Submitted by Necessary_Tadpole692 t3_10x97jk in philosophy
IrisMoroc t1_j7twg9j wrote
Reply to comment by InterminableAnalysis in Judith Butler: their philosophy of gender explained by Necessary_Tadpole692
>The idea that there are naturally occurring genders/sexes (and so masculine/feminine hormones) is exactly what's being questioned in Butler's work.
Yes, which is why it's ultimately science denying and the equivalent of gender creationism.
InterminableAnalysis t1_j7tz1gf wrote
Nope! It doesn't deny science, what it denies is a particular philosophical commitment within a particular scientific discourse, but not science at large. Moreover, it is in no way a form of gender creationism, since Butler's main point is that in gender performativity the structure of repetition of acts is based on prior conventions and understandings of gender.
IrisMoroc t1_j7u0fhp wrote
>It doesn't deny science, what it denies is a particular philosophical commitment within a particular scientific discourse, but not science at large.
Creationists literally say the same thing. ie they're not anti-science, they're against the fake evolution science.
Think: Butler never did a study and never thought about even testing her ideas. That's literally the bedrock of science! Even thinking "how would you even test any of this?" is kind of confusing, since these theories are somewhat vague. You'd have to create a testable hypothesis. Then test it. Which would ultimately make this much stronger, since it would then become a self-correcting science and more tied to reality.
But that would almost certainly mean that people like Butler would have to NOT make extremely big pronouncements about how the universe operates, and instead make smaller testable claims, then build up from there. And people like Butler don't want to do that. They want big theories of everything.
The thesis is so goofy - saying that humans are blank slates - it's like, do I need to really explain this? Like explain how hormones and biology affect our brains? Really? It's such blatant science rejection it's like arguing for creationism.
InterminableAnalysis t1_j7u1drj wrote
>Think: Butler never did a study and never thought about even testing her ideas. That's literally the bedrock of science!
I agree entirely, but there's a difference between denying science and writing a book that isn't even claiming to do science.
>But that would almost certainly mean that people like Butler would have to NOT make extremely big pronouncements about how the universe operates, and instead make smaller testable claims, then build up from there. And people like Butler don't want to do that. They want big theories of everything.
It should be noted that Butler's arguments on gender doesn't claim "this is necessarily what gender is". Butler rather approaches gender as a specific cultural and historical phenomenon, and talks about the conceptions of gender that we already have, however contingent they might be, and what it is about their production that causes them to arise with the particular ontological structure they have. That's why,
>The thesis is so goofy - saying that humans are blank slates
Butler does not claim this. A significant premise of Butler's thesis is that performativity only works by citing past cultural conventions, and that these conventions are not fully able to take account of all of the possible variations that, A)it can actually admit of, and B)can be produced outside of the possibilities it can admit of.
IrisMoroc t1_j7u1zpg wrote
>I agree entirely, but there's a difference between denying science and writing a book that isn't even claiming to do science.
You can't have it both ways. She's making VERY grand pronouncements about human nature, human biology, and such. This is clearly the realm of science which is the best means for figuring out reality. her approach is more akin to Greek philosophy - very armchair but no experiments.
Good news: I'm pretty sure her vague theories are also 100% unfalsifiable, so there will NEVER be a study which contradicts it.
So rejects all known facts, replacing them with vague unfalsifiable theories, and does zero experimentation. This is what we mean by saying her theories are anti-science, it's literally doing the opposite of what scientists do.
>Butler does not claim this.
She 100% implies it, or implies that biology is so small a role it can be ignored. Which is goofy nonsense. We know biology plays a MAJOR role in men and women. She separates sex and gender as wholy separate entirely to make "sex" as small a role as possible.
Since she and her adherants haven't even bothered to do the basics, I can thus pretty much reject their theories wholecloth. If they want to be taken seriously, actually create testable hypotheses and test them!
InterminableAnalysis t1_j7u2w6k wrote
>This is clearly the realm of science which is the best means for figuring out reality
It's not, it's in the realm of ontology, which is a category of philosophy.
>Good news: I'm pretty sure her vague theories are also 100% unfalsifiable, so there will NEVER be a study which contradicts it.
They are definitely falsifiable, but you can't just do experiments do falsify them. They are able to be falsified on exactly the basis that philosopher critics of Butler's work take: that the phenomena Butler describes aren't played out in exactly the way they claim, or that Butler's reasoning ignores certain crucial aspects or phenomena that contradict their conclusions, etc.
>So rejects all known facts, replacing them with vague unfalsifiable theories, and does zero experimentation.
Notably, Butler doesn't "reject all known facts", what Butler rejects is a certain notion of gender as inhering in the identity of a person, and supports their claim with a consideration of cultural practices in which the understanding and meaning of gender is produced.
>She 100% implies it, or implies that biology is so small a role it can be ignored. Which is goofy nonsense. We know biology plays a MAJOR role in men and women. She separates sex and gender as wholy separate entirely to make "sex" as small a role as possible.
No, what Butler implies (in fact argues for, as do most other feminist philosophers of gender) is that biology does not determine one's gender (and also that the sex/gender distinction is itself unintelligible, as our scientific conception of sex is based off bodies we already categorize as "man" and "woman").
>If they want to be taken seriously, actually create testable hypotheses and test them!
Again, Butler isn't doing science and never claimed to. This work on gender is ontological and political.
Xenophon_jr t1_j7ufk5f wrote
The distinction between sex and gender as indistinguishable is exactly why people criticise her for smuggling in tabula rasa for her theory to work.
InterminableAnalysis t1_j7ui0ky wrote
I can see why they say that, it's just not right. Take, for example, what Judith Butler says in an interview with the guardian: "Perhaps we should think of gender as something that is imposed at birth, through sex assignment and all the cultural assumptions that usually go along with that. Yet gender is also what is made along the way – we can take over the power of assignment, make it into self-assignment, which can include sex reassignment at a legal and medical level."
There is no presumption here that the body is merely a blank surface for signification to come onto after the fact. I insist on the fact that Butler ties their theory of performativity precisely to already-established conventions, but says that these conventions are not fully constraining. I mean, in a certain sense that even seems to be a truism. Cultural conventions have an impact but are not immutable.
soupbut t1_j7v065c wrote
But why? We don't even have a unified global idea of masculinity today, nevermind the span of history.
Why is it that middle eastern cultures see men holding hands to demonstrate platonic affection, whereas the same act would be distinctly unmasculine in most western cultures?
Why do most modern western cultures view weeping as distinctly unmasculine, but in ancient Greece it was considered unmasculine to not weep when faced with sorrow?
If different cultures, across different time periods, can see masculinity recognized and performed in different ways, then is it not clear that there is a separation between sex and gender?
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