Submitted by Necessary_Tadpole692 t3_10x97jk in philosophy
Alexandria__thegreat t1_j7rurci wrote
It seems to be that some people here don't really agree with Judith on gender, to put it kindly..
InterminableAnalysis t1_j7ryuu8 wrote
The mischaracterizations going on in these comments are wild
WesternIron t1_j7ud2v6 wrote
Not surprising, her work is kinda hard to read, so most people will get the work explained to them. And that explaining often will miss small crucial details that tie her theory together.
Her logic is like walking in a tight rope, it has to be perfectly balanced otherwise you fall off and miss the point
InterminableAnalysis t1_j7udw0a wrote
>Her logic is like walking in a tight rope, it has to be perfectly balanced otherwise you fall off and miss the point
I think you're right about that, and I think that's a general point about following philosophical arguments. But what's wild to me is that we literally have an interview linked and people are still here saying that Butler claims X when that position is either not at all present, or is clarified in the interview -- the one linked!!
I tend to hold to this general rule: r/badphilosophy brings us the gems, but the worst philosophy takes are overwhelmingly in the comments section of this sub.
WesternIron t1_j7ufcuh wrote
Yesss exactly, because many people point to butler as the godmother of wokeism.
And if I remember correctly, her philosophy often was more descriptive and and deconstructionist. Just point out how gender is perceived and who it works in Western society.
I think the only recommendations she gives is more exploratory. About how we can look individuals that don’t act in the binary and try understand their gender role
InterminableAnalysis t1_j7ug43k wrote
>her philosophy often was more descriptive and and deconstructionist
Yeah that's roughly my understanding as well. I don't really remember Butler saying anything along the lines of "you should all act your gender like this!", though there is a kind of prescriptivism at the heart of any descriptive enterprise (i.e., what I'm describing is true and should be seen as such, or something like this).
>About how we can look individuals that don’t act in the binary and try understand their gender role
Not only that, but also about how to understand oneself when one is unable to identify with some such classification. It really is a work that moves in the direction of some limited kind of liberation.
Normal-Flower4437 t1_j813brh wrote
>kinda hard to read
I mean…it’s pretty bad writing, period.
newyne t1_j7wa8dq wrote
My main contention is that I feel like they're too focused on habit developed through reward and punishment. Of course I think it plays a role, but like... Well, I think it makes sense to relate it to something "performative" in the more colloquial sense of the word, which is dance. I don't think there's such a thing as a dance that is not socially constructed in some way, that is not imitive. But I don't think that is the driving force of dance: the driving force of dance is the affectual experience of music. Actually, I'm in the process of developing this concept of passion that draws from Deleuze and Guattari's writing on desire. Anyway!
Repetition can make dance feel less natural: you can lose the feeling of it and start going through the motions. I know it's different: I do think one thing Butler is talking about is how we "go through the motions" with gendered behavior; we don't even think about what we're doing, and that's why they feel natural. Even so, I feel like perhaps hormones and center of gravity play a bigger role than Butler gives them credit for.
All that having been said, I haven't read as much Butler as much as I could have. You seem to be very familiar with them, though; what do you think?
WesternIron t1_j7we6ma wrote
I wouldn’t call it learned through habit, more like social conditioning that once served an evolutionary purpose.
To add a more modern analogy, it’s like how we develop machine learning AI, you feed it a BUNCH of data and try to make it sort it. That sorting is done by pre-defined algorithms, which means, that there are going to be expected parameters.
Humans are born, though thousands of years of genetics, with pre-defined algorithms on how we should interpret gender. Those gender roles may have had a use in the past but, they don’t now.
Butler basically would say, we need to have new data sets throw at our programming to break the pre-defined algorithms.
Also, I don’t think butler would say that gender roles are bad, just limiting(the major feminist criticism of her work comes from how to deal with trans people, as her model kinda ignores them)
newyne t1_j7wf6f6 wrote
Well, I say "habit," but I'm speaking more in terms of individual experience. What I'm getting at is that it seems to me that Butler places more of an emphasis on environment than biology. I mean, that whole binary deconstructs when you really look at it, anyway, but I still think it's fair to say that the latter changes more slowly; my analogy has always been water dripping on a rock, where water stands in for environment and the rock for biology.
Anyway, trans people is a good point of contention for what I'm talking about: can her theory account for why trans people don't feel "right" in the role they've been conditioned into? To the extent that some find it impossible to adequately live up to that role and are Queered into the discourse? If not... I mean, I think that throws a huge wrench into the idea that that which feels "natural" is that which has been socially conditioned.
InterminableAnalysis t1_j7wie4q wrote
>(the major feminist criticism of her work comes from how to deal with trans people, as her model kinda ignores them)
I just want to add a small detail to this: Butler has been explicit about their approach here. The point of the theory of performativity was to show how the (let's say) standard model of sex/gender classification fails to take into account the various other possibilities that are possible (i.e., trans identities).
Puzzleheaded-Gap-238 t1_j7vd85p wrote
What mischaracterization? What gives Judith butler the authority to claim the entire human species is performing their gender? She also claims biological sex is not "real," and by real, I mean that she is implying that humanity is separate from mammals, which is bizarre. Her writing style is filled with prose, postmodernism jargon and undefined terms. She claims this is a form of resistance. OK fine. Lastly going back to my first point of biological sex, she was asked in an interview why she ignores pregnancy. Being that the reality of every human being in the world came from the womb of a woman with the correct gametes, xx chromosomes and the much needed organs to bring a child to term. Which men do not possess. Her response was to ignore this question and go on to talk poetically about the social construct of biological sex. All claims have a source if you want them.
InterminableAnalysis t1_j7vi3aa wrote
>What gives Judith butler the authority to claim the entire human species is performing their gender?
Butler talks about a specific cultural phenomenon of gender as it's established on performative acts, not on performance. The two terms are different. Also, it's clear that you're trying to fault Butler with the charge of being presumptuous, but that's not an objection to the content of their argument, so I'll leave it there.
>She also claims biological sex is not "real," and by real, I mean that she is implying that humanity is separate from mammals, which is bizarre
Butler doesn't do this. The argument about biological sex is that it's a social classification (a group of scientists deciding on a definition is social classification), but that doesn't mean there's no reality behind it.
>Her writing style is filled with prose, postmodernism jargon and undefined terms.
Butler explains the terms they use for their own arguments, but not the ones they borrow from other authors/discourses. Also, postmodernism isn't really a thing in philosophy, so there's no "postmodernism jargon".
>Her response was to ignore this question and go on to talk poetically about the social construct of biological sex. All claims have a source if you want them.
I already know about such claims. Butler has emphasized many times that pregnancy isn't a defining characteristic of a woman, since there are women who can't give birth (which obviously extends to females, if we want to frame it that way), so responding with a point about the social construction of sex is actually an appropriate and consistent response.
BigNorseWolf t1_j7wyc15 wrote
>The argument about biological sex is that it's a social classification (a group of scientists deciding on a definition is social classification), but that doesn't mean there's no reality behind it.
If they're not trying to deny the reality behind it why dismiss it as A social classification that can be replaced with a different social classification? Especially when they go on to dismiss everything that an underlying reality to that classification would lead to ? The entire point of science is to get your description of reality so close that there's functionally no difference. We don't have a description of a theoretical model of the solar system we have a description of where the planets are.
Biology is not perfectly predictive for every individual and hasn't tried to since at least Darwin. It would be far easier to push for the idea that there are individual exceptions to the trends where we can clearly see the exception than to deny the trend which is even more obvious. Boy and girl are imperfectly descriptive of an existing underlying reality, they do not create a platonic reality separate from this one.
The social justice oddity is when presented with a true thing followed by a BS argument that leads to a bad thing it to try some way of arguing the true thing is false rather than attacking the BS argument.
Boys like football. Girls don't. Jane is a girl. Therefore she shouldn't be playing football.
Why not just argue hey, fallacy of composition. A trend isn't deterministic for every individual, Jane's different than the other girls ... and would probably be the first one to tell you that.
When social justice circles try to argue things they can see are clearly false (boys are girls aren't born different, its all in how you raise them) it makes it MUCH harder to argue cases where they have a point.
Puzzleheaded-Gap-238 t1_j82q3y0 wrote
Sorry for the delay. I will touch on this point. Judith butler does deny biological sex. "First, the idea that sex is a social construct, for Butler, boils down to the view that our sexed bodies are also performative and, so, they have “no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute [their] reality” (1999, 173). "
ONTOLOGICAL: relating to or based upon being or existence.
Put the meaning of ontological together with the idea that biological sex is a mere performance that, if taken away, would not exist, and you come to the conclusion that Butler believes sex is not real. To further emphasize my point, here is more from her work:
For Butler, sexed bodies never exist outside social meanings and how we understand gender shapes how we understand sex (1999, 139). Sexed bodies are not empty matter on which gender is constructed, and sex categories are not picked out on the basis of objective features of the world.
What does the above mean, you ask? Well, because Judith doesn't believe in any sort of objective truth relating to humanity, claiming biological sex is a mere social construct is her get-out-of-jail card. She is using a branch of postmodernism feminists which claims all human beings are blank slates, with no inate biological underpinnings.
My last point. Judith butler was born into this world from a woman. What ontological status can explain that? How do animals reproduce? Are they performing their biological sex as well?
Well, thanks for the debate. Since you defeated my other arguments previously, except the Judith biology denial, I humbly concede. Take care!
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