Jordan Peterson interview on C4

markodaly

One eyed Jack wrote: »

If you want to make the argument that men are inherently predatory, you’re going to need a lot more evidence than just mere supposition, because the figures don’t bear out your assumptions about the risk to women’s safety and welfare from biological males, let alone the tiny minority of biological males who identify themselves as women.

.

Therefore, we should have unisex hospital wards?
Are you in favour of young girls sharing public hosptial wards with older men?

creditcarder

markodaly wrote: »

Therefore, we should have unisex hospital wards?
Are you in favour of young girls sharing public hosptial wards with older men?

What about young boys sharing hospitals with women? My kneejerk reaction towards your example is no as a young girl who is developing deserves bodily integrity, buy my kneejerk reaction towards my example is that it might be weird to seperate the boy from the girl.

markodaly

Brian? wrote: »

What ideology is 20cent possessed by? Genuinely curious.

Doing his best to wind up 'right-wingers' so to speak.
Just look at his posting history. Its a massive time-sink.
Dare I say it, he doesnt blieve half the stuff he posts, but just wants to rise others.

markodaly

Brian? wrote: »

The joke was twofold. Zizek, who I admire greatly, actually looks like a homeless man the way he dresses. That’s really what I was laughing at.

A bit off topic, but this Zizek guy, whom I met personally after a debate, reminds me of an Arts student who took too much speed once, and never stopped.

The way he communicates his ideas is atrocious and those who hail him as some intellectual giant probably dont have an idea what he is saying or trying to say.
At least guys like Chomsky actually communicate their ideas, rather then the vacuous word salad that comes out of Zizeks mouth.

markodaly

creditcarder wrote: »

What about young boys sharing hospitals with women? My kneejerk reaction towards your example is no as a young girl who is developing deserves bodily integrity, buy my kneejerk reaction towards my example is that it might be weird to seperate the boy from the girl.

That is why Irish hospitals have a policy for seperating people on wards via sex.

Young boys (16 and over) share a ward with men. Young girls (16 and over) share a ward with women.
This is the policy as outlined by the HSE. However, taking the narrative here that all things should be unisex to try and cater for the 0.1% of people, the policy is therefore transphobic and bigoted.

Go figure.

20Cent

markodaly wrote: »

That is why Irish hospitals have a policy for seperating people on wards via sex.

Young boys (16 and over) share a ward with men. Young girls (16 and over) share a ward with women.
This is the policy as outlined by the HSE. However, taking the narrative here that all things should be unisex to try and cater for the 0.1% of people, the policy is therefore transphobic and bigoted.

Go figure.

No one said that but get offended anyway.

Brian?

markodaly wrote: »

A bit off topic, but this Zizek guy, whom I met personally after a debate, reminds me of an Arts student who took too much speed once, and never stopped.

The way he communicates his ideas is atrocious and those who hail him as some intellectual giant probably dont have an idea what he is saying or trying to say.
At least guys like Chomsky actually communicate their ideas, rather then the vacuous word salad that comes out of Zizeks mouth.

I find Zizek challenging to listen to at times. But hes often very easy to listen to and delivers his message with positivity and good humour. He’s extremely fond of off colour jokes and is quite charismatic in his own odd ball way.

The man is never vacuous though. That’s a strange opinion.

I’ve spent far less time listening to him speak that I have reading his books and articles. Have you read anything he’s written?

Brian?

markodaly wrote: »

Doing his best to wind up 'right-wingers' so to speak.
Just look at his posting history. Its a massive time-sink.
Dare I say it, he doesnt blieve half the stuff he posts, but just wants to rise others.

That’s not an ideology. Which is why I asked.

Yeah, but it's a product of ideology..
He goes on about compassion, but cheers on violence when the victim is a political opponent..

Brian?

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Yeah, but it's a product of ideology..
He goes on about compassion, but cheers on violence when the victim is a political opponent..

Ok. What ideology do you think 20cent the product of?

Brian?

Brian? wrote: »

Ok. What ideology do you think 20cent the product of?

I've already said..If you're so well versed on the writings of the stuttering Slovenian you know what ideology is..and you know he is an ideologue..

Gynoid

Brian? wrote: »

Ok. What ideology do you think 20cent the product of?

Julian Vigo writes in Forbes on gender IDEOLOGY, an extract to give you a sample...gender theory ideology, which is deconstructionist, as per its postmodern roots, has become quite influential. Gender is a construct etc.


https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/julianvigo/2019/01/27/gender-and-the-technology-of-simulation-%25E2%2580%25A8a-brief-history-of-gender-theory/amp/

"But to sum up the radical feminist position on gender, their claim is that patriarchy is the structure which oppresses female bodies irrespective of how these female bodies identity. Butler’s theory claims that the individual can simply identify out of sex through gender. But this becomes muddled in the new millennium since gender and sex are largely conflated by followers of Butler’s work. And this is not coincidental. More on that later.

Discussing drag performance, Butler initially grounds her theory of gender as that which “imitates” when there is an “incongruity” between the somatic and the performative—that is when gender and the body are, under conventional standards, antagonistic. So what, exactly, does the body imitate and what is the identity created? For if, as Butler asserts, identity must be comprised as “social temporality” and if gender is truly “internally discontinuous”, then the body becomes a manufactured identity for which there is no “real” and, conversely, where there is no “play”:

The possibilities of gender transformation are to be found precisely in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a failure to repeat, a de-formity, or a parodic repetition that exposes the phantasmatic effect of abiding identity as a politically tenuous construction. If gender attributes, however, are not expressive but performative, then these attributes effectively constitute the identity they are said to express or reveal. The distinction between expression and performativeness is crucial. If gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows or produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is no preexisting identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there would be no true or false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the postulation of a true gender identity would be revealed as a regulatory fiction. That gender reality is created through sustained social performances means that the very notions of an essential sex and a true or abiding masculinity or femininity are also constituted as part of the strategy that conceals gender’s performative character and the performative possibilities for proliferating gender configurations outside the restricting frames of masculinist domination and compulsory heterosexuality (141).

The problem with Butler’s assertion here is that one cannot simply wipe away “preexisting identity” as if there were never a referent to some “true” or historically configured gender that is anchored to a sexed body. For if this were the case, then there would be no possibility of gender subversion, no space of play. In attempting to bring forth a discourse of subversion, Butler stumbles between her allegiance to “true” and “abiding” genders while claiming, simultaneously, that there is no fixed identity while buttressing, all the while, the very binary she attempts to dismantle by claiming these as reclaimed identities which are re-naturalised by the subject. Moreover, Butler fails to return to the body as the fabric of subjectivity and relies so heavily on the performative of gender and sexuality that the body seems to be incidental on the stage of gender performativity.


Indeed, leftists know that there is a huge difference between the reality of racism and the fictional constructions of racism. One need look no further than to see how one leftist publication after another scoffed at the notion of Rachel Dolezal’s to being an African American woman. When the left wishes to understand that race is not technology implanted at the end of tanning cream or sun booths, they are perfectly adept to shoot down such mythical conceptions of race. Yet, when it comes to any man claiming a “female essence”, these very same publications lose all sense of historical materialist analysis and, like the far right, gender becomes a feeling and science is bigoted. It is also no coincidence that neither of these and other publications actually read the memo out of the White House which asserted to establish a legal definition of sex not gender. We are currently amidst an era akin to the time preceding the Scopes Monkey Trial where there is a will by the religious left to deny science, even fudging on existing science and statistics in order to create a narrative where individual feeling trumps material reality.

So earlier this week, Judith Butler descended from her throne to pen “The Backlash Against Gender Ideology Must Stop.” Arguing that gender theory is “neither destructive nor indoctrinating: it simply seeks a form of political freedom,” Butler sets out to resuscitate her gender theory while failing miserably. And many of us who have been following Butler’s work over the years—to include teaching her work— had a giggle upon reading this piece. Where Judith Butler’s work was lauded as revolutionary in reaction to a backlash against feminism in the 1980s and early 1990s, her work sought to shore up the new monolithic fiction: That gender is biological and that sex is a construct. And her recent article perfectly demonstrates that Butler is out of touch with how her theories have not only clashed with feminist and Marxist ideals of social equality, but how she fails to see women as human in their own right. She spends much of her article creating a straw man from the feminist critiques of her work pretending that these critiques emanate from the religious right. This is a complete falsehood. She continues her essay to claim that the Pope is the real problem attempting to bring those who are gay and those who are transgender into affiliation with this one “common enemy” which is nothing other than another rhetorical side show of her essay.

And then Butler writes this demonstrating that she has not read or perhaps not understood the criticism made of her work: “Gender equality is taken as a “diabolical ideology” by these critics precisely because they see gender diversity as a historically contingent “social construction” that is imposed on the divinely mandated natural distinction between the sexes.” This false claim relies upon the falsehood that people who critique gender ideology and the technology associated with this ideology believe in a “natural order” or gender. To be clear, most every man and woman on the planet does not abide by gender. This is a myth that the cultural elites like Butler crafted when also shaping out departments which falsely flipped the material reality of social struggle—to include feminism—by positing the new victim for the 21st century as a person in search of the gendered self. She writes that gender theory “seeks a form of political freedom to live in a more equitable and livable world,” while not acknowledging that gender theory proposes to challenge nothing of the social and political constraints leveled at females who have for centuries been struggling to create a more equitable world. Butler’s solution would have us all technologically alter the body and medicate ourselves until death (amen).

She references Simone de Beauvoir’s infamous “One is not born a woman but becomes one” quotation and from this asserts that de Beauvoir “created space for the idea that sex is not the same as gender” stating, “One may be born as female in the biological sense, but then one has to navigate a series of social norms and figure out how to live as a woman – or another gender – in one’s cultural situation.” How uncanny that Butler can “do” feminist theory until she is forced to involve actual women within the structural paradigm of power.


While it is far easier for Butler to create a straw man out of women who have critiqued her work scratching it all up to their being followers of the Pope or God, Butler ends up naturalizing gender anew in arguing that the movement of gender ideology is to render “natural” that which the individual eschews. Quite paradoxically St. Judy has created a cult of genderists who refuse to see the earth as round or the sun at the centre of our universe and instead names the “natural” as both that which religion portends and that which her theory espouses to render anew. And it is this movement which Butler’s theories in large part gave birth to, which today seeks to medicalize and render technological the somatic form, now children as young as 8 in the U.S. with formal Endocrine Society recommending that hormone suppression in gender dysphoric children begin “after girls and boys first exhibit physical changes of puberty” which means Tanner Stage 2 (8 for girls and 9 or 10 for boys). It is phenomenally easy for Butler to fashion gender as a the new natural and the new nature while eliding the very real repercussions that her theoretical musings have had in real life.

Most bizarrely in her piece is Butler’s insistence that the only people critiquing gender ideology are right-wing religious zealots, missing entirely the vast body of criticism from feminists and other leftists alike which take her to task eliding the question of social and class struggle as a possible remedy to discriminatory practices. I mean, as Butler would have us believe, the logical conclusion to deal with a world that is racist is to mirror Dolezal’s actions—fix the individual, not society. Right? And hence we return to “Workers of the World, identify as wealthy!”

Then in a very sloppy nod to Foucault’s work on Herculine Barbin, an intersex individual who lived in the 19th century in France, Butler falsely equates intersex with transgender individuals. Still, the comparison falls even further afield since the point of feminism is that people should not live out realities based on their genitalia, but instead should be free to live out their lives despite their sex. It is not that feminists are attempting to naturalize gender in critiquing an ideology which is fundamentally regressive and prescriptive in nature whereby certain actions must match a specific body, it is that feminists are speaking back to a troubling theory that would have us all checking in to our local gender clinics for examination.

The political freedom to live as one’s true self, in short, should not come at the end of a prescription pad or a series of technological effects to mimic the opposite sex. The true revolution of any culture or individual comes by speaking in clear and loud tones to the oppressive forces that shape the structures which in turn inform vast swathes of society how to treat males differently from females. A truly liberated society would not argue that a boy or a man who wishes to wear a dress become medicalized for life, nor would such a society deem these males women. Such a society would fight for the rights of these boys and men to wear dresses. A truly free society would not make the argument that one must embrace a “given” or “chosen” gender, for such a society would understand that gender is nonsense and that nobody possesses a gender.

What Butler misses in the many critiques of her work is what riddles her misunderstanding of feminism. It’s not that anyone can “become” a woman—for that is not what de Beauvoir wrote—it is that females are scripted into certain political and social modalities and are forced into the readymade landscape of woman with varying degrees of social or political recourse to subvert or push back against this pigeonholing. And sadly, Butler misses the forest for the trees, it would appear, in being unable to understand that her entire gender ideology hinges upon stereotype and nothing more. After all, what is gender if not stereotype?

It seems to me that today these social elites who are at the core of gender ideology lean too heavily upon the pretense of technological “change” and all the possibilities it superficially offers. The problem that they cannot fathom is that the real is a crucial component of human experience. And reality does matter when we look at some hard facts such as: male high school track athletes outperforming female Olympians or that males statistically rape and sexually assault women at far higher rates than the inverse. Reality of the body matters very much to females and the only reason why many view gender theory as destructive—not diabolical—is because it operates on the basis that gender is the new natural where women ought to cave in to this new wave of sex stereotypes. The only ones naturalizing gender are those who, along with Butler, would see fit that everyone is put into a reconfigured natural order while safeguarding the very social structures and norms that are the incubators of sex-based inequalities and gender stereotypes.

So when St. Judy tells us that the “backlash” (criticism of her theory) “must stop,” she is uniquely positioning herself as the Pope of a cult which not only functions through the make-believe dismantling of natural social hierarchies, but which in fact reinforces social and political nature through the constant conflation of gender with sex, the opaque language of identitarianism, and the use of medical and political proxies which assist in carving out the subject’s gender-entrenched selfhood. The result? A 21st century gendered subject who replicates the very same gendered constructs clearly evident in Butterfield 8.

Quite remarkably, Butler has pulled off this catechism for many years without much pushback from her contemporaries. Yet, even more remarkably is that as a female scholar Butler shows an astonishing incomprehension for the lived reality of women and girls around the planet. While academic elitism has served Butler’s theory well, its resonance in the real world is clearly falling flat as more and more people are understanding that gender is not something anyone possesses and is certainly not a tool that address sex-based oppression. If anything, the scales are falling off people’s eyes because we are seeing evidenced quite clearly that all gender amounts to is coiffure, vestiture, and a well-worn narrative of oppression based on lack of access to [insert an item stereotypically linked to the opposite sex]. And that ain’t oppression—these are the self-perpetuating tones of gender as social construction just like the feminists have been claiming for decades.

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Julian Vigo
I am an independent scholar and filmmaker who specializes in anthropology, technology, and political philosophy.

Brian?

Deleted User wrote: »

I've already said..If you're so well versed on the writings of the stuttering Slovenian you know what ideology is..and you know he is an ideologue..

I know Zizek is a Leninist, who self describes as either a Lacanian or Hegelian. He has at least 2 speech impediments, neither of which is a stutter.

But I didn't ask about Zizek, I asked what ideology you thought 20cent was influenced by.

One eyed Jack

markodaly wrote: »

Therefore, we should have unisex hospital wards?
Are you in favour of young girls sharing public hosptial wards with older men?

I never said we should have anything. I’m saying why we don’t, and why the idea of making demands on resources in a public hospital is as likely to happen as humans developing the ability to change their sex. Therefore I’m neither for nor against the idea as for me the greater concern is overcrowding in hospitals in the first place.

I was more put out by being stuck in with a load of ould farmers hogging the tv when I was in a public hospital once than the last time I was in and there was a sweet old lady in the bed opposite me and a young woman who was a member of our ethnic travelling brethren in the next bed over. Even though I was paying for private care and would always have preferred my own room, we all got on famously.

If I’d been stuck in with a load of farmers again or some nut job then yeah, I might have had reason to be more concerned for my own comfort, but in a public hospital patients aren’t really in any position to make demands about the accommodation. That’s just the reality of economics in public healthcare. Staff are lovely and they’ll do their best to accommodate people, but some arse who’s making demands to be accommodated according to their own special preferences is just commonly known as a ball breaker, a pain in the arse, regardless of their sex.

nkl12xtw5goz70

Brian? wrote: »

I know Zizek is a Leninist, who self describes as either a Lacanian or Hegelian. He has at least 2 speech impediments, neither of which is a stutter.

But I didn't ask about Zizek, I asked what ideology you thought 20cent was influenced by.

During his decade on Boards, 20Cent has eagerly supported every radical left-wing cause du jour, from the Occupy movement to Antifa, and now has embraced trans activism. I don't know that there's any actual ideological conviction behind this, other than a desire to jump aboard whatever bandwagon the radical left is promoting at the time.

Gynoid

Brian? wrote: »

I know Zizek is a Leninist, who self describes as either a Lacanian or Hegelian. He has at least 2 speech impediments, neither of which is a stutter.

But I didn't ask about Zizek, I asked what ideology you thought 20cent was influenced by.

And ignored when the question was answered.


Zizek joined Judith Butler, the demi goddess of gender theory ideology, in co signing a letter to support Avital Ronnel, senior female lesbian Professor, who took advantage of a younger gay male student. I found that odd.

20Cent

Deleted User wrote: »

I've already said..If you're so well versed on the writings of the stuttering Slovenian you know what ideology is..and you know he is an ideologue..

Žižek is in favour of a third bathroom/changing room option and hates political correctness so wouldn't have the same views as myself on this issue. Self ID was brought in by Fianna Gael in Ireland so hardly some radical view. The radical view is actually the one expressed by others in this thread of ostracizing and refusing to acknowledge others rights.

20Cent

Gynoid wrote: »

Julian Vigo writes in Forbes on gender IDEOLOGY, an extract to give you a sample...gender theory ideology, which is deconstructionist, as per its postmodern roots, has become quite influential. Gender is a construct etc.


https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/julianvigo/2019/01/27/gender-and-the-technology-of-simulation-%25E2%2580%25A8a-brief-history-of-gender-theory/amp/

"But to sum up the radical feminist position on gender, their claim is that patriarchy is the structure which oppresses female bodies irrespective of how these female bodies identity. Butler’s theory claims that the individual can simply identify out of sex through gender. But this becomes muddled in the new millennium since gender and sex are largely conflated by followers of Butler’s work. And this is not coincidental. More on that later.

Discussing drag performance, Butler initially grounds her theory of gender as that which “imitates” when there is an “incongruity” between the somatic and the performative—that is when gender and the body are, under conventional standards, antagonistic. So what, exactly, does the body imitate and what is the identity created? For if, as Butler asserts, identity must be comprised as “social temporality” and if gender is truly “internally discontinuous”, then the body becomes a manufactured identity for which there is no “real” and, conversely, where there is no “play”:

The possibilities of gender transformation are to be found precisely in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a failure to repeat, a de-formity, or a parodic repetition that exposes the phantasmatic effect of abiding identity as a politically tenuous construction. If gender attributes, however, are not expressive but performative, then these attributes effectively constitute the identity they are said to express or reveal. The distinction between expression and performativeness is crucial. If gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows or produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is no preexisting identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there would be no true or false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the postulation of a true gender identity would be revealed as a regulatory fiction. That gender reality is created through sustained social performances means that the very notions of an essential sex and a true or abiding masculinity or femininity are also constituted as part of the strategy that conceals gender’s performative character and the performative possibilities for proliferating gender configurations outside the restricting frames of masculinist domination and compulsory heterosexuality (141).

The problem with Butler’s assertion here is that one cannot simply wipe away “preexisting identity” as if there were never a referent to some “true” or historically configured gender that is anchored to a sexed body. For if this were the case, then there would be no possibility of gender subversion, no space of play. In attempting to bring forth a discourse of subversion, Butler stumbles between her allegiance to “true” and “abiding” genders while claiming, simultaneously, that there is no fixed identity while buttressing, all the while, the very binary she attempts to dismantle by claiming these as reclaimed identities which are re-naturalised by the subject. Moreover, Butler fails to return to the body as the fabric of subjectivity and relies so heavily on the performative of gender and sexuality that the body seems to be incidental on the stage of gender performativity.


Indeed, leftists know that there is a huge difference between the reality of racism and the fictional constructions of racism. One need look no further than to see how one leftist publication after another scoffed at the notion of Rachel Dolezal’s to being an African American woman. When the left wishes to understand that race is not technology implanted at the end of tanning cream or sun booths, they are perfectly adept to shoot down such mythical conceptions of race. Yet, when it comes to any man claiming a “female essence”, these very same publications lose all sense of historical materialist analysis and, like the far right, gender becomes a feeling and science is bigoted. It is also no coincidence that neither of these and other publications actually read the memo out of the White House which asserted to establish a legal definition of sex not gender. We are currently amidst an era akin to the time preceding the Scopes Monkey Trial where there is a will by the religious left to deny science, even fudging on existing science and statistics in order to create a narrative where individual feeling trumps material reality.

So earlier this week, Judith Butler descended from her throne to pen “The Backlash Against Gender Ideology Must Stop.” Arguing that gender theory is “neither destructive nor indoctrinating: it simply seeks a form of political freedom,” Butler sets out to resuscitate her gender theory while failing miserably. And many of us who have been following Butler’s work over the years—to include teaching her work— had a giggle upon reading this piece. Where Judith Butler’s work was lauded as revolutionary in reaction to a backlash against feminism in the 1980s and early 1990s, her work sought to shore up the new monolithic fiction: That gender is biological and that sex is a construct. And her recent article perfectly demonstrates that Butler is out of touch with how her theories have not only clashed with feminist and Marxist ideals of social equality, but how she fails to see women as human in their own right. She spends much of her article creating a straw man from the feminist critiques of her work pretending that these critiques emanate from the religious right. This is a complete falsehood. She continues her essay to claim that the Pope is the real problem attempting to bring those who are gay and those who are transgender into affiliation with this one “common enemy” which is nothing other than another rhetorical side show of her essay.

And then Butler writes this demonstrating that she has not read or perhaps not understood the criticism made of her work: “Gender equality is taken as a “diabolical ideology” by these critics precisely because they see gender diversity as a historically contingent “social construction” that is imposed on the divinely mandated natural distinction between the sexes.” This false claim relies upon the falsehood that people who critique gender ideology and the technology associated with this ideology believe in a “natural order” or gender. To be clear, most every man and woman on the planet does not abide by gender. This is a myth that the cultural elites like Butler crafted when also shaping out departments which falsely flipped the material reality of social struggle—to include feminism—by positing the new victim for the 21st century as a person in search of the gendered self. She writes that gender theory “seeks a form of political freedom to live in a more equitable and livable world,” while not acknowledging that gender theory proposes to challenge nothing of the social and political constraints leveled at females who have for centuries been struggling to create a more equitable world. Butler’s solution would have us all technologically alter the body and medicate ourselves until death (amen).

She references Simone de Beauvoir’s infamous “One is not born a woman but becomes one” quotation and from this asserts that de Beauvoir “created space for the idea that sex is not the same as gender” stating, “One may be born as female in the biological sense, but then one has to navigate a series of social norms and figure out how to live as a woman – or another gender – in one’s cultural situation.” How uncanny that Butler can “do” feminist theory until she is forced to involve actual women within the structural paradigm of power.


While it is far easier for Butler to create a straw man out of women who have critiqued her work scratching it all up to their being followers of the Pope or God, Butler ends up naturalizing gender anew in arguing that the movement of gender ideology is to render “natural” that which the individual eschews. Quite paradoxically St. Judy has created a cult of genderists who refuse to see the earth as round or the sun at the centre of our universe and instead names the “natural” as both that which religion portends and that which her theory espouses to render anew. And it is this movement which Butler’s theories in large part gave birth to, which today seeks to medicalize and render technological the somatic form, now children as young as 8 in the U.S. with formal Endocrine Society recommending that hormone suppression in gender dysphoric children begin “after girls and boys first exhibit physical changes of puberty” which means Tanner Stage 2 (8 for girls and 9 or 10 for boys). It is phenomenally easy for Butler to fashion gender as a the new natural and the new nature while eliding the very real repercussions that her theoretical musings have had in real life.

Most bizarrely in her piece is Butler’s insistence that the only people critiquing gender ideology are right-wing religious zealots, missing entirely the vast body of criticism from feminists and other leftists alike which take her to task eliding the question of social and class struggle as a possible remedy to discriminatory practices. I mean, as Butler would have us believe, the logical conclusion to deal with a world that is racist is to mirror Dolezal’s actions—fix the individual, not society. Right? And hence we return to “Workers of the World, identify as wealthy!”

Then in a very sloppy nod to Foucault’s work on Herculine Barbin, an intersex individual who lived in the 19th century in France, Butler falsely equates intersex with transgender individuals. Still, the comparison falls even further afield since the point of feminism is that people should not live out realities based on their genitalia, but instead should be free to live out their lives despite their sex. It is not that feminists are attempting to naturalize gender in critiquing an ideology which is fundamentally regressive and prescriptive in nature whereby certain actions must match a specific body, it is that feminists are speaking back to a troubling theory that would have us all checking in to our local gender clinics for examination.

The political freedom to live as one’s true self, in short, should not come at the end of a prescription pad or a series of technological effects to mimic the opposite sex. The true revolution of any culture or individual comes by speaking in clear and loud tones to the oppressive forces that shape the structures which in turn inform vast swathes of society how to treat males differently from females. A truly liberated society would not argue that a boy or a man who wishes to wear a dress become medicalized for life, nor would such a society deem these males women. Such a society would fight for the rights of these boys and men to wear dresses. A truly free society would not make the argument that one must embrace a “given” or “chosen” gender, for such a society would understand that gender is nonsense and that nobody possesses a gender.

What Butler misses in the many critiques of her work is what riddles her misunderstanding of feminism. It’s not that anyone can “become” a woman—for that is not what de Beauvoir wrote—it is that females are scripted into certain political and social modalities and are forced into the readymade landscape of woman with varying degrees of social or political recourse to subvert or push back against this pigeonholing. And sadly, Butler misses the forest for the trees, it would appear, in being unable to understand that her entire gender ideology hinges upon stereotype and nothing more. After all, what is gender if not stereotype?

It seems to me that today these social elites who are at the core of gender ideology lean too heavily upon the pretense of technological “change” and all the possibilities it superficially offers. The problem that they cannot fathom is that the real is a crucial component of human experience. And reality does matter when we look at some hard facts such as: male high school track athletes outperforming female Olympians or that males statistically rape and sexually assault women at far higher rates than the inverse. Reality of the body matters very much to females and the only reason why many view gender theory as destructive—not diabolical—is because it operates on the basis that gender is the new natural where women ought to cave in to this new wave of sex stereotypes. The only ones naturalizing gender are those who, along with Butler, would see fit that everyone is put into a reconfigured natural order while safeguarding the very social structures and norms that are the incubators of sex-based inequalities and gender stereotypes.

So when St. Judy tells us that the “backlash” (criticism of her theory) “must stop,” she is uniquely positioning herself as the Pope of a cult which not only functions through the make-believe dismantling of natural social hierarchies, but which in fact reinforces social and political nature through the constant conflation of gender with sex, the opaque language of identitarianism, and the use of medical and political proxies which assist in carving out the subject’s gender-entrenched selfhood. The result? A 21st century gendered subject who replicates the very same gendered constructs clearly evident in Butterfield 8.

Quite remarkably, Butler has pulled off this catechism for many years without much pushback from her contemporaries. Yet, even more remarkably is that as a female scholar Butler shows an astonishing incomprehension for the lived reality of women and girls around the planet. While academic elitism has served Butler’s theory well, its resonance in the real world is clearly falling flat as more and more people are understanding that gender is not something anyone possesses and is certainly not a tool that address sex-based oppression. If anything, the scales are falling off people’s eyes because we are seeing evidenced quite clearly that all gender amounts to is coiffure, vestiture, and a well-worn narrative of oppression based on lack of access to [insert an item stereotypically linked to the opposite sex]. And that ain’t oppression—these are the self-perpetuating tones of gender as social construction just like the feminists have been claiming for decades.

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Julian Vigo
I am an independent scholar and filmmaker who specializes in anthropology, technology, and political philosophy.

tldr

To save anyone reading all that, never heard of Julian Vigo, just trust people and if they go through the trouble of reassigning their gender take it that they mean it.

20Cent

Kassidy Savory Tick wrote: »

During his decade on Boards, 20Cent has eagerly supported every radical left-wing cause du jour, from the Occupy movement to Antifa, and now has embraced trans activism. I don't know that there's any actual ideological conviction behind this, other than a desire to jump aboard whatever bandwagon the radical left is promoting at the time.

Self ID was brought in by Fianna Geal hardly "radical left".

suicide_circus

20Cent wrote: »

Self ID was brought in by Fianna Geal hardly "radical left".

The same Fianna Geal that brought in abortion and gay marriage? its hardly a socially conservative organisation.

20Cent

suicide_circus wrote: »

The same Fianna Geal that brought in abortion and gay marriage? its hardly a socially conservative organisation.

Yeah but does anyone call them radical left?
Self ID passed unopposed in the Dail, wasn't even considered controversial. My view is the mainstream one in this case and those against the trans community the radical.

Gynoid

20Cent wrote: »

Yeah but does anyone call them radical left?
Self ID passed unopposed in the Dail, wasn't even considered controversial. My view is the mainstream one in this case and those against the trans community the radical.

Your view changes like the wind. Now you are Zizeks wing man on the third space, up till a few minutes ago you were having girls sharing shower space with ladies mickeys. Anyways, I am glad you see the sense of third space now, a dignity which preserves spaces segregated by biological sex.

nkl12xtw5goz70

Robert Purcell, chair of the Law Society Criminal Law Committee, acknowledges that the law that was enacted in 2015 did not envisage a situation where biologically male sex offenders would have to be incarcerated in a women's prison because they possess a gender recognition certificate.

Numerous other repercussions of gender self-identification, particularly with regards to women's and girls' rights to safety and privacy, have not been properly evaluated, either.

This bill was rushed into law by a government eager to display its progressive credentials to the world -- but it represents a huge step backwards, especially for Irish women. The ramifications are becoming increasingly clear now.

20Cent

Gynoid wrote: »

Your view changes like the wind. Now you are Zizeks wing man on the third space, up till a few minutes ago you were having girls sharing shower space with ladies mickeys. Anyways, I am glad you see the sense of third space now, a dignity which preserves spaces segregated by biological sex.

I said Zizeks solution was a third space as an answer to someone saying I was an ideologue of his. I disagree with that.

Kassidy Savory Tick

Kassidy Savory Tick wrote: »

Robert Purcell, chair of the Law Society Criminal Law Committee, acknowledges that the law that was enacted in 2015 did not envisage a situation where biologically male sex offenders would have to be incarcerated in a women's prison because they possess a gender recognition certificate.

Numerous other repercussions of gender self-identification, particularly with regards to women's and girls' rights to safety and privacy, have not been properly evaluated, either.

This bill was rushed into law by a government eager to display its progressive credentials to the world -- but it represents a huge step backwards, especially for Irish women. The ramifications are becoming increasingly clear now.

Short term political gains. No recognition of long term possible effects. The horrible price associated with modern western politics. None of them care about what will happen after their term is finished. There is such a lack of consideration for how these changes will affect society as a whole, and worse yet, little appreciation that once an initial change is made, there are always further ripple changes made thereafter. No legal change stays the same as the original change. Everything is widened... and the lobbyists/advocates are never satisfied with what they gain. There will always be another issue to add for changing, again with little real consideration for the changes long-terms.

Brian?

Gynoid wrote: »

And ignored when the question was answered.


Zizek joined Judith Butler, the demi goddess of gender theory ideology, in co signing a letter to support Avital Ronnel, senior female lesbian Professor, who took advantage of a younger gay male student. I found that odd.

You actually haven't answered the question. You may think you have, but you're repeatedly hand waving it away.

And now you're pivoting to attacking Zizek because you think we all align with him on every issue.

Brian?

20Cent wrote: »

Žižek is in favour of a third bathroom/changing room option and hates political correctness so wouldn't have the same views as myself on this issue. Self ID was brought in by Fianna Gael in Ireland so hardly some radical view. The radical view is actually the one expressed by others in this thread of ostracizing and refusing to acknowledge others rights.

I'm actually in agreement with Zizek's critique of political correctness.

I agree with you on most of what you said here.

It's amazing that we can all agree on some issues, but not others and somehow share the same supposed ideology.

20Cent

Brian? wrote: »

I'm actually in agreement with Zizek's critique of political correctness.

I agree with you on most of what you said here.

It's amazing that we can all agree on some issues, but not others and somehow share the same supposed ideology.

It's a way of belittling others arguments by implying they are "brainwashed" by someone else. Funny in this case we disagree with the person.

Ah lads..

20Cent

Deleted User wrote: »

Short term political gains. No recognition of long term possible effects. The horrible price associated with modern western politics. None of them care about what will happen after their term is finished. There is such a lack of consideration for how these changes will affect society as a whole, and worse yet, little appreciation that once an initial change is made, there are always further ripple changes made thereafter. No legal change stays the same as the original change. Everything is widened... and the lobbyists/advocates are never satisfied with what they gain. There will always be another issue to add for changing, again with little real consideration for the changes long-terms.

Didn't hear self I'd mentioned once during the election campaign it's a non issue. Everyone has moved on it is of no concern to anyone really. It's been five years now.