Today’s NYTimes opinion page carries this piece: “Judith Butler Thinks You’re Overreacting.” A question—“How did gender become a scary word?”—is in the subheading. The question assumes a false premise. Gender is not a scary word. It’s a synonym for sex in use for centuries. It refers to sex binary determined by gamete size (and, in back of that, usually chromosomes). We therefore don’t need to be “trying to figure out gender” per se. At least not for political or social purposes. It’s an observable fact that in itself is not complex. (See Sex and Gender are Interchangeable Terms; Gender and Sex. Once More for People in the Back. See also Manipulating Reality by Manipulating Words; There’s No Obligation to Speak Like a Queer Theorist. Doing so Misrepresents Reality; Denying Reality: The Tyranny of Gender-Inclusive Language.)
To be sure, there are interesting things about gender, such as how genotype and phenotype work in tandem and the developmental malfunctions that can occur that dynamic. The anomalies are the proper subject of medical practice. Also, the cultural and historical variability of social roles associated with it, mass mediated stereotyping, and so on. This is the work anthropologists and sociologists do (although I’ve stopped lecturing on sex and gender in my introductory class out of a desire to narrow the lane of offense taking). But as a basic fact of plant and animal biology, like death, it’s one of those few incontrovertible truths. Only postmodernist nihilism “problematizes” gender as an excuse to transgress social boundaries and depathologize/normalize paraphilias—i.e., mainstream disruptive fetishes and kinks. To be sure, this has corrupted some scientists (and doctors, along with huge sums of money); but this only means they have abandoned their calling and have crossed over into ideology.
The occasion of Jessica Bennett’s piece is Butler’s new book Who’s Afraid of Gender? Frankly, I have never fully understand why Butler garners so much attention. Yes, those whose desire to disorder society need arguments. But her work is unimpressive and often gibberish (Bennett describes her as “notorious esoteric philosopher turned pop celebrity”). Even her misrepresentations of what the opponents of queer theory are against in the interview lack sophistication. She feigns ignorance about the association of queer theory and pedophilia. “Some woman came at me with a big trolley and she was screaming about pedophilia. I could not understand why.” Then she says, “I figured out later that the way that the anti-gender ideology movement works is to say: If you break down the taboo against homosexuality, if you allow gay and lesbian marriage, if you allow sex reassignment, then you’ve departed from all the laws of nature that keep the laws of morality in tact—which means it’s a Pandora’s box; the whole panoply of perversions will emerge.”
The question of homosexuality and marriage equality, once essentially a settled question, is becoming problematic once more because of association with and tolerance for the fallacy of gender identity and the politics associated with it, politics rooted in sexual perversion. The perversions—pedophilia, transsexualism, etc.—come first, not after. In a recent essay on this blog, Fear and Loathing in the Village of Chamounix: Monstrosity and the Deceits of Trans Joy, I talk about the history of sexology, which clarifies the order of things (see also Thomas Szasz, Medical Freedom, and the Tyranny of Gender Ideology). Queer theory is indeed built upon the desire to transgress boundaries. But it is wrong to put gays and lesbians into Pandora’s box along with autogynephiles and the like. This is what Butler means by “gender,” namely trans-affirming, i.e., the project to normalize “sex reassignment surgery,” a medical euphemism for genital mutilation, and intentional endocrine disruption.
Once again, I give you Derrick Jenson on pedophilia, anarchism, and queer theory. Add knowledge about Cluster B and you now understand Trantifa.
freedom and reason 