/LGBT's thoughts on Judith Butler

>>7959059
Wow, she looks so much like a trans man it's crazy. Also it makes her look a lot younger than she actually is.

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>>7959084
Not going to lie, I have a big crush on young JB.

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shameless bump

>>7959059
Post modern cancer, trannies ought to be gassed desu

>>7961557
She isn't trans idiot but thanks for the insightful comment.

Cute femboi desu

I think it is a terrible book, you should keep away from it.

>>7961741
Interesting, I ordered it today so I'll still probably end up reading it, why did you think it was so terrible?

Don't really know much about her, though I'm aware she's a pretty big name in gender philosophy.

>>7959059
Since you're implying it's good, now I know it's very bad.

>>7961908
How am I implying it's good if said I haven't read it...? I was just wondering if there is anyone on this board that HAS read it and also wouldn't mind giving me their opinion on the book or Judith Butler in general because I rarely see her discussed here and also do not know much about her work.

>>7961974
1. You didn't say you haven't read it.

2. You imply that the bible is good every day, even though you've never read that either. Didn't stop you then.

3. Just because you say I'm only allowed to speak if I know something about your shitty book doesn't mean I'm going to obey you, you're nobody.

4. I don't know who Judith Butler is, but you have the smarmy attitude of a proud meme'r who thinks he's dumped a stinky one. It's only natural to assume that Judith Butler is shit, then.

>>7961989

>>7961745 is me, I'm really not trying to argue with you my man I'm just curious about a fucking book jesus christ, I honestly have no fucking idea what you are talking about.

>>7962015
I don't care who you are. You were trying to be dog shit, I mocked you for it.

>>7961989
>>7962023
I usually agree with you, but I'm not really following your reasoning here. OP didn't say anything to suggest they were a Christian, and their posting style doesn't seem recognizable as one of the big /lgbt/ shitposters, so I don't see where these accusations are coming from.

>>7959059
Looks exactly like my brother tbqh

>>7959059
I think her work is interesting in regards to the performativity of gender and identity, in a phenomenological sense. Gender is unironically, from any point of view, a socially constructed performance, as is identity in general. It's a useful analytic tool that's nice when you're avoiding ontological or metaphysical analysis.

My problem is that people integrate it into ideological postmodernism, which essentially ends up in waving away trans existence, and is just be really shitty Critical Theory junk. There is nothing that negates trans people inherently in the idea of gender performativity, but when it's part of a wholly social lens it becomes so. Identity becomes nothing more than performance, rather than something that manifests through performance.

Like, a trans person is not trans because they perform a trans identity, they do so because they are trans. If we stick solely to performance and negate all notions of innate Self or thingness, then no one is really anything but surface phenomenon. It's incoherent, and this is what most people spread these days (while not understanding this is what they believe).

Her work is useful, but when taken in a postmodern ideological context it compounds the contemporary erasure of trans existence. Not only this, trans/gender has become a word of possession that essentially places trans existence under the jurisdiction of hegemonic feminist ideology.

>>7961741
It is an excellent book, and you are unwell in the mind. If you are here on /tttt/, this book is literally "feminism and gender ethics for the modern person." It rejects a great deal of modern feminism implicitly--- most of Butler's critics are hardline TERFs who see her radical expression of gender as a form of playing or acting within the social structure as a cruel endorsement of transgenderism within feminism. They are wrong, albeit with the caveat that Butler does respect trans presence in feminism, because Butler isn't "radically" rejecting anything. She describes the way gender works and the reality of it; she has been accused of "blaming women" for their own behavior increasing patriarchal power (a laughable criticism because it's true, it's called internalization of oppression), and she gives men a realistic way to assist in defusing power conflicts by allowing them healthy gender expression rather than rigidly sticking to enforced "masculine" themed behaviors. What fixes the situation of gender politic is to allow people to act within and without the perceived roles. It also is not saying "gender is not real," but that gender is very real because we implicitly and explicitly take it very seriously, even if the actual categorical taxonomies are somewhat neutral or vague.

I took a class of hers and have read a lot of her work, so I find it a bit amusing when people call it "postmodern" or whatever. Most people on a board like this are usually hesitant to read philosophers or any commentary of subjects, because it flies over their head. It's a bit too complex for people with simplistic beliefs that say A and B are opposed, so I must necessarily believe A or B but not accept both A and B might be true. A and B might both have valid arguments.

>>7962352
But that's just more of your usual lies like always you dog shit.

>>7962474
I'm not lying though, why are you being so antagonistic? It's not like OP is one of the retard trolls who thinks it's okay to kill trans people if you don't like the idea of them having rights.

>>7962534
Just more lies. That's exactly what OP is. When you intentionally say the exact opposite of the truth, that's the most disgusting thing you can do with that Jesus hole in the bottom center of your face.

>>7962452
>rather than something that manifests through performance.
That is what Butler was contending, and it is why she was attacked by a lot of TERF-leaning feminazis as trivializing the meaning of wymynhyyd. Butler is contending that we are something internally, but that our performance is that internal nature filtered through social bargaining and expectations: in order to fit the role expected we compromise the internal identity (either because the external social expectations are specific or conflicting enough to raise difficulties) and "play" at being something we are not. The playing isn't voluntary; you are raised in it, like a lifelong psychosis you are made to believe gender and its core essence is not only real, but necessary; however, internally, you often would find yourself thinking and wanting to act in ways that are unacceptable. So someone corrects you, or people intervene with expectations that will make those ways of acting less prominent.

For Butler, the external, performative aspect is not the real aspect: all gender is performative, therefore entails a lot of socially constructed mores that would not be taboo. These should be taken, in the case of transgender people, to be the ideas that compound the social transition: one may be compelled externally to act or behave in a way that fits their gender narrative and not in ways that are socially unacceptable. In other words, a gendered worldview again rears its head just as before when one had not transitioned, saying "boys should not do X or Y girl behavior." Then you get "a girl (since you are now playing by this set of rules) should not do X or Y boy activity or action," etc... These statements and ideas are not as real as the internal belief of "I am a boy/girl." It is up to the trans person to decide for themselves how much they want to engage in proper socially constructed gender conduct; however, the external pressure to perform gender in a specific, socially endorsed way will continue.

>>7962562
To follow up: I am not contending that gender is not real, nor is Butler. When I say "gender is not real," I am saying "gender is an abstract," and that it is also something that is real to participants, but not to those rejecting the system. I'd compare it to psychoses like believing god talks to you, but imagine if every evangelical Christian was taught that psychoses, even if they did not literally have hallucinatory conversations with god.

>>7962578
Does that other, much longer post of yours mean as little as this post?

>>7962609
Of course it doesn't mean a lot, it's basically a fucking abstract of the material. They touched on phenomenology, ideological postmodernism, and erasure which all are intertwined. It would take several dozen posts at maximum length to elaborate on all of that.

>If we stick solely to performance and negate all notions of innate Self or thingness, then no one is really anything but surface phenomenon.
This is a statement about ideological postmodernists than postmodern theories of gender. It isn't so much a critique of Butler, but a critique of how some people have interpreted Butler and a handful of other feminists to advance that exact sort of critical theory plague of subsuming the whole of the identity into a social-functional object that can be manipulated or criticized.

>>7962562
>but that our performance is that internal nature filtered through social bargaining and expectations
I'm affirming the poster's assertion but supplying a caveat.

If you think that is meaningless, then I'm sorry you don't like distinctions.

>>7962720
No no no. What I mean is it's a bunch of words that, given their definitions, and the order that you arranged them in, the sentences they form mean absolutely nothing. They're nonsensical. Word salad. They're intended to be so complicated that hopefully nobody will realize they don't mean anything, but everybody can tell they don't mean anything.

>>7962578
The problem is that gender is real to trans people to the point of suicide, and it's "not real" to rebels who've never had to come into contact with it because it's a part of them that is so fundamental as to be meaningless. Escaping gender roles and whatnot, being an individual, sure, but gender is not a psychosis. The people rebelling against the notion tend to be the ones enforcing it by reifying it's existence in opposition (this of course is a common critique of all critical theories that move from tool to ideology).

Now, there's a lot of nuance that goes into performance--especially as it relates to trans people and how their performance can reflect or antagonize their internal dialogue and their internal dialogue can reflect or antagonize some innate thing that we can't really understand at this point--but I'd contend that those trying to dismantle and vilify traditional gender roles do much harm to trans people when it's taken to the logical conclusion (which is what we do in ideological conversation). The thing is that I've often seen Butler's analysis used as a tool for people saying the notion of transition is harmful due to it essentializing gender.

However, this ultimately leads either to trans people being shamed into not transitioning (real dysphoria vs nonreal social strife), or trans people being "accepted" by turning a blind eye to their experience and calling their identity a performance and lumping it into "gender rebellion" (see: trans focused TIME magazine that described trans people as "long haired men" and "women in flannel" rebelling against gender norms). This point of view has no need for coverage of medical transition as gender is a social construct, rather than a social manifestation.

May sound overblown, but I do fear that postmodern gender rhetoric is teleologically no different from TERFs'.

>>7962744
I could say the same for anything... so that doesn't really mean anything? It's like you lack the compunction to actually read things and put the material together in a sensible way. Do you have some kind of text aphasia?

>>7961577
I know, but her main work is about trannies

>>7962761
No. Some things people say make sense. Most things people say make at least a tiny bit of sense. Few things anybody says makes absolutely 0 sense.

And I don't read 1000 pages of shit when I can figure out it's all shit from the 1st page. Would you eat a whole bucket of pig shit just because someone shamed you for stopping after you smelled the bucket?

>>7962557
What exact lies did the OP make?

>>7962720
BTW you're a cool person to run into and get to have a nice autism talk with

>>7962781
OP ommited the fact that he is a cis straight male pedophile Christian retard trolls who thinks it's okay to kill trans people if you don't like the idea of them having rights.

>>7962749
>The problem is that gender is real to trans people to the point of suicide, and it's "not real" to rebels who've never had to come into contact with it because it's a part of them that is so fundamental as to be meaningless.
Agreed. The internal identity of trans people is much stronger than people who simply are "gender nonconformists." A transgender person not only deals with the social expectations of one gender, but a second and even more expectations for being "trans."

>but gender is not a psychosis.
Gender is not a psychosis simply because our minds didn't come up with the idea on their own in a vacuum from reality. If we are enforcing the rules ourselves, then it becomes real enough to not be a diversion from reality (frankly it is a bit of a diversion from what is "real").

>this of course is a common critique of all critical theories that move from tool to ideology
Yes, and it is a problem because the ideological postmodernists often cannot supply a solution without defaulting into opposing the old system. The creativity to make an entirely new solution that defeats the current and past dilemma is daunting or nearly impossible.

>those trying to dismantle and vilify traditional gender roles do much harm to trans people
I 100% agree. There are many camps of these postmodernists--- those who demonize are often pitted against those who are all for women or transpeople being able to redeem or take up old social expectations, such as being a housewife, without some feminist stigma being injected. It is insulting or derisive to people to say "everything is permitted because we are no longer going to enforce such and such taboo" and then turn around and make something antiquated taboo.

>>7962749
>The thing is that I've often seen Butler's analysis used as a tool for people saying the notion of transition is harmful due to it essentializing gender.
Again, fucking TERFs hate any critical gender theory because it takes from their coffers. There are genuine postmodernists who contend that, sure, but that is a sort of also an entry point for TERFs (who mind you, hate Butler for trivializing their female essentialism) to claim that it is anti-transgender and anti-transition rhetoric.

>(see: trans focused TIME magazine that described trans people as "long haired men" and "women in flannel" rebelling against gender norms)
Yeah, this sort of acceptance makes us all look fucking silly, trivial. It lacks ambiguity about their intent; they clearly intend to conflate "outside the gender norm" with "transgender," which makes it seem like all transgender identities homogeneously are nonconforming.

>May sound overblown, but I do fear that postmodern gender rhetoric is teleologically no different from TERFs'.
I agree. That is what seems to be happening. It is like... the best example is the argument among postmodernists about whether race is real and has meaningful differences or whether race is meaningless and will be bred out by interracial contact. The truth is a lot more moderate--- race exists, yes, but because we make it significant. Since it has been significant for so long, it truly becomes vital and no longer something that can be erased. Also, the dilution of racial appearances through miscegenation is not a thing at odds with the continued prevalence of racial culture, since it is a generational tradition to pass down one's culture to their children, regardless of how they look.

Gender rhetoric is too extreme about prescribing behavior to us. Butler... her work should be liberating, not restrictive. If you set out to cure some ill, the cure shouldn't be used to poison people.

>>7962788
Thanks. 1000's of pages of shit!!! Whoo!!!

>>7962797
Gender really is such a murky area, and just an easy place for tribalism disguised as coherent ideology. Recently, I've moved past the metaphysical gender paradigm/trying to justify myself on some level as "truly" female in favor of accepting the messiness of being a biological male whose gender presentation is that of a female and internal dialogue that of a Self with an innate need to present female--this is simply the way the pieces fit together, with or without societal reification (spent years of my life studying philosophy trying to understand myself and ultimately had no choice but to take a "leap of faith"). I get really worried about postmodernism simply because it doesn't help trans people who are trying to understand themselves, and I find that trans people aren't really allowed to self-identify from the ground up.

Lately I've been trying to integrate Plato and Nietzsche (I know), with some Derrida and grounded analysis of Mystic tradition and lots of other stuff, into a holistic phenomenological understanding of some kind. The basis is the personal irrefutability of my dysphoria (so it's a personal thing, not a proof), and trying to understand things from that position (innate ontology, experienced phenomenologically, manifested in the material with murky causality), in a pseudo-Cartesian manner.

>>7962846
You are definitely right. I initially was skeptical about Butler's work due to the rhetoric regarding Gender Theory bandied about by classmates (who I'm stealth around, and there's a surprising amount of insensitive, almost transphobic shit said when they don't think anyone is around to hear, but that is simply anecdotal). When actually confronted with her work it actually cleared up a lot of things for me, and I agree, it should be liberating.

I found James Baldwin's earlier work to be similarly liberating. Back when he was more idealistic and hadn't been worn cynical over time :"^

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>>7962792
Okay, I'm not the fucking pedoposter for fucks sake, I'm just a mtf that's interested in trans related psychology / gender theory.

>>7962562
>>7962468
>>7962452
Thanks for posting this, I'm definitely going to give the book a shot, do you have any other recommendations?

>>7963142
There's about 200 pedoposters on this board alone. There is no "The Pedoposter." This isn't the Matrix, no need for a "The Chosen One."

And nah, you're cis, straight, Christian and pedophile.

>>7963192
O-okay. I assumed you were referring to the person / persons that keep making threads like >>7962573

>>7963192
Yeah this.
I don't know why this person's so sure that there's only one person on this board who deliberately makes inflammatory posts about trans people.

>>7963287
There is definitely one person that makes a large majority of the threads, you can tell by their writing style / the images they use, but yeah thats not to say every bait thread about trans people is made by the same person.

>>7963142
As far as feminism, sadly, no. When I went to Berkeley and attended lectures her class was a one-off, as in I didn't study gender studies or philosophy. It was very hard to get my way into the class- not only was it packed, it is for in-major students. I literally know nothing about feminism save for a few other writers (despite UCB being ground zero for SJWs a lot of people I knew had taken no "SJW" classes in gender studies majors). I wouldn't recommend them- older feminist writers- unless you want to learn the historical development of feminism and gender studies. Things now are so different and everybody takes piecemeal from other writers to create new theories.

The most interesting stuff I've read would be psychology material: "Anti-Oedipus" is sort of a thing in between if you wanna learn about why Freudian psychoanalysis is in decline, but it's super wonky. The two guys who wrote it basically made people turn against Lacan and the modern psychoanalytical schools. Lacan is really dense... It isn't fair to say that psychoanalysis is fascist, but it really isn't far off. A lot of Freudian psychoanalysis is "diagnose a fucked up feeling; teach the subject to repress it after giving a simplistic explanation for why they want to do something so dark and twisted."

>>7963328
For a while, a great deal, at least 3/5ths of trans threads were Caraposter asking silly questions about trutrans and HSTS.

>>7962899
Tribalism seems like the innate endpoint of diverse social groups. It's overidentification with one aspect or variable of your identity as if it is "special" or unique in its obligations compared to your other social engagements.

>this is simply the way the pieces fit together,
Best things in life are cliches and truisms (called "truisms" because they are so obviously true) and one great one is, "just be yourself."

>"leap of faith"
That was definitely my experience; I am a Christian, too, so it was especially difficult to grapple with being "faith" into it, especially faith in myself to do what I was going to do and do it right... just to be happy.

>I get really worried about postmodernism simply because it doesn't help trans people who are trying to understand themselves
My experience with postmodernism was not philosophical or ideological, but comes from the postmodernist art world. I view it as liberating, because I don't see postmodernism as anything but a bunch of vague genre ideas of what comes after the modern. Some of this critical theory that is around in postmodernism is... just rehashing old tropes and ideas in new ways, but not really adding much but confusion. That confusion is palpable, you can feel it in the agendas of far left people, and it is clearly threatening, a threat of irrelevancy and erasure. You can see it now--- like on some news outlets they are talking about how alt-right people are using bizarre arguments reminiscent of SJW bullshit arguments to argue their own subjectivity and pander to the confirmation bias of their peers. It's been a problem on the left for a while, and now its moving around... being "entertained."

>Lately I've been trying to integrate Plato and Nietzsche (I know)
It's not absurd to try, but lol good luck. Did you go to school for philosophy or is this just a personal obsession? You are obviously very well read and have good comprehension. A lot of the terminology is lost on me.

>>7963287
Well, there is one that's far more prolific, autistic, and ban-prone then all of the rest. But there is a distant second, third, fourth and fifth place champion pedo shitposter. They're all very distant to the gran masta pedo poster, but five of them account for 98% of all of the threads, and 65% of all of the posts, on this board.

The rest of all the threads, the other 2%, are all also made by other, lesser known pedos, and about another 20% of the posts, so that only 15% of the posts are made by something resembling humans. And they only barely resemble humans.

>>7963504
>Best things in life are cliches and truisms
Oh yes, for sure. It's getting to those truisms yourself that makes them meaningful, and "just be yourself" is one that took a long time to move towards... Not too long compared to some people, but it felt like an eternity.

Truthfully, my leap of faith came at my lowest point where I had no real alternatives. I have a knack for pushing myself to the brink in order to force change. Bad habit. I'm not Christian, but I was raised Catholic and I've always had an appreciation for religious philosophy. It's kind of ingrained in me.

And I definitely understand the liberation of postmodern art, but I feel like far too many postmodern artists these days exist bereft of context, without any real knowledge of what came before them, or a love of craft. I think it's important to understand and value what you're building upon in order to move forward--otherwise you're not doing anything worth doing, imo.

Personally, as a writer, I unironically find greentext and memes to be important cultural artifacts that should be integrated into literature--or at least the zeitgeist that birthed them--while drawing from sources from literary canon and philosophical discourse.

>Did you go to school for philosophy or is this just a personal obsession?
Personal obsession. I'm an English/Creative Writing graduate, so it's useful in my field anyways. The reason I got so into philosophy was because I'd been trying to make the dysphoria go away, or have it be manageable. Literally tried to follow Stoicism at 7 and just slowly made my way through lots of philosophy. Ultimately, trying to grasp the ineffable was driving me crazy and I had to take that leap of faith. Before I transitioned I was one of those "everything can be answered by pure reason!" people, but now I'm a crazy person into creating a holistic ideology of Self.

It's always cool having a level-headed discussion with a cool person. Are you an artists?

>>7964196
>I have a knack for pushing myself to the brink in order to force change. Bad habit.
Yeah, I only decided I was gonna embrace myself fully after years of repressing due to a pretty bad relationship ending and half a year of severe alcohol abuse. When I got sober, I decided this was why I was getting sober and moving on.

>The reason I got so into philosophy was because I'd been trying to make the dysphoria go away, or have it be manageable
I have done the same for years, hence psychology and political fixations.

>I feel like far too many postmodern artists these days exist bereft of context, without any real knowledge of what came before them
I think this staple of crafting art is somewhat important, but there are far too many naive artists who become propped up as misrepresented examples of this kind of work (Jean-Michel Basquiat). Naive or outsider artists are great--- but most are hijacked by old white collectors and spoiled, born-rich art critics as something representative of things (like some racial or sexual orientation social phenomenon) they clearly are not or do not believe. Knowing the past is a vital part of making art now, and often... there's examples of "outsider" postmodernists who are reputed as deniers of older art, but clearly have previous influences they were conscious of.

>Literally tried to follow Stoicism
Lol, aren't we all stoics at some point? 7 is a great age to start.

>Are you an artists?
Yes, an unemployed artist with a few gallery showings and a small resume.

>>7963192
boy wait until you find out about /b/

>>7964291
I appreciate your comments on postmodern art. For sure there is a certain need for naive and outsider artists creating new things. It's always nice to be tempered with nuance.

I'm glad you have had some showings. It's always nice to get little recognitions, and idk, push forward. Even if I've been very stagnant and resting on my laurels for a while... Went through a very, very rough patch of my life and haven't totally bounced back.

This conversation has given me a greater understanding and appreciation of Butler's work, so that's cool. Rare to get nice conversation like this.

Cristan Williams: You spoke about the surgical intervention many trans people undergo as a “very brave transformation.” Can you talk about that?

Judith Butler: It is always brave to insist on undergoing transformations that feel necessary and right even when there are so many obstructions to doing so, including people and institutions who seek to pathologize or criminalize such important acts of self-definition. I know that for some feels less brave than necessary, but we all have to defend those necessities that allow us to live and breathe in the way that feels right to us. Surgical intervention can be precisely what a trans person needs – it is also not always what a trans person needs. Either way, one should be free to determine the course of one’s gendered life.

CW: I think it’s safe to say that many gender theorists are controversial in one way or another. Some have lumped your work together with the work of gender theorists such as Sheila Jeffreys, who wrote:

[[Transsexual surgery] could be likened to political psychiatry in the Soviet Union. I suggest that transsexualism should best be seen in this light, as directly political, medical abuse of human rights. The mutilation of healthy bodies and the subjection of such bodies to dangerous and life-threatening continuing treatment violates such people’s rights to live with dignity in the body into which they were born, what Janice Raymond refers to as their “native” bodies. It represents an attack on the body to rectify a political condition, “gender” dissatisfaction in a male supremacist society based upon a false and politically constructed notion of gender difference… Recent literature on transsexualism in the lesbian community draws connections with the practices of sadomasochism.]

Can you talk about the ways in which your views might differ?

>>7965455
cont.

JB: I have never agreed with Sheila Jeffreys or Janice Raymond, and for many years have been on quite the contrasting side of feminist debates. She appoints herself to the position of judge, and she offers a kind of feminist policing of trans lives and trans choices. I oppose this kind of prescriptivism, which seems to me to aspire to a kind of feminist tyranny.

If she makes use of social construction as a theory to support her view, she very badly misunderstands its terms. In her view, a trans person is “constructed” by a medical discourse and therefore is the victim of a social construct. But this idea of social constructs does not acknowledge that all of us, as bodies, are in the active position of figuring out how to live with and against the constructions – or norms – that help to form us. We form ourselves within the vocabularies that we did not choose, and sometimes we have to reject those vocabularies, or actively develop new ones. For instance, gender assignment is a “construction” and yet many genderqueer and trans people refuse those assignments in part or in full. That refusal opens the way for a more radical form of self-determination, one that happens in solidarity with others who are undergoing a similar struggle.

One problem with that view of social construction is that it suggests that what trans people feel about what their gender is, and should be, is itself “constructed” and, therefore, not real. And then the feminist police comes along to expose the construction and dispute a trans person’s sense of their lived reality. I oppose this use of social construction absolutely, and consider it to be a false, misleading, and oppressive use of the theory.

>>7965465
CW: Recently, Gloria Steinem wrote:

So now I want to be unequivocal in my words: I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make. And what I wrote decades ago does not reflect what we know today as we move away from only the binary boxes of “masculine” or “feminine” and begin to live along the full human continuum of identity and expression.
Would you comment on Steinem’s statement?

JB: I agree completely that nothing is more important for transgender people than to have access to excellent health care in trans-affirmative environments, to have the legal and institutional freedom to pursue their own lives as they wish, and to have their freedom and desire affirmed by the rest of the world. This will happen only when transphobia is overcome at the level of individual attitudes and prejudices and in larger institutions of education, law, health care, and kinship.

CW: What do you think people misrepresent most about your theories and why?

JB: I do not read very much of those writings, so I cannot say. I do know that some people believe that I see gender as a “choice” rather than as an essential and firmly fixed sense of self. My view is actually not that. No matter whether one feels one’s gendered and sexed reality to be firmly fixed or less so, every person should have the right to determine the legal and linguistic terms of their embodied lives. So whether one wants to be free to live out a “hard-wired” sense of sex or a more fluid sense of gender, is less important than the right to be free to live it out, without discrimination, harassment, injury, pathologization or criminalization – and with full institutional and community support. That is most important in my view.

>>7965473
CW: Do you think that humans have an innate and subjective experience of having a body? If so, would part of that experience also include having a body with primary sex characteristics?

JB: Most of what people say about these matters is rather speculative. I know that some subjective experiences of sex are very firm and fundamental, even unchangeable. They can be so firm and unchanging that we call them “innate”. But given that we report on such a sense of self within a social world, a world in which we are trying to use language to express what we feel, it is unclear what language does that most effectively. I understand that “innate” is a word that conveys the sense of something hired-wired and constitutive. I suppose I would be inclined to wonder whether other vocabularies might do the job equally well. I never did like the assertion of the “innate” inferiority or women or Blacks, and I understood that when people tried to talk that way, they were trying to “fix” a social reality into a natural necessity. And yet, sometimes we do need a language that refers to a basic, fundamental, enduring, and necessary dimension of who we are, and the sense of sexed embodiment can be precisely that.

CW: Some (such as Milton Diamond) assert that there seems to be a genetic issue that can lead to transsexualism. What are your thoughts about such assertions?

>>7965465
>She appoints herself to the position of judge, and she offers a kind of feminist policing of trans lives and trans choices. I oppose this kind of prescriptivism, which seems to me to aspire to a kind of feminist tyranny.

Jesus christ have we finally found /our girl/???

>>7965480
JB: In the works by Milton Diamond that I have read, I have had to question the way he understands genetics and causality. Even if a gene structure could be found, it would only establish a possible development, but would in no way determine that development causally. Genetics might be yet another way of getting to that sense of being “hard-wired” for a particular sex or gender. My sense is that we may not need the language of innateness or genetics to understand that we are all ethically bound to recognize another person’s declared or enacted sense of sex and/or gender. We do not have to agree upon the “origins” of that sense of self to agree that it is ethically obligatory to support and recognize sexed and gendered modes of being that are crucial to a person’s well-being.

CW: If “gender” includes the way in which we subjectively experience, contextualize, and communicate our biology, do you think that living in a world without “gender” is possible?

JB: Sometimes there are ways to minimize the importance of gender in life, or to confuse gender categories so that they no longer have descriptive power. But other times gender can be very important to us, and some people really love the gender that they have claimed for themselves. If gender is eradicated, so too is an important domain of pleasure for many people. And others have a strong sense of self bound up with their genders, so to get rid of gender would be to shatter their self-hood. I think we have to accept a wide variety of positions on gender. Some want to be gender-free, but others want to be free really to be a gender that is crucial to who they are.

>>7965490
[inserted twitter post of bitch ass horrible fymynyst cathy brennan to ensure the trans readers shudder in shame, saying: "bc a mutilated male body is not a female body"]

CW: I have seen where – especially online – people who identify as “gender critical feminists” (TERFs) assert that transwoman are merely mutilated men. What are your thoughts about using “gender critical feminism” to make such assertions?

JB: I do not know this term, but I reject totally the characterization of a transwoman as a mutilated man. First, that formulation presumes that men born into that sex assignment are not mutilated. Second, it once again sets up the feminist as the prosecutor of trans people. If there is any mutilation going on in this scene, it is being done by the feminist police force who rejects the lived embodiment of transwomen. That very accusation is a form of “mutilation” as is all transphobic discourse such as these. There is a rather huge ethical difference between electing surgery and being faced with transphobic condemnation and diagnoses. I would say that the greatest risk of mutilation that trans people have comes directly from transphobia.

CW: Many trans people assert that women/females can have a penis and that men/males can have a vagina. What are your thoughts about that?

JB: I see no problem with women having a penis, and men having a vagina. People can have whatever primary characteristics they have (whether given or acquired) and that does not necessarily imply what gender they will be, or want to be. For others, primary sexual characteristics signify gender more directly.

>>7965497
[Intersectionality may well sound like some unfortunate bowel complaint resulting in copious use of a colostomy bag, and indeed it does contain a large amount of ordure. Wikipedia defines it as ‘the study of intersections between different disenfranchised groups or groups of minorities; specifically, the study of the interactions of multiple systems of oppression or discrimination’, which seems rather mature and dignified. In reality, it seeks to make a manifesto out of the nastiest bits of Mean Girls, wherein non-white feminists especially are encouraged to bypass the obvious task of tackling the patriarchy’s power in favour of bitching about white women’s perceived privilege in terms of hair texture and body shape.] – Julie Burchill

CW: Do you have any thoughts about “intersectionality?”

JB: If you are referring to the important contribution of black feminist theory, then I have many thoughts. It has made an important contribution to social and political analysis, asking all of us to think about what assumptions of race and class we make when we speak about “women” or what assumptions of gender and race we make when we speak about “class.” It allows us to unpack those categories and see the various kinds of social formations and power relations that constitute those categories.

>>7965503
CW: It has been asserted that if one controls the way one identifies and behaves, that one can change the way one experiences their body. For example:

[He could see that I was possessed of this thing, which only now, I realize was demonic. I knelt on the study floor, in tears, I was choking, forces were telling me not to do it, to walk out; freedom as a woman awaited me, after all, I had made such progress. I fought back, I cried aloud, I repented, I rebuked what had gone on in my life… All this happened 18 months ago… I gave them my suitcases of dresses, clothes, make up etc. It made me feel sick, and it was a major thing for me to do. I had to get rid of all that had held me before. They disposed of the stuff. I stopped having manicures, and cut my nails short, I grew a small beard. I threw all the [hormone] tablets away, and turned away from anything that had to do with my desires. I asked my Pastor for a verse that I could look at every day and enjoy my new freedom as a man, a father and a husband. I put a piece of paper next to my bed, with encouraging verses, which I read every morning when I got out of bed. I knew that the woman inside was dead. The power of Christ had destroyed her, and all she stood for. Eighteen months on, the devil still tries to persuade me, but he knows that I will not go down that path, as the consequences for my family would be immense. I am accountable to several people, and I am enjoying my manhood.] –Sam’s Story

>>7965508
In the above example, the individual has made an ongoing daily ritualistic practice of denial and repression in the belief that it will change the way they experience their body. In what seems to be a somewhat similar approach, Janice Raymond wrote:

[This paper has argued that the issue of transsexualism is an ethical one that has profound social and moral ramifications. Transsexualism itself is a deeply moral question rather than a medicaltechnical answer. In concluding, I would list some suggestions for change that address the more social and ethical arguments I have raised in the preceding pages.

While there are many who feel that morality must be built into law, I believe that the elimination of transsexualism is not best achieved by legislation prohibiting transsexual treatment and surgery but rather by legislation that limits it and by other legislation that lessens the support given to sex-role stereotyping, which generated the problem to begin with…

It would raise questions such as the following: is individual gender suffering relieved at the price of role conformity and the perpetuation of role stereotypes on a social level? In changing sex, does the transsexual encourage a sexist society whose continued existence depends upon the perpetuation of these roles and stereotypes? These and similar questions are seldom raised in transsexual therapy at present.]

– Raymond (1980), Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery

In your understanding of “gender,” do you believe that either of these approaches – both focusing on controlling behavior (via god and religious counseling or legislation and stereotype counseling) – would be able to eliminate trans people?

>>7965511
JB: I think that it is incumbent on all of us to get rid of these approaches – they are painful, unnecessary, and destructive. Raymond sets herself up as the judge of what transsexuality is and is not, and we are already in a kind of moral prison as we read her work. What is much more important than any of these behaviorist or “moral” approaches are all the stories, poems, and testimonies, the theoretical and political works, that document the struggle to achieve embodied self-determination for individuals and for groups. What we need are poems that interrogate the world of pronouns, open up possibilities of language and life; forms of politics that support and encourage self-affirmation. And what we need is a political and joyous alternative to the behaviorist discourse, the Christian discourse on evil or sin, and the convergence of the two in forms of gender policing that [is] tyrannical and destructive.

CW: Do you think “sex” is a social construct?

JB: I think that there are a variety of ways of understanding what a social construct is, and we have to be patient with terms like these. We have to find a way of understanding how one category of sex can be “assigned” from both and another sense of sex can lead us to resist and reject that sex assignment. How do we understand that second sense of sex? It is not the same as the first – it is not an assignment that others give us. But maybe it is an assignment we give ourselves? If so, do we not need a world of others, linguistic practices, social institutions, and political imaginaries in order to move forward to claim precisely those categories we require, and to reject those that work against us?

>>7965514
CW: What, if anything, would you like trans people to take from your work?

JB: Gender Trouble was written about 24 years ago, and at that time I did not think well enough about trans issues. Some trans people thought that in claiming that gender is performative that I was saying that it is all a fiction, and that a person’s felt sense of gender was therefore “unreal.” That was never my intention. I sought to expand our sense of what gender realities could be. But I think I needed to pay more attention to what people feel, how the primary experience of the body is registered, and the quite urgent and legitimate demand to have those aspects of sex recognized and supported. I did not mean to argue that gender is fluid and changeable (mine certainly is not). I only meant to say that we should all have greater freedoms to define and pursue our lives without pathologization, de-realization, harassment, threats of violence, violence, and criminalization. I join in the struggle to realize such a world.

[end of article and spam dumping]

>>7965488
She is a very nice person and an intelligent academic; in the rhetoric surrounding things, people forget to breathe. Not everyone is out to get us, and not everyone is trying to hurt us--- even if it feels like it... a lot of the time it does feel that way.

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After reading this article / a few other things I'm still slightly confused what exactly JB's opinion of gender is, basically does she view it as somewhat innate but also as something thats subject to be influenced by external factors like language / culture / etc.?

>>7965568
Let me quote the vital statement on innateness:
>My sense is that we may not need the language of innateness or genetics to understand that we are all ethically bound to recognize another person’s declared or enacted sense of sex and/or gender. We do not have to agree upon the “origins” of that sense of self to agree that it is ethically obligatory to support and recognize sexed and gendered modes of being that are crucial to a person’s well-being.

In other words, innateness shouldn't be our litmus test for why something exists; her theory of performative gender should be seen as stating that the nature of how we are may be iterations on iterations of change as we negotiate with society, so it is difficult to draw a causal line to our gender from any or every factor. One person could have so many causes of their gender expression, it would be difficult to state genetics or nurturing as the cause unless the direct link is actually found; it hasn't been found, yet, despite the trutrans "brainscans" meme or a "gay gene," psychological states aren't so easily connected to running diodes through brains or finding a certain gene.

The performative idea basically allows gender to operate like so: culture and language and other factors from outside of you effect changes through expectations, etc. Usually, society will force you to repress. You can bargain with the world, picking and choosing and finding the path to gender expression that you feel suits you. Essentially your choices and feelings on the matter may be innate, but they can change with you as you interact with external forces. So ideally, in this way you have an awareness that you can, indeed, act as you wish and choose the path of least resistance to your internal motives. It is like a synthesis of your innate preference (wherever it came from) and what the outside world provides you (you only really know how to act from external cues and expectations, which you can absorb or reject).

>>7965860
>My sense is that we may not need the language of innateness or genetics to understand that we are all ethically bound to recognize another person’s declared or enacted sense of sex and/or gender

>innateness shouldn't be our litmus test for why something exists

Do you agree with that view? There seems to be a strong predisposition in our society to associate great importance with establishing a causal link between something or finding its "innateness" and it's acceptance into society as fact / legitimate.

A good example of this in my opinion would be how gay rights advocates seemed to benefit from scientists establishing that homosexuality is not a "choice" as many people critical of homosexuality once argued, and is actually something much more "innate."

Wouldn't it be fair to say that transgender people would also greatly benefit from studies that legitimize trans identities as being "innate" components of who we are however difficult it may be to establish that link?

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Last bump before I let this thread die, still curious if anyone has any input on >>7966207

>>7966207
Yes, trans people would benefit (and have benefited) from studies such as those, but I think Judith Butler is basically correct, in that innateness does not necessarily determine legitimacy.

However, if a study came out that trans women do not actually have "female brains" or anything that sets them apart from cis men neurologically or spiritually, I would probably kill myself, just because it's personally important to me.

>>7967978
nobody has time to read all that.
can you state your question in 10 words or less?

>>7968002
Why is it so important to you personally?

How innate does it have to be? Would being unchangeable but acquired in early childhood be enough?

>>7966207
Do I agree? I feel... like my nature as a person has changed, always. The trans-ness has been there- dysphoria and envy- but it changes, matures, and grows generally, from unhealthy behavior into healthy behavior as I've gotten older. I don't care where things came from, mostly because I don't see the difference between things like the sky of mud or shit or a dick or a computer screen or a can of soda or God. God is minutely more important than mud. I'm loose with concepts. I think causation is often illusory, redundantly obvious, or an endeavor to reduce and reduce. Once you reduce things far enough, you just keep finding more layers to how something works. Consciousness and identity are a loop of pas, present, future that always conflate things in the wrong order, recreating yourself all the time due to new information, trauma, stress, and personal, emotional insight.

To be accepted as a fact is for me to live and be respectable and have a purpose that endears my existence to a sense of validity in others. What if being something was a choice? So what? I think most people would realize things are not a choice when they try to fake something and end up in therapy for repressing their true nature. It evens out.

Even if someone wants to make trans-ness innate, it would only lead to some compulsory societal interventions. Psychology already plays games with us as a field; they don't care about the ramifications of being our saviors. We don't always need to be saved by some dogma about our essential nature; I don't want that, personally.

>>7971104
I guess what I'm trying to say is that... I'd rather be respected because I am worthy, rather than having a study legitimize our rights fully in order to compel the law to legislate moral treatment. I want us to teach people the truth through living openly and honestly, damning the consequences.