Judith Butler on Gender Performativity (Makers of the Modern World)

This video in our Makers of the Modern World series addresses Judith Butler and gender performativity.

[EcclesiastesLiker-pyts]

Very informative. I took "English Language" at school, which in practice was just this woman's thought and that of those like her. I thought at the time it was a strangely narrow curriculum.

[memyselfishness]

Thank you for this. I've often noticed and thought about the inherint flaw between the existentual ideas in queer communities and the essential ideas. Identity as a choice vs inherint part who someone is.

[CassiePelser]

I love these discussions! Perfect for listening to while washing dishes. Keep them coming!

[wesleybasener]

Really appreciate this! I had a lot of friends in college who swam in simular streams of thought. So its cool to learn where that stuff came from.

[KyleSletten]

The thing that's compelling about this is that I was always told not to behave unmanly. If gender really exists I can't be unmanly because I define a man, but that's not how conservatives talk about it.

[lewreed]

I have to admit (confess?), I began this video with some skepticism because Dr Cooper is a Christian. I needn't have worried. This is rock solid stuff, and I've subscribed to the channel.

I'm familiar with Butler and Foucault (whose style, I would have said, she imitates shamelessly, despite not managing to be any more than a pale imitation) and the strands of European thought from which they spring. It's good to have this condensed in a video by someone far better qualified than I am to tackle it, and done with integrity.

While I look forward to a time without Butler's ideas knocking around, I also hope that in 20 years we're not looking back on today with any fondness, because we've careered into a world that makes our current spats about gender seem enviably quaint.

Thanks for your efforts, Dr Cooper.

Yours,

A recovering Irish Catholic.

[laffytaffy]

I may not agree with you, but this was a clear and informative talk, a rare find these days.

[mostlydead]

New Polity has a series that deals with Butler's ideas.. while they are critical they admit that Butler is closer to Christian thought than are many who attack them..

[gnomesurf]

Interesting video, I'll be sure to check out the rest of this series.

[torbjorntoll]

Thank you Dr. Cooper for an excellent lecture. Around 47-8 min you had a slip of the tongue and said Descartes when you meant the person you were talking about.

[Gregorycrafter]

Can you please do some on Tillich, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sarte. In circles that I frequent around thinkers like those have become a significant threat

[computergamescritical]

Haven’t watched the video yet! But I’m excited!
For many years, I had suspected that these theorists of gender didn’t really know what they meant when they said “man” or “woman” and indeed this was also an accusation leveled against them by so many right-wing or centrist people… but frustratingly, I could never really confirm this fact, what if the answer was just buried in the literature? I didn’t want to read through all of that stuff, so I was stuck only suspecting that this was the case, but never really knowing, that is, until Judith Butler was asked about the question, and Butler said something like “Well, you’d need to know how the term was used throughout history….” blah blah blah and at that point it was effectively confirmed to me that Judith didn’t actually know!

Here’s why… the answer Judith provided effectively tried to answer the question from a *languistic descriptivist* lens, seeing how the term was used throughout history, but *it’s painfully clear that the question “What is a w🔴man” is asked about JUDITH BUTLER’s theory on what a woman is, not about what OTHER PEOPLE think women are* ! Additionally, it should be clear that Judith would have to answer two questions, not just one, because both genderists and non-genderists agree that transwomen are people with male bodies that identify as women, the reason why they use the term “woman”
to describe such people is precisely because it gives off a certain connotation or mental image, the fact that Judith would sidestep the question of what that connotation or mental image is, and simply try to answer who qualifies as women according to certain definitions shows that Judith doesn’t actually understand the nuances of the question!

[torbjorntoll]

Thank you Dr Cooper! You are doing a good job of clarifying ideas that are influential and yet are so esoteric that they are hard to grasp. If we don’t believe in a common human nature (the what of what man is) and no person (the who of who we are), where will it take us? History is full of awful stories of what has happened when these two truths have been denied.

[sporeguy-lb]

Coincidence this came the same day as Philosophy Tube's video on Butler? I could play the videos in parallel and you address each point as it comes. It's freaky

[jrhemmerich]

Around 49:00 you talk about the connection between doing and being/becoming. The placement of existence before essence is a very Sartrian/atheistic existentialist point of view.

It is rather counterintuitive to say the being of biology (boy/girl) is dictated by social behaviors (l like blue/pink). Is Buttler’s justification for the extension of action into biology a function of the assumption that biology is a physical construct produced by evolutionary action over time? Even granting evolution, it still seems a stretch to treat biological realities as subject to the same degree of flux as social realities.

It seems, as Christians, we would want to say that being and essence often come together, but not always. This is a question of contingency. God’s essence is necessarily to be all good, holy, and wise, and God acts flow from his being.

Human sex is a matter of biological being and is not subject to act/choice. However, we would say that Adam’s act/choice to sin changed his essential nature from innocent to sinful (without totally loosing the image of God).

Would you say that essence is never subject change by action? Or would you say it depends upon the category we are speaking about—God, man, sexual identity, guilt or innocence, etc.?

I’m inclined to say that we have simply confused necessary things (sexual identity) with contingent things (moral choice), and we have done so out of rebellion against a theistic essentialism (ala Sarte, etc.).

Do you think this is along the right track?

[cardenioscouse]

Does it surprise anyone if I say not all gay people, me included agree with this insanity? All I want is a private life and nothing else, these gender politics are terrible.

[iNTELLECT_]

Thank you for this lecture. As I have heard others talk about Butler the one key thing that you pointed out that I hadn’t heard was how she was influenced by Kant and Hegel. That leads me to believe that dialectical thinking being applied to feminism is what caused her to come to her bizarre conclusions.

[merg-vhsx]

This is an immensely useful video. Thank you.
With love, one hugea** TERF.

[anyanyanyanyanyany]

so you're saying the question of "What is a woman?" did not emerge from some random phenomena of social insanity, but is actually based on ideological principles and philosophical concepts?😯 Looks like Matt Walsh was on to something, or was he?😁

[johntobey]

She is a queen version of Noam Chomsky. Incoherent amd progressive at tge same time. Jaques Rousseau all over again.