Judith Butler and the new identity politics?

[malelesbian]

empty words, more words and more words. I'm asking for concrete proposals, not abstractions about xyz culture. What form will this feminin culture take? A white one? one based on ressentiment?

The concrete proposals are to encourage men to embrace femininity and stop telling them that they can't act feminine and recognize such prohibitions as toxic masculinity. Another part is to listen to women, and give them a platform, and try to give them what they want in your own work. I'm an artist and philosopher, dude, a literary critic if anything, I admit I'm not a full-blown political scientist. I'm just trying to express my reading of Butler, I don't have any policy ideas or anything.
Here's an example of feminine culture, joshi pro wrestling. More violent than male pro wrestling and not white at all.

Except I didn't say that activism was constrained by political subjectivity (which would mean I would be saying activism is insufficiently political.) I said activism possesses an understanding which is constricted by political subjectivity, I.E: that activism is precisely too political, that it is constrained within the political sphere because of its hyperpoliticisation, and cannot therefore think in terms of the non-political. I.E: activism seeks to interpret the world, the point, however, is to cognise how the world understands and interprets itself.

I think activism aims to change the world, which is what Marx said was the point. I don't understand your point about cognition, if you're proposing we should accept some sort of cognitive science, I will say that new research in cognitive science uses Butler's theories. Butler's theory draws heavily from phenomenology which is widely regarded as compatible with cogntive science. Furthermore, Butler's theory is meant to be cognitive, it describes our real experience of how society understands and interprets identity. Hers is a limited theory, yes, but that doesn't invalidate it.

But Butler, like Foucault, thinks everything is political, which mystifies politics to such a degree that all meanings of the political process are obfuscated.

Butler and Foucault do research immanent to the social systems they describe. You're right, they don't transcend the limits of a particular historical era of society. They don't need to. We can study politics without using apolitical terms. Why would we need some sort of apolitical scientific point of view to understand Butler's insights into gender identity? Do you even care about gender identity, bro?????

Althusserian structuralisms main defect is to see the social relations as technical, and science possessing an objective dimension above that of class society. It is, however, the very historicism that Marx takes from Hegel, something Althusser denies, and Foucault is shaped by this erronious interpretation. Hence the process of discourse analysis becomes a question of domination. But capital is a relation of force, not a relation of strict domination, killing your oppressors means nothing if said social relations persist. It is why all ideologies under capitalism sooner or later gravitate to liberalism, (especially and including leftist and anarchist ones) precisely because capitalism designates a specific central political sphere, that being the state.

I don't understand how this is a criticism of Foucault or Butler. If you're saying they don't critique capital, you're right, but that's irrelevant to their arguments. I don't understand why you think it's a defect for Althusser to argue that objective science is possible. Nor do I understand how Althusser's erroneous interpretation influenced Foucault.

If indeed you and Butler are such trenchant critics of the pseudo-revolutionary subject, then why do you participate in a discourse which reifies it? The feminin culture you speak of is also indelibly shaped by capitalist rationality, it does not exist orthogonal to it. In fact, this idea of the feminin being intuitive and less about hyper instrumental rationality at its core capitulates to misogyny, by reinstating the gendered divisions of feudalistic society. Girlboss is an absolute advance on this, and you know it.

The idea that accepting sexual difference reinforces sexist gender divisions is an idea that simply ignores the unique character of the feminine and blots out the Other. Remember, Butler follows Foucault's claim that myriad power-relations influence the subject. The masculine Same is this pseudo-revolutionary subject. The feminine Other is an alternative to capitalism. Sure, capitalism influences the feminine. Capitalism influences everything. But I don't see how anyone has reified the subject here.

Are you saying girlbosses are good or bad? I thought they just reproduced capitalist conditions and were bad.

 

[malelesbian]

furthermore, isn't the main contention of this 'manosphere' that the majority of modern men have in essence become too feminised? How does not this merely play into their hands? It is almost as if you want to establish a reciprocal antagonism of reenforcement. The more you rail against them, the more their position becomes emboldened, and the more you double down.

You're not wrong. I essentially accept that the modern man is very feminine, I just want people to embrace the positivity of the feminine.

 

[thirdform]

You're not wrong. I essentially accept that the modern man is very feminine, I just want people to embrace the positivity of the feminine.

Yes well, if you want white men to cry and generate mock spectacle
like white women when us people of colour challenge them, then be my guest. I'll just laugh.

 

[thirdform]

The concrete proposals are to encourage men to embrace femininity and stop telling them that they can't act feminine and recognize such prohibitions as toxic masculinity. Another part is to listen to women, and give them a platform, and try to give them what they want in your own work. I'm an artist and philosopher, dude, a literary critic if anything, I admit I'm not a full-blown political scientist. I'm just trying to express my reading of Butler, I don't have any policy ideas or anything.

Oh well. I had enough of your types all through my 20s. Frankly contemporary artists are some of the most insufferable humans to exist on God's green earth. recycled art as utility, as hectoring, not as avant-gardism.

Personally I'd rather defend a womans right to abortion and bodily autonomy than lecture to men, something the democrats have used as a bargaining chip. and now rowe v wade is overturned, and it will only get worse, especially with the totally manufactured trans panic, and the bogus (quasi-antisemitic) idea of the global gender elite.

I think activism aims to change the world, which is what Marx said was the point.

Is that what he said? You think the proletariat have the resources to dedicate to full time activism? That's bizarre, given all activists I've met have been very well to do bourgeois and petit-bourgeois. No, Marx said the proletariat are the future protagonist of history, and will change the world, in a more or less unconscious/instinctive or conscious way, depending on the maturation of the class party. Social being determines social consciousness, bro. The world changes through impersonal violence, not what you or me think at any one moment.

Butler and Foucault do research immanent to the social systems they describe. You're right, they don't transcend the limits of a particular historical era of society. They don't need to. We can study politics without using apolitical terms. Why would we need some sort of apolitical scientific point of view to understand Butler's insights into gender identity? Do you even care about gender identity, bro?????

The point is not apoliticism but to envisage beyond politics, to acknowledge its contingent nature. If you can't do this for gender, then you will inevitably become trapped in the very social relations you want to criticise, hence Butler these days arguing for radical non-violence and spitting on most of her proletarian and readers of colour. Do you want to argue that academia is not a modality of social production and wants to perpetuate its position within the existing social hierarchy? It pays better to be in opposition, after all.

I don't understand how this is a criticism of Foucault or Butler. If you're saying they don't critique capital, you're right, but that's irrelevant to their arguments. I don't understand why you think it's a defect for Althusser to argue that objective science is possible. Nor do I understand how Althusser's erroneous interpretation influenced Foucault.

No, the issue with Althusser is that he imputes an autonomous existence to bourgeois science. Foucault takes the baton from him in his discussion of biopolitics. It's as if bourgeois rationality will be the eternal form of rationality henceforth. Marx was far ahead of this position when he spoke of the alchemical nature of money.

The idea that accepting sexual difference reinforces sexist gender divisions is an idea that simply ignores the unique character of the feminine and blots out the Other. Remember, Butler follows Foucault's claim that myriad power-relations influence the subject. The masculine Same is this pseudo-revolutionary subject. The feminine Other is an alternative to capitalism. Sure, capitalism influences the feminine. Capitalism influences everything. But I don't see how anyone has reified the subject here.

I don't agree that there is a masculine same. Gay men? Disabled men, black and brown men? working class vs middle class men? There are a myriad amount of gradiants. At best you could argue that these are unified by a conception of oppressive/toxic/what have you will ... masculinity. I would agree with that. But if you accept this, then you have to accept this for women, and you would have to argue for toxic femininity, something you want to deny. After all, there are many (perhaps not a majority, but a sizeable amount) of women who have issues with feminin men (or femboys) as the contemporary parlance calls them, are there not? Your understanding is very parochial, I think if you went to any third world country you would see that many women are equally as disgusted with homosexual men in feminin atyre as straightforward masc-y blokes. (Certainly, some of this has to do with the historical legacies of ccolonialism, but not all of it.)

Women do not solely exist as this romanticised diverse other that you think they do, which is precisely why I mentioned how activism possesses a sense of understanding constricted by political subjectivity. Your presentation makes out women to be part of nebulous feminist liberation categories (I.E: you reduce women to the political abstract.) But when you cease with this, you can see women in all their human, all too human condition, both positive and negative.

Are you saying girlbosses are good or bad? I thought they just reproduced capitalist conditions and were bad.

I have no moralistic attachment to girlbosses. But then I don't think of gender in toxic/nontoxic terms. I do not understand why you would argue that a female CEO or boss is acting according to phalocentric rationality. By that logic a mother who manages the house is phalocentric, sports women are phalocentric, your classmates are phalocentric. and it persists, until finally the feminin is made quiescent.

 

[version]

Here's an example of feminine culture, joshi pro wrestling. More violent than male pro wrestling and not white at all.

What's explicitly feminine about this, other than the fact it's two women wrestling? How would two men doing this look different to two men wrestling as we usually see it?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

The concrete proposals are to encourage men to embrace femininity and stop telling them that they can't act feminine and recognize such prohibitions as toxic masculinity. Another part is to listen to women, and give them a platform, and try to give them what they want in your own work. I'm an artist and philosopher, dude, a literary critic if anything, I admit I'm not a full-blown political scientist. I'm just trying to express my reading of Butler, I don't have any policy ideas or anything.
Here's an example of feminine culture, joshi pro wrestling. More violent than male pro wrestling and not white at all.

I haven't paid too much attention to this thread bc I'm a lot more concerned with pragmatic struggle for survival rn than abstract theorizing - while acknowledging that the struggle for survival is in some way, albit hard to define or quantify, downstream of abstract theorizing, there are just much bigger and more immediate concerns - but the main thing that's struck me is how dated your conceptions of men, women, masculinity, and femininity seem to be. like, straight out of the 90s. idk if that's also straight out of Butler - know who she is ofc, never read her - esp her seminal 90s work. I have heard from a couple people in academia that Butler still looms enormously over all gender theory, tho you'd presume that if discourse has advanced anywhere since the 90s, it would be there? very curious, anyway.

your concrete proposals (I note you're upfront that they're not actual policy suggestions, fair enough) also seem predicated on these very dated and binary conceptions of masculinity and femininity. I'd absolutely agree that listening to women and centering their own experiences in their own words is a great idea. that's the ideal way to approach all people. And men should absolutely be able to act more "feminine" without repercussion. but embracing femininity is neither necessary nor the answer to toxic masculinity. they're not binary opposites, they're just two different ways of being, and not the only two ways either. there's also nothing wrong with men being masculine. the answer to toxic masculinity is to excise the toxic parts from masculinity. that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with men being any more or less feminine. just yeah, a strangely dated take.

and also @version is right, as someone who grew up with professional wrestling, that's a bizarre example to use. obviously it's two Japanese women wrestling, but beyond that there is nothing inherently feminine about it. and Japanese professional wrestling has a distinct culture and style, just like lucha libre or whatever has a distinct culture and style, but they don't exist in some idyllic vacuum outside of the greater world of professional wrestling where you can talk about a totally separate feminine culture.

 

[malelesbian]

I haven't paid too much attention to this thread bc I'm a lot more concerned with pragmatic struggle for survival rn than abstract theorizing - while acknowledging that the struggle for survival is in some way, albit hard to define or quantify, downstream of abstract theorizing, there are just much bigger and more immediate concerns - but the main thing that's struck me is how dated your conceptions of men, women, masculinity, and femininity seem to be. like, straight out of the 90s. idk if that's also straight out of Butler - know who she is ofc, never read her - esp her seminal 90s work. I have heard from a couple people in academia that Butler still looms enormously over all gender theory, tho you'd presume that if discourse has advanced anywhere since the 90s, it would be there? very curious, anyway.

your concrete proposals (I note you're upfront that they're not actual policy suggestions, fair enough) also seem predicated on these very dated and binary conceptions of masculinity and femininity. I'd absolutely agree that listening to women and centering their own experiences in their own words is a great idea. that's the ideal way to approach all people. And men should absolutely be able to act more "feminine" without repercussion. but embracing femininity is neither necessary nor the answer to toxic masculinity. they're not binary opposites, they're just two different ways of being, and not the only two ways either. there's also nothing wrong with men being masculine. the answer to toxic masculinity is to excise the toxic parts from masculinity. that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with men being any more or less feminine. just yeah, a strangely dated take.

Yes, I draw from Butler's 90's work. But I don't see how that dates me. It's unclear to me what the difference is between the conception of gender in the 90s and the contemporary conception of genders. What are these other ways of being and how do they differ from being-feminine and being-masculine? If you're going to bring up non-binary gender identity, that was Butler's point. Anyone who defies the rules of traditional gender is excluded from mainstream culture based around the gender-binary. Yes, we're looking at masculinity and femininity as a binary, all post-structuralists do. But we can use the categories of masculinity anf femininity to defy and criticize this binary.

The point of men acting feminine is that the patriarchy represses femininity and excludes it from mainstream discourse. This seems empirically true to me. I'm open to counterexamples, but it does seem to me that toxic masculinity's toxicity derives in large part from its refusal to let femininity in. Everyone should promote feminine culture, not just men. But how many men actually do promote feminine culture? And if you don't want to act feminine that's fine. The issue is that for so many years men who have acted feminine have been persecuted or excluded for it. And you agree that men should be able to act feminine without experiencing negative consequences. Being-feminine helps promote feminine culture, especially when men act feminine, since society has historically prevented them from doing so.


On Joshi, the point is that most non-Joshi women's wrestling looks like a more simplistic version of men's wrestling. Joshi is a more complex than a lot of American men's pro wrestling. Joshi wrestlers created so many moves and fought so hard that they were competitive with men's wrestling, more competitive in many cases. Joshi wrestlers created moves that look more devastating than the moves men do, arguably because they were women and they want to look more violent than the men. A Joshi wrestler created Goldberg's jackhammer, for instance, a move portrayed in fiction as one of the most powerful ever. When a man does even one single move created by a Joshi wrestler it looks ultraviolent, but Joshi wrestlers were creating 3 or 4 of these moves in the same match. Joshi is feminine because it redefines the limits of what women can do. If you won't accept the foremost contribution of women to pro wrestling as an instance of feminine culture, IDK what to tell you.

 

[WashYourHands]

was I the only person slightly aroused by the wrestling vid? it’s ok, everyone is an adult

Catholic remnant operating system says women scrapping for cash is degrading, removed framework says these are people making fully informed choices and getting paid

put another way, I don’t know if the frisson of woman on woman wrestling is a useful example of striking any significant blows against the empire, unless blows against the empire relates to some kind of euphemism Corspey has for masturbatory Master and Commander attired flagellation

 

[Clinamenic]

unless blows against the empire relates to some kind of euphemism Corspey has for masturbatory Master and Commander attired flagellation

"Hold fast"

 

[Mr. Tea]

I've definitely read some terrible descriptions of women in people like PKD. You get stuff like the author making a point of describing a woman's nipples for no particular reason.

I bought DADOES? on a whim the other day, and while I'm generally enjoying it, there has just been a completely gratuitous description of Rachel's 'small, high breasts', which immediately made me think of this thread.