Mick Hartley

After I posted on that Judith Butler interview in the New Statesman last week, I've been waiting for someone – well, someone else – to take her apart. And now here's Meghan Murphy in Feminist Current – Judith Butler resurfaces to remind the world she is a fraud:

Butler is not known for clarity in writing or concept, but is nonetheless referenced more often than any other gender studies scholar, today. As such, New Statesman sought to interview her, in order to follow up on her views on the transgender debate, and those very bad feminists who dare continue to question the legitimacy of gender identity ideology and to insist women’s rights matter.

When asked how far ideas Butler explored in Gender Trouble help explain how the trans rights debate has moved into mainstream culture and politics, she responded with cluelessness typical of someone so seeped in academia they have lost touch with the real world. She insists on referring to women who express concerns about the impact of erasing “woman” as a legal category as “trans-exclusionary radical feminists,” and further insists this is a “marginal” position that feminists (she apparently sees herself as one) must fight to ensure remain marginal.

One presumes Butler does not see the hypocrisy of advocating to marginalize women in the fight for women’s rights. This lack of self-awareness remains present throughout the interview, offering at least some consistency.

The truth is, of course, that to question the notion that one can go from man to woman in a moment, simply by pronouncement, and that men who identify as transgender should have free, unchallenged access to women’s change rooms, transition houses, sports, and prisons is not, in fact, a “fringe movement.” Rather, there is a loud minority insisting on a fringe position that appears to dominate, thanks to social media manipulation and liberal media cowardice and bolstering. […]

Butler goes on to conflate sex with gender, the most basic confusion underlying the trans debate, pointing out that “Feminism has always been committed to the proposition that the social meanings of what it is to be a man or a woman are not yet settled” and that “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…”

It feels strange to have to explain the meaning of “gender” to a gender theorist, and point out that what feminists have been arguing for the past century has been that one’s biological sex should not determine one’s interest in masculine or feminine stereotypes or roles, but here we are. I can only assume Butler has plugged her ears like a child every time women like me have explained, patiently, that “sex” refers to one’s body and biology, and “gender” refers to the social roles imposed on or assumed based on one’s sex. We have argued that one’s affinity for femininity, for example, does not make a woman, and that the only thing that makes a woman is the fact she is female. Rather, it is gender identity activists who have insisted that identification with regressive, sexist, gender roles and stereotypes is what defines a man or woman. That is to say, that preferring femininity to masculinity actually determines one’s biology. Butler is arguing against herself. […]

It is amazing to me that a respected scholar could be so deeply confused as to fail to even understand her own claims and arguments, but I suppose this is a testament to the situation of fields like gender studies, wherein scholars have their heads shoved so far up one another’s asses, they no longer feel required to think. All they need is an endless circle jerk of positive reinforcement to continue to receive funding and keep their jobs. Usefulness and rationality be damned — if we all participate in the charade, there is no threat. Indeed, this has been the tactic of trans activists as well, for whom “no debate” has become a mantra, saving them from the humiliation of having to defend their own statements.

Butler must know her career depends on her continuing this farce, and trusts no one will call her on it. She can hang on until she retires, financially secure and perhaps, therefore, content with her lack of integrity and investment in leading a duplicitous life.

Had it not been for this interview, I may have forgotten what a fraud she is, so I suppose we can thank her for reminding us.

Good stuff.