Judy Judy Judy
Judith Butler blows up her own argument in the middle of a sentence – and doesn’t correct it, even though it’s not a live conversation but an email exchange with a New Statesman writer.
When Justice Ginsburg established “sex” discrimination as a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed right to be treated equally, she underscored that equality was the basis for feminist legal victories. What if access to certain kinds of healthcare, including abortion, is a matter of equality? If men have adequate healthcare, and women do not, then women, or those who are pregnant, suffer discrimination.
No, you can’t flip your own argument mid-sentence like that. You end up with gibberish. “If men have adequate healthcare, and women do not, then women, or men who are pregnant, suffer discrimination.” Wut? But you just said men have adequate healthcare, in contrast to women, not in contrast to women or men. Sometimes remembering to be incloooooooosive makes nonsense of your argument.
Then it’s stupid in a different way.
Something similar is happening with trans healthcare. If people who are not trans get the healthcare they require, and trans people face discrimination at healthcare facilities, then they suffer discrimination.
That argument should be “If people who are not trans get the healthcare they require, and trans people don’t get the healthcare they require, then they suffer discrimination.” I wonder if she changed it because of unease – possibly unconscious – about the nature of that “healthcare.” As many of us point out several times a day, it is at the very least questionable that trying to change people’s sex with surgeries and cross-sex hormones can be called “health care.” I for one don’t think it is health care, I think it’s quackery and health damage.
This is an email interview, not a live one. You’d think she could do better.
Consider, then, that when we say that the denial of abortion rights is discrimination on the basis of sex, we may be saying that sex plays a role in the judgement to deny those rights that is unfair and unjust. We do not need to adjudicate whether the denial of abortion rights gets the sex right – probably not. So it is not on the basis of sex as it is that discrimination occurs. Discrimination makes reference to sex in unfair and discriminatory ways, and the only “sex” that legally matters is the one figured and operative in a discrimination action.
I have no idea what she thinks she means by that.
So when some feminists now make claims like, “the patriarchal oppression of women is heavily rooted in our reproductive systems”, it can sound like those reproductive systems are the cause of the oppression. That is muddled thinking, wrong, and does not advance feminist aims. It is the social organisation of reproduction that leads to the conclusion that abortion should or should not happen. The state is claiming that it has interests in the womb, and it is figuring the womb as its province, rather than the province of those who actually have them. It is precisely the anti-feminist forces that figure the womb in that way that we must oppose. Otherwise, we attribute the existence of oppressive systems to biology, when we should be asking how those oppressive systems contort biological claims to their own ends.
Wut?
No the state isn’t claiming it has “interests in the womb.” The state, aka the collective of anti-abortion fanatics in Congress and state legislatures and the courts, is claiming it gets to force women to stay pregnant. It’s not about disembodied wombs, it’s about the treacherous sneaky selfish inferior beings who have those wombs. It’s about women’s ability (and purported duty) to produce babies, but not disembodied from the women themselves. There’s sadism and resentment and power-tripping involved here along with the Baby Imperative, and if you think there isn’t you’re on the wrong drugs.
You’re expecting her to proofread? Reading Butler makes anyone less smart than they were before reading her; is there any reason to believe that she herself would be immune? If Butler had to read her own stuff more than once, she wouldn’t know what the fuck she was talking about either.
This:
“Consider, then, that when we say that the denial of abortion rights is discrimination on the basis of sex, we may be saying that sex plays a role in the judgement to deny those rights that is unfair and unjust. We do not need to adjudicate whether the denial of abortion rights gets the sex right – probably not. So it is not on the basis of sex as it is that discrimination occurs. Discrimination makes reference to sex in unfair and discriminatory ways, and the only “sex” that legally matters is the one figured and operative in a discrimination action.”
Sounds like a smart person who is suddenly getting a glimmer of understanding that even though she didn’t set out to become a grifter, she has, in fact, become a grifter.
It’s the peril of Google translate. I’m sure it sounded a lot better in the original Sumerian.
If A, then A.
Truly, she has a dizzying intellect.
I can’t tell you all how glad I am that so many clever people don’t understand a word she says.
I agree, transition medication/surgery is not “healthcare” since the body is not in an unhealthy state and is not being returned to a healthy state (quite the opposite if anything).
Thus talk of “denying healthcare to trans youth” is activist-speak, designed to twist the truth.
Equally, though, elective abortions are not “healthcare”. Again, the body is not in an unhealthy state. So, again, the term “healthcare” is not appropriate.
[Though, for clarity, I support laws allowing elective abortion up to some limit, along the lines of Western European laws.]
Butler is just flailing on a ledge here. She can find no way to square the circle, no way to reconcile her fantastical imaginary concoction of gender with the reality of sex, no way to respond to the very real threat to women prohibition of abortion represents while continuing to pretend women don’t exist.
Coel, it might be worth modifying your statement that “the body is not in an unhealthy state” during pregnancy. The body may or may not be in an unhealthy state during pregnancy. Some pregnancies, predictably, will seriously harm or kill the mother if brought to term. And some medical systems, legally, will sit by and watch as it happens.
In some states in America, we have now crossed that line. There is no male equivalent of the state of Ohio refusing to allow a 10 year old to get an abortion – which she didn’t need because she “identified” as female, but because it could very well kill her to bring her rapist’s baby to term.
Complications related to pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death worldwide for girls 15-19. For girls under 15, pregnancy is rarer but more dangerous. Read this article and say again that providing an abortion for that 10 year old wasn’t healthcare.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/18/health/young-girls-pregnancy-childbirth.html
If the pregnancy is one the woman doesn’t want then her body damn well is in an unhealthy state, and giving birth is downright assaultive.
Re #5, I found this tweet amusing:
https://www.twitter.com/JosephFCMiller/status/1551268137353592832
I think I do.
I believe she’s saying that a policy can be discriminatory against group A even if it isn’t perfectly targeted. I haven’t had enough coffee to come up with a good example that doesn’t indulge in dumb stereotypes, so I’ll keep it abstract.
Say that an employer has a policy not to hire people with attribute X. People with X are very disproportionately likely to be members of minority Group A, but it’s not 100% correlation: some Xs are not As, and some As are not Xs. That doesn’t mean the policy can’t be discriminatory (whether it is or not would probably depend on whether this is a plausible, non-discriminatory reason for excluding Xs.)
Otherwise, employers (or whoever) could try to be “clever” by implementing policies that don’t literally discriminate on the basis of race, sex, etc., but that use some other characteristic as a proxy for the group they’re trying to exclude.
So policies that discriminate against pregnant people (yes, I know, bear with me here) can still be discriminatory against women, even if not all women can get pregnant (true even if we leave trans people out of it), and even if not all pregnant people are women.
If people face discrimination, they face discrimination. Wow, we’re dealing with a real deep thinker here!
And this was a WRITTEN interview!
@Papito: #7:
I agree, hence my comment was about elective abortion (generally defined as “induced abortion done at the request of the mother for other than therapeutic reasons”).
@Ophelia:
By that standard, the trans activist could declare that, if developing into an adult is not wanted, then going through puberty is downright assaultive (after all, they never consented to it), and hence that puberty blockers are “necessary healthcare” and that withholding them amounts to “denying them healthcare”.
That’s true, but on the other hand, puberty is not assaultive in the way pregnancy is. It doesn’t involve having a growing infant inside one’s abdomen, compressing all one’s organs and causing immense discomfort and fatigue at best, nor does it involve a 7 or 8 pound infant with a large head being pushed through a small opening in one’s pelvis via painful contractions. It’s true that no one consents to puberty but it’s not true that the physical results of puberty are comparable to pregnancy and childbirth.
Consent is a strange, almost incoherent, notion to apply to bodily processes; e.g., I don’t consent to hunger. Neither does consent apply to one’s own actions; e.g., I don’t consent to my eating this hamburger. It’s only once another agent enters the situation that consent even begins to make sense; e.g., consent to sex.
Puberty isn’t compatible with talk of consent. Pregnancy is, because it involves another agent, whether the father (inseminating parent) or the zygote/embryo/fetus.
@Nullius:
So you’re describing the foetus as an “agent” in the context of consent? Hmmm ….