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A summary of the Owen Jones interview with Judith Butler for those who can’t stand to watch.
OJ’s questions are designed to elicit from Butler the sort of statements a self described “cis man” can’t advance without being challenged for privilege.
He misuses Butler as a 1/
OJ’s questions are designed to elicit from Butler the sort of statements a self described “cis man” can’t advance without being challenged for privilege.
He misuses Butler as a 1/
as a "feminist" (really?) and (ironically) as a female to borrow authenticity for the slogans he wants her to repeat. At no stage does he look like he is any way familiar with her work.
He invites her enthusiastically to talk about ideas he doesn’t seem to realise she discarded as incorrect many years ago. She’s there because if he presses the right button she might produce the right sound bite to attack a common enemy. The “TERF”.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. It fails when he asks her about “intersectionality”. She is supposed to honk back the unfounded criticism that gender critical feminism fails this test and is therefore “no form of feminism” because it “fails” to include transpeople.
But no one gave her the heads up and instead she talks about intersectionality in the way it was meant to be talked about. In terms of race. You can almost hear OJ fidgeting in bored disinterest off camera
. Racial, sexual & class equality are only used as leverage to knock out an opponent by the likes of Jones. JB either unwittingly or unwillingly doesn’t play ball.
Butler also misses her cue when OJ raises Foucault in an attempt to mock Liz Truss, unfairly contrasting deaths from COVID with her suggested focus on criticising decades old philosophers. He clearly enjoys this little own joke, head back & snorting conceitedly but he gets more
than he bargains for when the reference goes seemingly over her head & Butler holds forth on postmodernism in earnest way beyond his ability to understand or care.
JB herself seems a stuck record when referencing GC feminism offering up Sheila Jeffries and Janice Raymond as if they were the current cutting edge in GC thought. Apart from a total mischaracterisation of Suzanne Moore & an appalling crack at JK Rowling
(says she has “capitalised on a history of sexual trauma”, claims traumatised people often persecute others & she hasn’t dealt with her trauma responsibly) she appears completely out of touch on GC views. At no stage does she articulate the GC perspective even to knock it down.
But falsely paints it as a commitment to the idea that “sex assigned at birth” only is relevant. I don’t know a GC person who believes that sex is assigned at birth at all, never mind being the only consideration. She sets the “assigning of sex at birth” process up as a sinister
Orwellian state function, mixing in metaphors from BLM to falsely portray GC feminists are aligned with reactionary right wing authoritarianism. Its really only about midwives & doctors recording sex, Judith, love. Because it’s the 1st and most lasting medical fact you will ever
need about yourself next to your blood group. She makes a bizarre reference to GC concern about abuse of self ID by men as “a projection”!!!
She makes vapid points about the penis not being inherently dangerous & lots of men don’t rape & the meaning of men & women is a movable
She makes vapid points about the penis not being inherently dangerous & lots of men don’t rape & the meaning of men & women is a movable
feast - to suggest that GC concerns about womens safety under self id are “fantasies” – disgustingly she actually uses that word -
- without being able to acknowledge that 98% of sexual offenders are biologically male. Its as if, when it comes to sex, if not race, this is a cerebral exercise that never has to factor in the body count.
It is implicit to both OJ & Butler that any perspective that fails to centre the idea that trans people are unable to function, even “to breath” without complete & utter acceptance by everyone else that they are exactly as they identify, is itself, transphobic
The effect that may have on others rights and ability to live good lives is thereby cut off at the outset from meriting any further exploration. Yet no acknowledgement is made that not all trans people have or claim to have this level of incapacity or dysphoria & trans activism
pushes for the removal of any such assumption in the recognition of trans identity.
Owen tries to push her on why the UK has so many GC feminists & she looks as if she is being asked to guess how many Malteasers would fill a Toyota Yaris. “Are they more likely to be anti-migration & against Muslim women wearing veils?” she asks him in a genuine spirit of enquiry
Awkward pause. He knows they aren’t.
Not the answer he was hoping for & one that shows she really hasn’t got the foggiest.
She’s so far from having her finger on the pulse of UK feminism that she might as well be holding the dead hand of Foucault.
Not the answer he was hoping for & one that shows she really hasn’t got the foggiest.
She’s so far from having her finger on the pulse of UK feminism that she might as well be holding the dead hand of Foucault.
