Submitted by Necessary_Tadpole692 t3_10x97jk in philosophy
InterminableAnalysis t1_j7vi3aa wrote
Reply to comment by Puzzleheaded-Gap-238 in Judith Butler: their philosophy of gender explained by Necessary_Tadpole692
>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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