Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

Science is just a social construct. True. But batshit opinions about ~testosterone~ are the gods honest truth. Also dragons.

WCC for what it's worth i wasn't disapproving of you or anybody being angry and i wasn't just talking about you when i said i hoped people cd take a step back. i just hate to see anger becoming something that hurts the bearer rather than a righteous venting

― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), donderdag 16 februari 2012 1:01 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and this, yes.

I knew I should have gone to bed - WCC if you think my post was a sideways attack on you for being angry, it totally wasn't.

I think people should refrain from insulting one another if at all possible, should certainly not throw kettles at each other's heads or stab with knives, but neither should they refrain from expressing anger whilst simmering in bitter fury until their guts are all twisted up and all their relationships have soured, or suppress their anger so deep that they become passive little lettuce leaves floating along on a tide of other people's opinions. Anger is an honest and valid emotion, it can be harmful and it can be constructive.

I just had a moment's curiosity as to whether my discomfort was another gender-related social construct because I have often felt at a disadvantage in situations where other people, usually men, have *appeared* to handle angry conflict situations in a less... self-compromising...? way than I do.

I have read enough Butler to know that I find her style immensely off-putting. You can get that from an online abstract.

if it helps this is something that i feel and think about on an incredibly emotional and visceral way. when you bat away things that i've just said have effected me in important ways as irrelevant i don't understand how that is any different from what you've been accusing people of doing on this thread.

I have read enough Butler to know that I find her style immensely off-putting. You can get that from an online abstract.

― White Chocolate Cheesecake, donderdag 16 februari 2012 1:05 (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...

If you had said that you found Butler's style immensely off-putting I don't think anyone would have argued with you. But you didn't. You directly accused her of intending to use language to obfuscate.

also butler's writing now is somewhat different to what it was twenty years ago

and regardless of whether or not you've read butler, she is incredibly influential. someone recently told me that she was the most cited living writer.

Ok sorry Plax, I'm not batting it away as irrelevant. It's that your post came across as "lay off thd Judith Butler" which just seemed so off base to me as her work is not the foundation of my views on gender.

I don't like her style, that's not to say that others can't find meaning in it. But I'm drunk and angry and annoyed that I'm being accused of holding or misusing a position I don't follow, so I hit out at the position.

Jesus fucking Christ. That's right "don't make assertions about testosterone without a citation" is a matter of ~following my opinion~. Yup, that's right.

well, i mentioned that i was responding to research itt thread days ago, and posted some stuff in the other thread recently. you call me "snide", but i think i've tried very hard to engage you not just civilly, but with some hope of real accord. which isn't to say that i don't get "butthurt" from time to time, but i honestly don't think i'm the one driving this [whatever it is] at this point.

chomsky iirc xp

where is this because i've tried googling it!

most cited is... a potentially dubious distinction.

well, i mentioned that i was responding to research itt thread days ago, and posted some stuff in the other thread recently. you call me "snide", but i think i've tried very hard to engage you not just civilly, but with some hope of real accord. which isn't to say that i don't get "butthurt" from time to time, but i honestly don't think i'm the one driving this [whatever it is] at this point.

well you do keep coming back over and over again to 'it's just, like, my opinion maaaan' all over this thread so

most cited is a pretty good indication of influence though

Hate it when people feel angry btw, it always bothers me at a gut level when people I like and respect are angry. If it's directed at me I *might* react aggressively, but mostly I want to *make it better* and I can't help wondering if this is something other women-flavoured (and men-flavoured I guess) ILXors get too - it it just me? Is it something I've been taught to feel because I'm female and women are supposed to be social facilitators? Or is it universal, more or less?

― Also unknown as Zora (Surfing At Work), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 3:44 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh yeah, i definitely get this. suspect it's a fairly universal human thing. and the "like and respect" bit is key. it's why the disapproval of your parents can be so devastating when you're a kid. i find that if i think someone's a jerk, their anger is much easier to handle.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1992/citation-0415.html

i've seen the bible cited a lot tbh

I *am* suspicious of Butler's style. I do find it obfuscating, that whole school of philosophy which makes complicated things even more complicated. My taste in philosophers runs more towards Mary Midgley and people who are able to render complicated subjects in such a way that they actually seem easy. But this is me as a data analyst, and a number cruncher by trade. These are the things that important to me.

well you do keep coming back over and over again to 'it's just, like, my opinion maaaan' all over this thread so

― gyac, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 4:14 PM (55 seconds ago) Bookmark

maybe, but that's not all i've said.

Is it Chomsky? Linguistics FTW!

(that is probably the most "obsessed Radiohead fan" thing I've ever said so shoot me in the fucking face now)

the only one i could find chomsky was fourth and butler third

here's a ranking only within the humanities where she does do quite well:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=405956

science is a social construct

― judith

its interesting you used phrenology as an example, as its an intersection of science (well, it's quantitative anyway) and the social world. "science is a social construct", yes, but it seems to me that we get into particularly sticky territory when we're using science to make conclusions about social issues (say, gender and sexuality) as opposed to natural ones (say, celestial mechanics)

@WCC, You didn't even *know* Butler until 15 minutes ago, yet you claim to know her style, place it into a "school of philosophy" no less, because of an extract online somewhere...

Ah well, the joke's on me I suppose, talking to a person who says she's drunk and angry. On the internet. A lol forum. I'm out.

But complicated things are complicated. I much prefer to open up those complicated things to further questioning, to put pressure on them and to discover how they work by investigating it for myself, than to be given an answer and go 'yes, that sounds about right, and it's by a scientist so they must know'.

Also, Chomsky's linguistics are pretty much entirely discredited, right? I have time for the dude, but... well.

yeah but tbh it's all very circular, especially with a lot of different topics itt.

em: yes.

to discover how they work by investigating it for myself, than to be given an answer and go 'yes, that sounds about right, and it's by a scientist so they must know'.

And by none of this do I mean anything close to 'well, it's just our differing opinions, maaaan'.

LBI. Let me spell this out for you. I know who Butler is. I have seen her referenced in many places, intersecting with the things I read about in gender, sociolinguistics etc. I checked out a couple of articles that were online, and found them impenetrable.

When Plax tells me "lay off the Butler" this is an absurd proposition, because Butler is not the foundation of my ideas about gender. I have read enough about Butler to find her impenetrable. I have seen her mentioned enough to know approximately which school of thought she belongs to. I have not read enough of her to have her theories be so much at the base of my ideas about gender that I need to lay off them. Can you understand that, or do you need me to draw you a map?

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

what's hard about that

i never said "lay off the butler" just so we're clear. i said that you were repeatedly using a trope that was strongly associated with her work. i was saying her work has formed identifications with a lot of people who are not women and that it has been taken up and used and identified with and become a canon text for groups that judith butler does not belong to. i never literally said "lay off the butler" or anything similar.

anyone who thinks butler is hard should give spivak a go. or laruelle.

lol iatee

isn't butler's impenetrability, like, a widely discussed thing? iirc she's pretty much admitted to it.

(i found her writing style completely obfuscatory when i tried her at university, but then i also find deleuze incomprehensible too)

deleuze and guattari is tough but deleuze solo is pretty clear.

WCC, you said I've never read Judith Butler. Which is what I went by. Plus, Plaxico never said "lay off the Butler"?

It's just a shame that you tell other people off for not having read certain books or gathered information that you have - like Con, who seems genuinely interested in a lot of things mentioned here. Yet you dismiss Butler, a hugely prolific writer on this matter, without having read a single thing by her.

No need to "draw me a map", save those pencils for your artwork.

even anti oedipus is pretty straightforward.

there is a certain performative difficulty in butlers work, the complexity of the text as a set of entanglements in order to mirror the complex social configurations she is writing about. yes.

difficult and deliberately difficult aren't the same as trying to be obscure or confusing.

there is a jargon to a lot of this stuff that becomes "familiar" with time but i think it's okay that difficult ideas are difficult. i couldn't pick up a quantum physics text and just breeze thru it until i understood the universe either.

i'm sorry if this is too much fanboyism

what's hard about that

took me longer to comprehend than to read, but igi, and i don't even know who Althuss is. hegemonic structures are not fixed things, they exist over time, in the way they are repeated and reasserted. style is a bit lol bullshit academic obfuscation, but i figure that goes with the subject.

OK, your actual post has disappeared behind the cut, Plax, but that was the general gist I got "this idea comes from Butler, Butler said it only in one place and moved beyond it" when it's an idea that has been debated back and forth in other places and I've been talking about those other places so much - it would make more sense if you'd said "lay off the Dale Spender" or "lay off the Cordelia Fine" so I didn't really understand why you were getting Butler from what I was saying.

Le Bateau Ivre, go boil your head.

and for one person deleuze and guattari = difficult another person loves the playfulness and texture of the work

Le Bateau Ivre, go boil your head.

― White Chocolate Cheesecake, donderdag 16 februari 2012 1:31 (3 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...

Stay classy.

oh i guess it was deleuze & guattari that i read (or tried to read, don't think i got to the end, certainly didn't understand enough of it to take anything from it)

there is a certain performative difficulty in butlers work, the complexity of the text as a set of entanglements in order to mirror the complex social configurations she is writing about. yes.

This I have no time for. Maybe it comes from reading too much about maths and physics, and wanting things to be elegant, that the mark of a brilliant mathematician is someone who takes a big mess of complicated stuff and renders it down to an elegant beautiful equation.

Taking complicated stuff and making it more complicated, to prove that the subject is complicated? That's obfuscation as far as I'm concerned.

i couldn't pick up a quantum physics text and just breeze thru it until i understood the universe either

pretty sure you wouldn't understand the universe afterwards either fwiw

continually mystified/bummed that these threads seem to inevitably devolve into CWW hostility tbh

pretty sure you wouldn't understand the universe afterwards either fwiw

that's the joek!