tassled cushion😂

‘an unaccompanied penis’ 😂😂

What an image. I think I’d just kick it. Like a football. Or more, a rugby ball perhaps.

There’s a common theme there isn’t there 🤔