September 8, 2021 - 2:15pm
In 1999, The Guardian ran a piece on an annual prize for bad writing, which celebrates “the most stylistically lamentable passages found in scholarly books and articles”. The only condition for entry was that no parody was allowed. The winner was Judith Butler, for this:
This week, The Guardian ran an interview with Butler who boldly stated that: “…we should not be surprised or opposed when the category of women expands to include trans women.” Here, Butler’s argument is much more clear: the category of women must be expanded to include men.
While I don’t contest that Butler is a bad writer, it appears to me that her linguistic obfuscation serves a purpose. Butler follows the post-modernist school of feminist thought, hoping to “disrupt” the categories of gender, thereby rendering it meaningless. Of course, such a proposition is ridiculous.
If we can put on and take off our gender, then that means we can also decide to identify our way out of oppression. Girls in menstrual huts in Nepal; teenagers being forced into marriage; girls and women being bought and sold in the global sex trade; women everywhere being raped and then disbelieved and blamed – all of this can be dealt with if we simply perform a different gender expression. Somehow I am not convinced that performing as a Drag King will solve the problem of misogyny.
In the same recent interview, the reporter asks: ‘This year’s furore around Wi Spa in Los Angeles saw an online outrage by transphobia followed by bloody protests organised by the Proud Boys. Can we expect this alliance to continue?”
To which Butler suggests that TERFs (as she so lovingly refers to feminists who defend our sex-based rights) act as fascist enablers:
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