Episode 81: Judith Butler's Gender Bubbles (early access, ad-free)

In the discussion of Judith Butler, I noticed Jesse / Katie kept messing up the pronouns, like calling Butler she, or her, then correcting themselves as "they". to me this just puts a fine point on why the pronoun thing is just an unwieldy mess, and points to the idea that the brain processes pronouns as the way you perceive someone, not how someone else wants to be perceived. you can change the language but the brain isn't tricked, and we should stop fumbling over words just to pass through someone's dumb shit test.

Love your podcast but hate Jessie’s voice. 😢 can you guys maybe auto tune it ?

I wish Jesse had addressed the accusations that Joyce was engaging in “the Jews are behind it” anti-semitism (other than just saying one wasn’t a billionaire.) Now I’ll have to get a copy from the library or just buy one. Well played

Michael

So, ya'll know we're gonna be talking about Representative Minaj's position on national vaccine policy, next. Right?

Klondike

If you are looking for a non-binary conservative type, I have heard of this musician Ariel Pink who was sort of cancelled for going to the January capitol rally to support Trump, and has said things about not really being a man or a woman

On the wi spa thing…. I am a gay male and the male side of wi spa is a notorious cruising spot. I’ve gotten off sooooo many times in the sauna.

At what stage does a male become a woman? The mosque bomber in MN - Michael Hari - now goes by "Emily Hari" because he claims he is a woman. No drugs, no surgery, I don't even think a diagnosis. The news reports say "She was found guilty" I'm a liberal. Knocked doors for Elizabeth Warren, but we have to have some sense of reality here. Who decides a male is a woman and we must call them "she"?....simply their own "say so" doesn't quite cut it for me. Sorry

Kind of shocked to see that the BARPod subreddit thread for this episode seems to be turning to full-throated opposition for preferred pronouns. I dk if it's non-listeners or what, but I really hope that it's not the first indication of the subreddit just turning into a rightwing safespace like so many other initially good faith lefty-critical spaces have become. I'm totally fine with right-leaning viewpoints but I definitely don't want things to follow along the pattern of turning into a hard-right space that's divorced from the actual source material in the way that you see with lots of similar content/content-related spaces.

I haven't looked into the numbers, but I would hypothesise that the UK is a safer place to be a prostitute. Sex work is legal here so long as you don't solicit in a public place.

How on Earth can you write ‘HER penis and testicles’ with a straight face

Totally agree on the point regarding the HRC statistics and how they're misrepresented to make it appear more urgent a problem than it actually is *and* that in most cases the murders have absolutely nothing to do with their status. But it doesn't simply stop at the reporting of it - the fact that the 'transgender day of remembrance' is a thing and is highlighted yearly by politicians also contributes to the fear, and rather trivialises other 'days of remembrance' - it's nowhere near the same ball park as some of the other days of remembrance that exist but it seems to be seen as a quick win by politicians who want to seem to be caring. It is also, to my mind, a challenge as well - the numbers the HRC release are tiny, especially given that they're global figures. As someone else noticed the murders over the past 3 years in the UK have been zero, which is fantastic. Or so you'd think - the leaders of political parties here *also* fall over to ensure they get their social media nods to this day out, and frankly, it's just embarrassing, The issues of other marginalised group are recognised in this manner, and this is where the charge of 'challenge' come in - you want to point out that x more women have been murdered due to domestic violence, but then you pause to wonder why it's becoming a competition to see who got murdered the most and it's all because this one is elevated waay more prominently than it should be.

Duncanm

Oddly enough it was devised in the US but was quickly cancelled, however in the UK it's still going strong after nearly 60 years! Also, see The Young Ones S2E1 "Bambi"!

Jesse and Katie need to educate themselves on University Challenge. They didn't know what it was and that is literally violent against me, as I identify as a Quizzer. Do better.

University Challenge is a British TV quiz show where universities compete. The film Starter for Ten will give you a good idea.

Alex Wright

Is that 35 trans people reported killed in the entire United States or what? Over a HUNDRED natal women have been killed by men in Britain - a country with a low homicide rate by international standards - this year alone. https://uk.news.yahoo.com/more-than-100-women-killed-men-in-2021-so-far-uk-163448826.html (Apparently no trans people have been reported as being murdered in the UK in the last three years, thankfully.)

Alex Wright

You’re bang on questioning how the internet is being employed in all this. The MAPs trend is not far removed from all the people who are self-diagnosing as ASD, ADHD, DID, BP, etc - people go online not feeling entirely okay with themselves/their place in the world, find a welcoming community that helps them realise their “true nature,” offers (completely unprofessional) coping techniques and a place to vent, then over time turns into an activist/advocacy group and stars campaigning for greater social recognition and acceptance.

Joolz

Y'all are playing with fire. Lol. Jesus Chris. It is really hard to address the issue of transgender homicide without sounding apathetic, but the numbers that keep getting promulgated through social media are not remarkable. I do concede that there are probably many incidents that are not reported as the death of a transgender person, but when you consider there are 1.4 million trans people in the US, and 30 deaths is not an epidemic. I live in Portland, and we are at 60 + homicides so far this year, disproportionately Black. The WW did the math and that works out to 1 out of 1000 Black Portlanders murdered last year. That is what an epidemic looks like. Also, I'd just like to point out the oddity of how much attention is given to these homicides, while homicides of Black people get a response of "oh, well you know, there's nothing we can do about Black homicide but defund the police, because, well, you know it's all because of systemic racism." But these same people have a completely different perspective when it comes to trans death. There seems to be a stronger sense of efficacy of recognizing the atrocity of trans death, but that same feeling is completely absent when addressing the fact that 7000+ Black people were murdered last year. Most people could probably not even name one Black murder victim that wasn't killed by police.

I work in a Biology department and most people faculty staff and students still use gender to mean sex. Like colleagues and students asking if I knew the “gender” of my unborn child. What most people have gotten out of the current discourse Is that gender is more PC / Polite / inclusive and sex is a bit unspeakable. I often point out to my students that fruit flies don’t identify as anything but do have a sex.

The use of the word "Gender" will be inherently confusing for a long time because a very significant percentage of the population still considers this word to be a simple substitute for sex when referring to male/female. Now, in these conversations and on Twitter the word Gender tends to mean "Gender identity" or "Gender Roles" (as Katie pointed out). This creates confusions in articles/online conversations etc. Sometimes I think that confusion is purposeful. But nonetheless many of these conversations will get nowhere if people are continually mixing up "gender" and "sex" in conversation. As a person who pays attention to the news, is fairly well read, well educated and liberal, and as someone who came to this issue about 1.5 years ago I was still using the word gender interchangeably with sex. I think most regular average people are not engaged with this issue enough to have picked this apart. And, as such, I don't think we know what the general public would think about things like "self-ID" etc unless surveyed with really clear language. It sounds like Jesse referred to a survey where, when it is spelled out, self-ID is very much not popular. Also to Katie's point about Butler, she is interested in re-imagining the meaning of woman, but Katie says we shouldn't do so with "female" (I agree we shouldn't change the meaning of "female", but I'm one of those crazy people who thinks we shouldn't change women to include males either). It seems we are willing to cede the meaning of the word "woman" to no longer be in reference to a person with female anatomy, but we don't want to cede the meaning of the word female. This is another example of the confusing language - most, probably a VAST majority of people understand the word "woman" to mean female, not someone who is male but feels/thinks/believes they are women. They haven't even considered that. It simply always has meant females....why would that change? Hence more confusion in discussing these topics and using the word "woman" without an agreed upon definition.

Is it really surprising or hard to believe (as Jesse expressed) that violence against transwomen sex workers is rooted in homophobia? If a man has sex with a transwoman (especially those with intact male genitalia) *of course* most people consider that to be gay sex. Because it is. Same-sex sex. There is no denying that. Hence...people "tricked' into that act, or those who are self-hating and don't want to admit they are into that type of sex are expressing homophobic feelings/self-hate/violence. Seems pretty obvious. If you have male anatomy and you engage in sex with another person with male anatomy that is same-sex sex....therefore homosexual sex.

I guess to me wrt to the pedophile rights thing. I do emphathize with how horrible a condition it would be to be a good person and yet have an all consuming but impossible to realize sexual fixation (not gonna weigh in on whether orientation is the right term, because I actually feel similarly towards people that for example want to be murdered and eaten or want to murder and eat other people which I'm definitely not going to call an orientation). But my issue here is whether harm is actually going to be reduced by doing things like legalizing "no-harm" child porn like animations or child sex dolls. The problem is that even if did a study and it showed that in a group of no-MAPs it reduced the likelihood of them harming a child (which, again, we don't yet know), you are likely not going to measure the effects that it would have on the NON study population of offending pedophiles and other sex abusers to make such things available. You would have to look at rates of offending in that population as well, and that population is even more resistant to study (since if they were to join a study they would be put in jail, or you are studying pedophiles in prison). That is, even if rates of offending went down among virtuous non offending pedophiles, do they go up by an amount that counteracts that among the serial offenders? Given these populations are quite different the effects are plausibly quite different. Furthermore there is a self interest here which is hard to disentangle. If someone is struggling with these desires it's going to feel VERY important to them that they have some kind of outlet because they like all humans want to have some kind of sexual experience and release. As a result, even with the best of intentions, there is a perverse motivation for a MAP to say "oh yes, this is definitely going to help me not offend" if it helps them get access to these things, because finally they will be able to get off. That is, I'm saying that like a lot of sexual things, sex, or dickful thinking as D.S. calls it, will win out. Again this is all said with plenty of empathy for MAPs. But if they are really good people in my opinion they really need to self reflect as to whether getting access to child porn and dolls is really going to be for the be betterment of society or just for their own gratification, and maybe WAIT until they have some actual evidence that it will be before lobbying to make it so (even if that's hard to come by). Otherwise they are going to start losing sympathy from a lot of us that are predisposed to want to help them get help and not offend.

WRT the pedophilia: I think what it comes down to, as K&J mentioned, is how much one trusts the honesty of self-confessed pedophiles. I guess I just don't. Are some people on there legit? Probably. I support the site's right to exist and people's right to post--free speech and all that. Maybe I'm antiquated, but if you're secretly attracted to kids and NEED to speak about it, write it in a journal and burn the journal--why go to the internet to talk with your peers?? Don't normalize this; it's an aberrance--even if it's involuntary. In regards to the last episode and erotica sharing, I do think something big must've been going on for the Feds to shut it down. "This is a place to jack off to 'fictional' kids" can pretty quickly turn into "this is a place to find internet friends to privately/off-site share your favorite vids." I mean, Al Capone's tax evasion sentence didn't come out of nowhere.

Damn, that’s a bad sentence.

Susannah

The National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) is a pretty mainline male radfem group and I remember them openly talking about coalition building with Mike Pence. I agree that even the more mainline or mainstream radfems tend to go overboard in coalition building with right-wing Christian groups that are very extreme.

In terms of the connection between Radfems, WoLF and right wing ties, Kathy Brennan did a breakdown video of where some of these radfem groups funding comes from and its a horrifying list of really far right wingnuts. Also, this is a paragraph from the amicus brief filed by WoLF - "The Women's LIberation Front ("WoLF"), an organization of radical feminists dedicated to the liberation of women by ending male violence, regaining reproductive sovereignty, and preserving women-only spaces, and the Family Policy Alliance ("FPA"), a Christian organization dedicated to helping Pro-family Americans unleash their citizenship for a nation where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive and life is cherished." And there is more, but there has been a tighter relationship between some Radfem groups and the right than Katie is acknowleging. You can see the whole brief here - https://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/16-273_amicus_pet_womens_liberation_front_and_family_policy_alliance.pdf. This relationship is a very bad strategy in my opinion. The FPA is an anti-choice organization that doesn't give two shits about women's rights. I believe in coaltion building but this one is poison.

I think Butler is a sociopath. Not the worst kind but still. She has been involved in some academic scandals, demonizes reasonable people, and has engaged in pedo-apologia.

Are there any 20th or 21st century feminist or gender theorists that aren't heavily influenced by materialism?

I think you are onto something here. I think theory is great and fine, but one of the more grating aspects of the original Butler interview was that they asserted the whole issue with the "anti-gender movement" was that they don't understand gender theory. Whether or not this is true, it is irrelevant to the current problem. When I see people mad at TERFS and social conservatives, it is not because they disagree on academic treatises. It's because they disagree on policy and are concerned about real-world consequences of our mainstream discourses on these issues. The meat space is real, and if the 2020-21 academic year has taught us nothing else, it's that the internet is NOT the same.

I read the book that Jesse reviewed and I find many of its arguments compelling. However, there were no citations. I’m sure many of the sources the author pulled from were credible, but without footnotes I couldn’t tell for myself. I know citing your sources can take time but it’s really what’s required in order to be credible.

I think Butler's writing is a mess for all of the reasons you two cited, but there are Marxist references in the sentence - particularly the word Althussarian which refers to the Marxist Louis Althussar - which if you don't know anything about Marxism or Marxist thinkers, this would totally go over your head.

The one where he has a body double when he opens his robe? I remember that...

JulieDee

Is Gendevangelists a thing?

It bums me out that in the past, I knew Wi Spa primarily as the setting of a very funny Conan segment, and now the first thing that comes to mind for me is a controversial sex crime.

I know a "centrist gender non-conforming" trump voter. close enough?

Jesse is off about the og conservative trans people! Just look at Christine Jorgensen a true homophobe and conservative asshat💖 Ten years ago in a women’s studies class, I criticized christine for hating the gays and being an overall creep, and a proto nb person in the class responded by screaming at me that Christine was in “survival mode” and had to disavow gays in order to live 🤣 (

I've not read a lot of Butler but was quite into the post structuralists etc at uni which I think were an influence? Anyway there's a whole tradition there of crazily turgid prose, unexplained neologisms, puns and odd punctuation ( a lot of slashes!) which Butler is following. As Jesse says this can make the texts very 'surfacey' with words meanings related to other words. But this is kind of deliberate... the whole theory is that language and social structure are all there is, and personal understanding is paramount, so there is no fundamental meaning. The best way to impart this is by showing (ok, performing) the thing you want to say by saying it. This is all a bit cop-outy I suppose. Personally I love it within the confines of theory but I find it baffling when it is applied to actual fleshy bodies. But Butler has said elsewhere that online spaces act in exactly the same way real life spaces do, so eh...

Paper cuts! That's my joke from Twitter, Katie you owe me 5¢.

Yes! You guys should watch it

We need “No one can force me to read Judith Butler” merch.

"He thinks that I'm a cabbage, 'Cause I hate University Challenge!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgqa3cVOxUc

There's a longstanding and well-documented alliance between radfems and the religious right around porn and sex work. In fact, some anti-sex work leaders like Laila Mickelwait overtly identify as both as radfems and religious conservatives. I think that's undeniable, and there's a similar alliance between strong GC's and the socially conservative right (for example, the Manhattan Institute) around trans issues and queer theory more generally. That said, there's really no identifiable alliance between GC's and militant groups like the Proud Boys. I think both the Proud Boys and Antifa are attracted to cultural flashpoints like flies to poop, really.

University challenge is a quiz show for intelligent viewers who don’t mind only being able to answer one or two of the questions per episode. It’s iconic in the UK!

It would be nice if Katherine Viner took note of the way the Guardian’s critics have manipulated the narrative to make an ally look bad. That’s what got me thinking about what was going on in my lefty social media circles, and what a freeing realisation it’s turned out to be.

Joolz

Exactly. That’s insane. You can’t change an interview after it happened to make the author and interviewee sound better. No understanding at all from the author that their leading question is the problem here, not that you can just ‘queer the concept of interviews’ by changing them after the event

Duncanm

Yup. I am under pressure at my job that would likely evaporate if I loudly came out as nb.

Now now, where is your deranged feline pride! I’m owning the crazy catlady appellation, much like my cats own me. 😹

no.

Tea Ess

I think just taking hormones is also self-ID-lite. Shouldn’t people have to go through something more rigorous to change their entire identity?

My theory as to why there are so many feminists are coming out as nb is bc being a white woman isn't great politically in their circles.

Positivelypolarized69

They’re good by me, although I might put on my own cargo shorts and embrace my inner Autist and write a private email in the next week or so. I don’t think I was as convincing on the basis of the facts as I could have been. I don’t want to fill up their comment section with it anymore.

I would have liked to hear more sympathy for the victim who bravely wrote in. Sounded too much like getting defensive on behalf of the pedophile. Many people in AA aren’t drinking when they go to meetings, and the entire point is not to drink, but…They got there for a reason. Also: Did Jesse’s brother get rid of the car or the rats or neither?

There are no crazy cat ladies, only girl feline enthusiasts with episodic mania ( when we see cats).

JGraves

I really think you should have made a point of mentioning how the screenshots of Butler’s deleted paragraphs circulated on Twitter *without the question included* so the initial narrative was that the Guardian just decided to arbitrarily cut those paragraphs without it being clear that they were just cutting an answer because they were cutting the question.

Absence of Gravitas

My favorite part was Judith Butler’s interviewer (offering to change the question ex post but keep the same answer —begin quote— Gleeson suggested to retract the question and replace it with something more timely, like the recent Texas abortion law. She offered the following revision, “free of charge:” _It seems that some within feminist movements are becoming sympathetic to these far-right campaigns. In 2019 NBC news reported that the US right wing lobbying group The Heritage Foundation had hosted 'gender critical' feminist perspectives. Remarkable given the Heritage Foundation is pushing for restrictions on abortion, as seen in Texas._ “I explained that while I wasn’t attached to my question, and was happy for that to get revised or removed, I could not endorse removing Judith Butler’s answer,” Gleeson said. “Unfortunately, the Guardian editors decided to go ahead with their decision to censor Judith Butler.” —end quote— Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kv3m4/why-the-guardian-censored-judith-butler-on-terfs

Grace M-Thérèse

You guys were busy this week