ELI5 Judith Butler

submitted by Jalaces from self.GenderCritical

Sorry if this is a stupid question but I'm still new to the gender critical philosophy and im trying to understand some of the things I thought before, when I hadnt thought too hard about it. I've heard some TRAs complain that Judith Butler's ideas about gender are "transphobic", but they weren't specific about what she said that they didn't like. I was curious because if TRAs describe something that way usually that means it supports a gender critical view, but with Judith Butler I can't seem to find anything especially gender critical even though she seems to be a gender non conforming lesbian and not at all part of the trans trend of teenagers and SJWs. Her writing is pretty dense and I wasn't able to get through much of it without taking a LOT of time to digest what she says, so I was hoping someone already familiar could give me a guide to her ideas about gender, and whether they support our views?

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[–]Asplenium 15 insightful - 2 fun15 insightful - 1 fun16 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Judith Butler is pretty much the Sokal Hoax personified. In other words, she has mastered the art of putting so many long words together that everyone either assumes that she must be a genius or they just cannot be bothered to try and unpick it at all. But she is not in any way gender critical.

[–]valleyoftherogue 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

She is the Phyllis Schlafly of the woke left, and far more dangerous in my book.

[–]sisterinsomnia 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That is very funny! I am very used to reading dense academic material from several disciplines, but when I was reading her I had to keep going back several times, finally to get what she was trying to say which was either something quite obvious or just totally nutty in the sense that it had nothing to do with the actual reality we live in. In my opinion she is a very bad writer and not a feminist at all.

[–]womenopausal 12 insightful - 4 fun12 insightful - 3 fun13 insightful - 4 fun -  (4 children)

JCJ has a great article on Judith Butler, but with language possibly a bit unsuitable for five-year-olds: https://janeclarejones.com/2019/01/24/judith-butler-how-to-disappear-patriarchy-in-three-easy-steps/

[–]Jalaces[S] 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

The sentences in this are really long and English isn't my first language. I can sort of get the general idea but it's very hard for me to understand all of the references and sarcasm in this.

[–]uwushallnotpass 22 insightful - 9 fun22 insightful - 8 fun23 insightful - 9 fun -  (1 child)

Question: If a tree falls in a forest, and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?

Reasonable people: Yeah, I guess. Because the mechanism that produced the sound (vibrations in the air) was still in operation. Even though nobody experienced this sound via their ears, the thing that produced the sound was still there. It’s intrinsic to the tree, which exists independently of anybody’s ears, so human beings really need to stop projecting their own narcissism all over every discussion and realise that reality exists. This is called science.

Judith Butler: What tree? If I do not see a tree, there is no tree. If collections of cells can make up an orange and an elephant and an amoeba, who’s to say that this particular collection of cells is a “tree”? A “tree” is therefore a social construct, something that humans thought up and agreed to define, and if we thought it up we can decide what it is and whether it falls or not. The only way this “tree” can be said to exist is through me, Judith Butler, experiencing the tree, and since someone else’s experience may be different from mine, words don’t mean things. This is called queer theory.

(with apologies to JCJ)

[–]womenopausal 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Sorry! I wish I could be more helpful.

[–]WeaselUnderground 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

From what I remember from reading some of her work in school, she talked a lot about the idea that gender is a performance. So we "do" gender as an action rather than gender being something we "have" or "are." But she's not saying that we consciously choose to perform gender or that we can just stop the performance, instead she's saying that the performance of gender from the time we are infants actually shapes who we are and how we think as an individual. It's complicated and I don't know that I fully understand it, but I think she's saying that if you're a baby girl people treat you differently and that means you act differently and start performing gender as you get older and that performance shapes how you get treated and that in turn shapes how you act, and on and on.

This is probably the idea that TRAs dislike, since it goes against the idea that gender is inherent.

[–]jkfinn 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I guess mothers of movements are criticized just like mothers of sons. It's hard to fathom how some trans persons can criticize one of their exalted founders. Maybe they're so infected by Freudianism (most are americans after all) that understanding mother is beyond the pale---or maybe they resent her "intellectualism."