Slavoj Zizek — Gender identity & Transgenderism

[iwouldprefernotto]

If you want to get Zizek's 'I WOULD PREFER NOT TO' t-shirt you can do so here:

[kojak]

Żiżek had been born into the wrong nose and now his hands subcosciously reject it and so on and so on

[plumo]

As a trans woman, I find this refreshingly humanizing -- here Zizek is seeing the decision of transition divorced from any cultural baggage, simply as a quite radical decision a person makes to themselves. It's ironic that his closing sentence hews so close to the liberal platitude of "you're so brave!" yet it is entirely divorced from any narrativising, and is predicated on something (compared to the cynicism inherent in 'braveness') much more fulfilling, optimistic, and universal.

[metaouroboros]

So, from my limited understanding, Zizek does not buy ideas like gender fluidity because he feels that it does not demonstrate the same overwhelming need for assuming one's correct identity. I suppose you could counter by saying that genderfluid people might feel a different overwhelming need, not to transition to one identity, but to be allowed to express the identity they feel at a certain point in time. It's not an overwhelming need to make a transition to a specific social role, but to be allowed to freely express a social role based on a need that is similarly strong, but changes regularly. On the other hand, if the need to express oneself as gender fluid is not as strong as the need to transition to a binary gender, why should we disregard it? Even if it's not as strong a need, it's still there.

[ombelle]

“The greatness of transgender is for me precisely that it brings us very close to this radical level of freedom.”

— Slavoj Zizec

[gwen]

i wish Caitlin Jenner wasn't the defacto icon for transgender :c

[aubreyxengland]

Zizek would make a great baseball coach

[gojeffygo]

In picking one of the archest neoliberal trans icons to appear in the thumbnail who ever is in charge of creating this clip is making a different argument than zizek seems to be making.

[rkoll]

The reason I love this guy is by loving him I accept myself way better in the relationship to other people.

[lfdoidao]

I think it is really interesting how he talks about it being a nessecity, not having a choice

[brunoalvespinto]

'And so on.'
- Zizek, Slavoj

[pineapple]

The comparison to being a resistance fighter in an occupied country is actually genius, I’m gonna steal that

[secu_bot_commentary]

Baaed from what I understood, the decision of switching to another gender identity is a very radical form of freedom that requires episodes of psychological crises to fully finalize. Additionally, one also needs to feel the NECESSITY of becoming trans in making that decision. In summary, being trans is one of the most important decisions one can make during their life and because of that, it needs to be taken very seriously. The only problem is that some people DO NOT take it seriously and play around too much with gender identities to the point where it unfortunately becomes a laughing stock.

[zetanone]

I really love the way that he thinks about gender and sexuality, as making a “choice” about yourself that is in reality not at all choice but an essential part of who you are. However, and I have read very little Zizek, so what I am about to say might be refuted or mentioned somewhere else in his almost daunting body of work, I think his assertion that by claiming fluidity this person is avoiding the hard choice of self is just laying out two or three boxes (man, woman, neither) and then not contemplating whether or not there may be more boxes than what he is claiming. If someone is assigned man at birth, undergoes HRT to acquire a “female” body, and then identifies as non-binary, I don’t think that is some denial of the choice, but the choice itself. Whether or not it fits within the standard boxes that western society payed out to us is irrelevant to the fact that they have made that choice.

Again, I am an idiot and also a teenager, I don’t actually know anything, so if I horribly misrepresented his position then I am sorry.

[ellw]

u know maybe instead of summarizing personal interpretations in the comments, it might be better if we asked specific questions and added specific pieces of knowledge about parts of this talk. just an idea

[bobjohnson]

Reality is not easily ignored. It's a job that requires lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of words.

[imamsanji]

We agree that gender is different from the biological sex, why would a person needs to change their biological sex to fit the gender they think they are? I don't understand.

[odedsayar]

He's making a weird point at the end, looking at fluid identities as being prescriptive rather than descriptive (and thus not being genuine in his opinion). To me it seems like the complete opposite - it's not people waking up in the morning and deciding to be straight/gay today, but noticing that at certain periods of time the have different tendencies.
You could form a similar argument about rigid identity being prescriptive - one calls themselves "straight" because they were attracted to the opposite sex up until now, but they can't really know what the future holds, so by identifying as straight you already decide who you're gonna fall in love with.
I don't think this kind of logic holds

[Davidvp]

He hits the nail on the head, transgender rights are a matter of freedom, the choices will be subconscious and sometimes radical like love or other matters of identity, but that's what freedom is make choices as we want them, regardless of their subconcious or whatever origin they have.

[anewname]

My issues with trans activism [obviously, not trans people] is the widespread conflation of sex & gender on three levels: rhetorically, conceptually, and [especially] terminologically and the consequences of this conflation which is the fact that a materialist analysis of gender not possible without being erroneously accused of “essentialism” or having a phobia.

The idea that being a man or a woman is based on a persons subjective self-concept a very recent development. Gender was commonly understood to refer to the constructs of “masculine” & “feminine”, which certain *things* [e.g. words, behaviors, social roles, abilities, mannerisms, clothing/fashion, names, personality traits, professions etc] are categorized based on what is deemed socially/culturally appropriate for either men or women, respectively. Man and woman are not types of gender but the specific words for male and female humans.