In addition to being a generally incoherent writer, radical LGBT author and feminist icon Judith Butler is an angry woman.
A very angry woman.
And she’ll spew venom against anyone who dares oppose her or the radical LGBT agenda she espouses.
Butler, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research in New York City, is one of the founders of the modern “gender identity” movement whose 1990 book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity is considered foundational in the field. In her latest hit piece, “Why is the idea of ‘gender’ provoking backlash the world over?” published in The Guardian on October 24th, Butler not only attacks the usual people, organizations and countries the Left vilifies for standing up for the family and the culture of life against the imposition of the radical LGBT agenda—and that would include The International Organization for the Family, Citizen GO, the Vatican, Poland, Hungary, and Christians—but now expands the list to include Denmark, France, Romania, Turkey, Costa Rico, Columbia, Brazil, and traditional Muslims. A look at Butler’s article reveals just how illogical and convoluted her arguments really are and how hate is her driving motive.
To begin with, Butler sees a rising global conspiracy against the extreme LGBT agenda everywhere:
“The anti-gender ideology movement crosses borders, linking organizations in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and east Asia. The opposition to “gender” is voiced by governments as diverse as Macron’s France and Duda’s Poland, circulating in rightwing parties in Italy, showing up on major electoral platforms in Costa Rica and Colombia, boisterously proclaimed by Bolsonaro in Brazil, and responsible for closing gender studies in several locations, most infamously at the European University in Budapest in 2017 before it relocated to Vienna.
In Germany and throughout eastern Europe “genderism” is likened to “communism” or to “totalitarianism”. In Poland, more than one hundred regions have declared themselves “anti-LGBT zones”, criminalizing an open public life for anyone perceived as belonging to those categories, forcing young people to leave the country or go underground. These reactionary flames have been fanned by the Vatican, which has proclaimed “gender ideology” “diabolical”, calling it a form of “colonizing imperialism” originating in the north and raising fears about the “inculcation” of “gender ideology” in the schools…[T]he networks amplifying and circulating the anti-gender viewpoint include the International Organization for the Family, which boasts thousands of participants at its conferences and the online Platform CitizenGo, founded in Spain, which mobilizes people against lectures, exhibitions, and political candidates who defend LGBTQI rights.”
Then to show how “really bad” this international conspiracy is, Butler links it to–you guessed it–“fascism.” When you get down to it, almost all attacks by the Left against the Right boil down to “But you are doing exactly what Hitler did!” Ad hominem attacks, rather than rational argument, are the specialty of radicals like Butler. She writes:
“Anti-gender movements are not just reactionary but fascist trends, the kind that support authoritarian governments… As a fascist trend, the anti-gender movement supports ever strengthening forms of authoritarianism…[A]s a fascist trend, it mobilizes a range of rhetorical strategies from across the political spectrum to maximize the fear of infiltration and destruction that comes from a diverse set of economic and social forces… This form of fascism manifests instability even as it seeks to ward off the “destabilization” of the social order brought about by progressive politics.”
Piling on the ad hominem attacks, Butler then declares that this fascism partners with (no, it can’t be!) “white supremacy,” “anti-migrant anger,” “Islamophobia”, and male patriarchy:
“Stoked by fears of infrastructural collapse, anti-migrant anger and, in Europe, the fear of losing the sanctity of the heteronormative family, national identity and white supremacy, many insist that the destructive forces of gender, postcolonial studies, and critical race theory are to blame. When gender is thus figured as a foreign invasion, these groups clearly reveal that they are in the business of nation-building. The nation for which they are fighting is built upon white supremacy, the heteronormative family, and a resistance to all critical questioning of norms that have clearly restricted the freedoms and imperiled the lives of so many people… The opposition to “gender” often merges with anti-migrant furor and fear, which is why it is often, in Christian contexts, merged with Islamophobia…[People opposing the LGBT agenda] fear that men will lose their dominant position or become fatally diminished if we start thinking along gender lines.”
The charge of “white supremacism” is particularly confusing as, noted above, Butler includes Turkey, traditional Islam, the Hispanic countries of Columbia, Costa Rica, and Brazil, and networks in Africa, Latin America, and East Asia as opposing the LGBT agenda. Details, details…
If you know your arguments won’t win the day—as Butler’s cannot—just call your opponents all sorts of nasty names in the hope that this will decide the argument; facts and reason be damned. This is the tried-and-true formula for debate espoused by Butler and her fellow radicals.
Butler then makes convoluted arguments about sex that defy reason and oppose objective science. She writes (with my comments in parentheses) that the radical LGBT agenda “does not deny sex, but it does tend to ask about how sex is established [hmm…maybe through the XY and XX sex chromosomes and sexual genitalia?], through what medical and legal frameworks [maybe through observation and DNA testing and laws that have recognized the differences between the sexes for millennia], how that has changed through time [it hasn’t], and what difference it makes to the social organization of our world to disconnect the sex assigned at birth from the life that follows, including matters of work and love [it produces confusion and chaos].”
She then tries to argue that transgenderism is not, in fact, against science:
“We generally think of sex assignment [to be correct, it should be sex “acknowledgment,” as sex is an objective fact: if you have a Y sex chromosome and the male genitalia/reproductive system, you are male; if you have no Y sex chromosome and the female genitalia/reproductive system, you are female] as happening once [it can happen only once as it is an objective reality not a subjective opinion], but what if it is a complex and revisable process [except it isn’t], reversible in time for those who have been wrongly assigned [again, sex is acknowledged, not assigned]? To argue this way is not to take a position against science [oh, really?], but only to ask how science and law enter into the social regulation of identity. “But there are two sexes!” Generally, yes, but even the ideals of dimorphism that govern our everyday conceptions of sex are in many ways disputed by science [they are not] as well as the intersex movement [she means those extremely rare cases of individuals with ambiguous genitalia who are generally not part of the modern transgender movement], which has shown how vexed and consequential sex assignment can be.”
She then adds: “It does not matter that chromosomal and endocrinological differences complicate the binarism of sex and that sex assignment is revisable.” The truth is, these differences do not “complicate” the fact that there are two sexes; sex chromosomes and reproductive systems objectively demonstrate the “binarism of sex.” And sex “assignment” is not “revisable.” No matter what hormones he takes or what surgeries he undergoes, a biological male will still have in each of his cells the Y sex chromosome marking him as a biological male. And no matter what surgeries he undergoes, a biological male will never be able to produce eggs or give birth, just as a biological female will never be able to produce sperm or impregnate anyone. Indeed, there are over 5,000 physical differences between a biological male and a biological female and surgery can only alter a few external ones.
Butler then argues incredibly that it is Christians who are anti-science and implies that they have even been misinterpreting the Bible in regard to the sexes:
“[O]pponents of ‘gender’ seek recourse to the Bible to defend their views about…the distinctive values of masculine and feminine (although progressive theologians have pointed out that these are based on debatable readings of biblical texts [Really? What is debatable about “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them? Gen.1:27]). Assimilating the Bible to natural law doctrine, they claim that assigned sex is divinely declared, suggesting that contemporary biologists and medical doctors are curiously in the service of 13th-century theology [no, they are just observing objective reality].”
Perhaps realizing that her arguments against the reality of biological sex do not make sense, Butler resorts once again to throwing additional ad hominem attacks against those she opposes:
“The anti-gender advocates claim that “gender ideologists” deny the material differences between men and women, but their materialism quickly devolves into the assertion that the two sexes are timeless “facts”. The anti-gender movement is not a conservative position with a clear set of principles. No, as a fascist trend, it mobilizes a range of rhetorical strategies from across the political spectrum to maximize the fear of infiltration and destruction that comes from a diverse set of economic and social forces. It does not strive for consistency, for its incoherence is part of its power.”
If only Butler would read her own books and articles, she would understand what “incoherence” is.
In the final paragraph of her article, however, Butler gets at the real target of her writing: feminists who oppose the radical transgender movement because they really believe that “women” really are different from men and that no biological male can become a “woman” no matter what he thinks or what hormones or surgeries he undergoes. Butler writes:
“[I]t makes no sense for “gender critical” feminists to ally with reactionary powers in targeting trans, non-binary, and genderqueer people. Let’s all get truly critical now, for this is no time for any of the targets of this movement to be turning against one another. The time for anti-fascist solidarity is now.”
Ah, so fascists, white supremacists, Islamophobes, Christians, misogynists, and homophobes are not her real opponents; it is feminists opposing her and her radical transgender agenda who are. How could these feminists ally themselves with all those reactionaries, these fascists, these white supremacists? Butler just cannot understand it. If only these wrong-headed feminists would just read her convoluted and reality-denying writings….
In an unforeseeable irony, Judith Butler ends her piece by attacking her own feminist tribe. Her arguments—which oppose science and which she knows will not hold water with the reading public—give way to ad hominem attacks and leave her hoping that this mudslinging will win the day. In the end, Butler is just a sad figure who sees conspiracies everywhere and is dedicated to rehashing tired criticisms against her opponents who have science, reason, and the Bible on their side.