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Renowned Feminist Philosopher Judith Butler Tears Transphobic Feminism Apart

Judith Butler says that J.K.Rowling and the transphobic TERFs do not speak for feminism at large.

If you haven’t heard about Judith Butler before, here is a short summary: She is one of the most important gender theorists in modern times.  

When right wing extremists despair about postmodern gender theory, she is probably one of the thinkers they are referring to (not that they have ever read her). 

She has shown how social structures, language,  the stories we tell and the roles we play strengthens the oppression and marginalization of women. In other words: For her gender is definitely a cultural and social phenomenon, and because of that she is on a collision course with the so-called “gender critical feminists” (TERFs) who want to reduce gender to biological sex.

I strongly recommend that you read the recent New Statement interview with Butler, where she addresses the thinking and the tactics of TERFs in very clear terms. The interview is behind a paywall, but you should be able to access a couple of articles for free.

Still – in case you are locked out – here are some important excerpts.

She refuses to think of transphobic TERFs as mainstream feminists.

I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. If you are right to identify the one with the other, then a feminist position opposing transphobia is a marginal position. I think this may be wrong. My wager is that most feminists support trans rights and oppose all forms of transphobia. 

So I find it worrisome that suddenly the trans-exclusionary radical feminist position is understood as commonly accepted or even mainstream. 

I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen. 

She dismisses J.K. Rowling’s idea that allowing people to identify as they want will be a threat to women in women’s bathrooms.

The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. 

This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. 

She dismisses the idea that the term “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” (TERF)  is a slur.

I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women’s spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists? 

My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples. 

My sense is that we have to renew the feminist commitment to gender equality and gender freedom in order to affirm the complexity of gendered lives as they are currently being lived.

She does not accept the idea that the term gender can be defined once and for all, for example in reference to biology.

We depend on gender as a historical category, and that means we do not yet know all the ways it may come to signify, and we are open to new understandings of its social meanings. 

It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women… Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity. 

She also says:

It is painful to see that Trump’s position that gender should be defined by biological sex, and that the evangelical and right-wing Catholic effort to purge “gender” from education and public policy accords with the trans-exclusionary radical feminists’ return to biological essentialism. 

It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society.

So there you have it: One of our leading feminist philosophers are comparing TERFs to the transphobic extremists of the right. And she is right to do so.

It is important to stress this: TERFs are not representative of feminism. They represent a toxic fringe movement that at this point in time does more to help right wing misogynists than women. 

Judith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in “anti-intellectual times”

Pink News has also covered this interview.

Butler criticized TERFs back in 2014, as well, as reflected in this interview.

Judith Butler: the backlash against “gender ideology” must stop

Photo: Adorno Preis

someone please take me on bookstore dates, and talk with me about books, and our futures and aspirations, and then at the end we exchange our favorite books with each other, and drive home listening to music.

We don't hurt Bruno no no no no

That's all I'm gonna say

I saw this while scrolling

And I know a lot of social media’s response to this will be to call women stupid bitch Karens for being married to Trump voters in the first place, because the internet hates women, but think about how misogynistic Republican men are, and how violent/threatening they are. Think of the Republican men who went to 1/6, and the ones who show up to rallies with rifles. Think of how many Republicans are cops, and the amount of cops who are domestic abusers. Do you really think Republican men are not dangerous to the women and children in their lives?

It should go without saying, but if you’re afraid of your partner finding out who you voted for, you need to get out of that relationship. That’s easier said than done, though, so in the meantime, know that who you actually vote for is not public information. Your voter registration information is public, meaning the fact that you’re registered, what party you’re affiliated with, and that you voted. But no one knows who you voted for in a given election, and you do not need to vote for the party you’re affiliated with in a general election. It’s possible to be a registered Republican and vote for Democrats.

More information here:

archive.is

Can people see who I voted for? What information is public or private…

reblog to send three ghosts after elon musk

Hey hi I've run into some truly galling information on tiktok so like

Y'all. If your doctor prescribes you antibiotics FUCKING TAKE ALL OF THEM OH MY GOD

If you stop when you 'feel better' you are not only allowing the infection to grab ahold stronger and set deeper but congratulations! You just signed up to be the incubator for the world's next variation on antibiotic resistant strains of what the fuck ever! Good job.

I cannot begin to describe the sheer number of commenter I just saw on a tiktok where the person was explaining how they didn't feel well, were they were telling them to 'just take the extra antibiotics you have lying around your house' fucking NO

Different antibiotics are for different things, even IF you actually were infected with something antibiotics can treat you won't have the right one you won't have enough and you're already fucked regardless because there were never Extra's to begin with! If there are pills left in the bottle you did it wrong.

Jesus h christ. If you're prescribed pills take them as instructed. Please.

Reblog for a larger sample size for no sample size at all, because obviously nobody will vote