Culture Tranny News Megathread - Hot tranny newds
- Thread starter trannyfucker
- Start date
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
I'm fine with that, my objection is to requiring me to pretend he's one too.
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2019
Like that will help it's more profitable selling the books to be burned
Australian Bookshop To Stop Stocking J.K. Rowling’s Novels – Including Harry Potter – In Order To Create “A Safer Space”
From 2000:View attachment 1614092
Like that will help it's more profitable selling the books to be burned
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Australian Bookshop To Stop Stocking J.K. Rowling’s Novels – Including Harry Potter – In Order To Create “A Safer Space”
NEWS STORY: Harry Potter Casts No Spell on Christian Booksellers
c. 2000 Religion News Service NEW ORLEANS _ With the biggest publishing event in decades unwinding around them, complete with adoring media and
religionnews.com
Same shit two decades difference. Can't wait to see what new group of lunatics bans Harry Potter in 2040.
round robin
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2020
Muslims, at the rate things are going.From 2000:
NEWS STORY: Harry Potter Casts No Spell on Christian Booksellers
c. 2000 Religion News Service NEW ORLEANS _ With the biggest publishing event in decades unwinding around them, complete with adoring media and
Same shit two decades difference. Can't wait to see what new group of lunatics bans Harry Potter in 2040.
- Joined
- Aug 16, 2019
Of all the absurdities with this thing, their fevered fantasy that her pen name is some secret code is to me the height.
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2019
View attachment 1614092
Like that will help it's more profitable selling the books to be burned
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Australian Bookshop To Stop Stocking J.K. Rowling’s Novels – Including Harry Potter – In Order To Create “A Safer Space”
I mean this is virtue signalling at it's finest. Harry Potter as a book series is out there. If this had happened during it's heyday you could claim this was a brave and bold move but at a point where people aren't as likely to buy the new books and can easily find used copies? it's literally just them fluffing their own ego and fishing for those sweet sweet internet ass pats. The only person whose negatively affected by them deciding to not possibly carry the Crime novels which probably do have a current interest, is they themselves. The claim that they'd donate any money from sales of her books that they do sell to some trans nonsense is also bullshit, no small business will pour all of it's profit into a charity regardless of what they claim on social media.
The icing on the cake though is claim that they will still take orders for books they don't stock in store ie. if someone comes to them and wants them to order a Harry Potter book or other Rowling book, they'll still do it. LMAO. Look at us making this post about how we want to control people's purchasing choices but dear customers pls we want to eat the cake too so don't fret! it really means nothing beyond you having to wait a little longer if you want the book as a purchase through our business and please understand even though we want to control your ability to purchase it we do still want your purchase!
So stunning! So brave!
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
There's no better advertisement for a book than being banned. Stupid motherfuckers.
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2017
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
But why bother when you can just order it on Amazon without dealing with some cheeky cunt trying to control your purchasing?
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2018
this tranny Cassie Brighter wrote one essay demanding lesbians sleep with him & the terfs went after it.
so he wrote this 2nd one, saying basically the same thing, but claiming he isn't saying that.
he just wants them to consider it & ask themselves why not????
Are Lesbians Who Don’t Sleep With Trans Women Bigots?
That’s not what I wrote. That’s not what I believe. And yet, I keep being told that’s what I said.
starts out ok:
I agree with you 100% that sexual orientation is a very personal thing and must be respected. AT NO POINT do I say that lesbians who don’t sleep with people if they do not want to are bigots. In no way am I demanding that anyone sleep with anyone. Sex should be 100% consensual at all times.
but later in the article, contradicts that, announces preference is prejudice:
I am inviting lesbians to consider that, if a woman rejects another woman because this woman has a surgical vagina, then that’s (to a smaller or bigger degree) driven by prejudice. In her heart-of-hearts, is she thinking “she’s not a real woman”? And even further (and I’m aware I’m stretching your comfort level here), I’m saying that a lesbian woman may enjoy sex with another woman even if this other woman has a penis (I have very much seen it happen). It is extremely important for me that you understand I’m not dictating behavior or being prescriptive — I am inviting folks to consider the possible.
"but what if she has a vulva and vagina?"
Something I am challenging, in the article, is:
is the person attracted to women, or attracted to a specific body part? And even still, would they reject a trans woman who has a vulva+vagina?...
Is one woman attracted to the other woman until she learns the other woman is trans? And if so, is it because of body parts? And if the trans woman DOES have the ‘right body parts,’ does the first woman STILL reject her?
no, they do not have a vulva or a vagina. sorry. trans women have surgical zombie parts, not real vaginas.
that's what gets me: do they really believe their gross stink ditches are equivalent to real vaginas?
can't they just SEE the difference or is this denial? or just trying to manipulate lesbians?
so he wrote this 2nd one, saying basically the same thing, but claiming he isn't saying that.
he just wants them to consider it & ask themselves why not????
Are Lesbians Who Don’t Sleep With Trans Women Bigots?
That’s not what I wrote. That’s not what I believe. And yet, I keep being told that’s what I said.
starts out ok:
I agree with you 100% that sexual orientation is a very personal thing and must be respected. AT NO POINT do I say that lesbians who don’t sleep with people if they do not want to are bigots. In no way am I demanding that anyone sleep with anyone. Sex should be 100% consensual at all times.
but later in the article, contradicts that, announces preference is prejudice:
I am inviting lesbians to consider that, if a woman rejects another woman because this woman has a surgical vagina, then that’s (to a smaller or bigger degree) driven by prejudice. In her heart-of-hearts, is she thinking “she’s not a real woman”? And even further (and I’m aware I’m stretching your comfort level here), I’m saying that a lesbian woman may enjoy sex with another woman even if this other woman has a penis (I have very much seen it happen). It is extremely important for me that you understand I’m not dictating behavior or being prescriptive — I am inviting folks to consider the possible.
"but what if she has a vulva and vagina?"
Something I am challenging, in the article, is:
is the person attracted to women, or attracted to a specific body part? And even still, would they reject a trans woman who has a vulva+vagina?...
Is one woman attracted to the other woman until she learns the other woman is trans? And if so, is it because of body parts? And if the trans woman DOES have the ‘right body parts,’ does the first woman STILL reject her?
no, they do not have a vulva or a vagina. sorry. trans women have surgical zombie parts, not real vaginas.
that's what gets me: do they really believe their gross stink ditches are equivalent to real vaginas?
can't they just SEE the difference or is this denial? or just trying to manipulate lesbians?
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2018
A transgender thug who identifies as a woman has been jailed in an all-male prison for 20 weeks following a racist rampage inside a Sainsbury's.
Rachelle Mikhnevich, 36, kicked and attempted to bite two police officers after shouting racial slurs at store employees when she struggled to scan items at a self-service checkout in Manchester.
Mikhnevich assaulted an assistant and kicked the store manager in the attack, before telling a security guard: 'Go away you fucking nigger, go away.
'Fucking look the other way lad before I fucking knock these cunts out, fuckk off you ugly cunt.'
Following the incident, which took place at a supermarket inside Manchester Piccadilly station on March 16, Mikhnevich claimed she had drunk three bottles of wine before the attack.
She insisted 'I'm not a racist' when speaking to police, while apologising and claiming: 'It's not how I usually behave.'
'I am shocked by what I have done and I am disgusted with myself and I can only apologise,' she said.
Mikhnevich, from Helsby near Frodsham, Cheshire, was jailed for 20 weeks at Manchester Magistrates' Court after she was convicted of assault and racially aggravated public disorder.
She is now being detained at the men-only Altcourse Jail in Liverpool, where she is undergoing hormone therapy while awaiting surgery for the next stage of her five-year gender reassignment transition.
Prosecuting, Eileen Rodgers explained how Mikhnevich was at the self-service till at around 9.15am when an employee approached her to ask if she 'needed any help as he could see she was struggling'.
Miss Rodgers told the court: 'She said the items had already been purchased but couldn't prove that to the shop employee.
'He then challenged her and she became abusive and kicked him in the legs.
'The store manager ... then became involved when he saw what was going on and went over to try to calm the situation but he was kicked between the legs and looked to be in a lot of pain.
'They couldn't stop [her] from kicking and shouting 'f*** off' again and again and had to hold on to her for five minutes before the police arrived.'
Miss Rodgers explained how a security guard then came over to diffuse the situation, but Mikhnevich began shouting racial slurs at him.
'He was also kicked as well,' she said. 'Police were called to attend but during the arrest, she was very abusive and was very drunk and on numerous occasions attempted to bite these officers and decided to try and spit at them.
'She later admitted in interview to being extremely drunk ... and had consumed at least three bottles of wine.
'She made numerous apologies confirming she has no proper recollection due to memory loss and the alcohol she had taken in.
'She was completely remorseful and apologised and said she should not have done that and she's not a racist by nature. She doesn't believe in anything like that at all.'
The victims suffered no lasting injuries as a result of the attack.
In evidence, security guard Amate Ayittey said: 'I heard one of the staff saying they want to check the receipt of the customer but the customer was trying to throw all the items from his bag and kicked off.
'Sid [Keita, the store employee] is from Nigeria and the customer used the N word. We were doing our duty and I was just trying to protect the staff. I felt bad that Sid had been called that name.
'The store was busy and there were people around who where shocked.'
Mikhnevich had 17 offences on her record including previous assaults on emergency workers, sending threatening letters and having a bladed article.
In mitigation, defence lawyer Steven Alis said: 'By her nature, she's not a racist person but she accepts she was very intoxicated.
'She was very upset on the day and struggled and kicked out but fortunately for her none of the staff or police officers suffered any serious injuries apart from some discomfort on the actual day.
'She takes on a daily basis 17 tablets to cope with various ailments some on which are hormone tablets. She has a lot of personal issues going on in her life.
'The transgender journey is a five-year journey and she started on taking hormones over the past 18 months.
'She is currently awaiting an appointment for the next stage but according to her, it'll be about another three years before the whole process assuming it goes smoothly is completed. She's not someone who has just begun this journey it's been a long time.
'She said she realised at a very young age she was in the wrong body and her journey has taken a long time to start and she has been abused on the way.
'She is a miss but inside a male prison as she's currently pending an operation.'
Seems to just be a gay man/drag queen, no idea why they are claiming to be women now.
FB shows what a waste of oxygen he is:
When your real family say your a FUCKING DISGRACE course of who you are and what I’ve become.... mother fucker you live in Ellesmere Port and your fuck all and won’t go no where in life like me... I’m going nvq 2 prick I hope you all die a painful death you vile peace of shit the lot of you...
Today I’ve made the toughest decision by NOT going to my dads funeral
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2015
Yes.
Transbians DON'T pass. Never ever ever. And yet these narcs can't stop inventing scenarios where they do to manipulare lesbians. But in the real world there is no such thing as "learning" a troonbian is actually a man because you can see it 1000 miles away.
Yes, because troonbians are disgusting hulking ogres and it doesn't matter if some had their dicks flayed.
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2018
Incoming...
BREAKING NEWS: Bill to Protect Female Sports Introduced in Senate
September 22, 2020|Updates
Five Senators introduced the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.
Washington, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senators Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act to make it a violation of Title IX for a school that receives federal education funds to permit a biological male to participate in a sports program designated for women and girls.
Senator Kelly Loeffler is a former athlete and the co-owner of a WNBA team, the Atlanta Dream. In a press release she stated, "Title IX established a fair and equal chance for women and girls to compete, and sports should be no exception,” said Senator Loeffler.“As someone who learned invaluable life lessons and built confidence playing sports throughout my life, I’m proud to lead this legislation to ensure girls of all ages can enjoy those same opportunities. This commonsense bill protects women and girls by safeguarding fairness and leveling the athletic field that Title IX guarantees.”
“Men and women are biologically different,” said Senator Lee.“That’s just a scientific fact. For the safety of female athletes and for the integrity of women’s sports, we must honor those differences on a fair field of competition.”
“Maintaining the integrity of healthy competition is crucial for the future of women and girls in sports,” said Senator Blackburn.“Schools and universities that allow males to participate in women’s sports defeats the purpose of Title IX.”
“When Title IX was passed and signed into law, the intent was to ensure equal access for men and women in education, including sports,” said Senator Lankford. “Permitting biological males to participate in women’s sports rejects the very spirit of Title IX, which was intended to create an equal playing field for women and girls. This bill upholds and reiterates congressional intent and promotes actual equality for women and girls in sports by respecting the dignity of biological female athletes across the nation.”
“At their best, sports teach our kids fundamental lessons about fairness and integrity in a safe environment—but there’s nothing fair, honest or safe about allowing men to compete in sports leagues designed solely for women,” said Senator Cotton.
“This bill will preserve the sports leagues and teams that allow women and girls to excel as athletes. And it will defend the commonsense principle that women’s sports are for women. It’s tragic but unsurprising that such a defense is necessary.”
Save Women's Sports, a non-partisan coalition, applauds the Senators in their effort to champion females. This should not be a partisan or religious issue. Our coalition has varying views outside of this topic but we are all able to agree on one thing, males should not compete in female sports.
We do not have to agree on everything, to come together to Save Women's Sports.
Source/Archive
They should find a way to shove Bader Ginsburg’s name onto the bill, just for that added touch of salt.
BREAKING NEWS: Bill to Protect Female Sports Introduced in Senate
September 22, 2020|Updates
Five Senators introduced the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.
Washington, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senators Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act to make it a violation of Title IX for a school that receives federal education funds to permit a biological male to participate in a sports program designated for women and girls.
Senator Kelly Loeffler is a former athlete and the co-owner of a WNBA team, the Atlanta Dream. In a press release she stated, "Title IX established a fair and equal chance for women and girls to compete, and sports should be no exception,” said Senator Loeffler.“As someone who learned invaluable life lessons and built confidence playing sports throughout my life, I’m proud to lead this legislation to ensure girls of all ages can enjoy those same opportunities. This commonsense bill protects women and girls by safeguarding fairness and leveling the athletic field that Title IX guarantees.”
“Men and women are biologically different,” said Senator Lee.“That’s just a scientific fact. For the safety of female athletes and for the integrity of women’s sports, we must honor those differences on a fair field of competition.”
“Maintaining the integrity of healthy competition is crucial for the future of women and girls in sports,” said Senator Blackburn.“Schools and universities that allow males to participate in women’s sports defeats the purpose of Title IX.”
“When Title IX was passed and signed into law, the intent was to ensure equal access for men and women in education, including sports,” said Senator Lankford. “Permitting biological males to participate in women’s sports rejects the very spirit of Title IX, which was intended to create an equal playing field for women and girls. This bill upholds and reiterates congressional intent and promotes actual equality for women and girls in sports by respecting the dignity of biological female athletes across the nation.”
“At their best, sports teach our kids fundamental lessons about fairness and integrity in a safe environment—but there’s nothing fair, honest or safe about allowing men to compete in sports leagues designed solely for women,” said Senator Cotton.
“This bill will preserve the sports leagues and teams that allow women and girls to excel as athletes. And it will defend the commonsense principle that women’s sports are for women. It’s tragic but unsurprising that such a defense is necessary.”
Save Women's Sports, a non-partisan coalition, applauds the Senators in their effort to champion females. This should not be a partisan or religious issue. Our coalition has varying views outside of this topic but we are all able to agree on one thing, males should not compete in female sports.
We do not have to agree on everything, to come together to Save Women's Sports.
Source/Archive
They should find a way to shove Bader Ginsburg’s name onto the bill, just for that added touch of salt.
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2015
Great fucking news!
Troon cheaters, eat shit!
Inb4 hulking ogres start crying that they can't compete against women anymore and threaten to 41% themselves.
pepper
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 24, 2014
I love that he doesn't even play along with the language game by calling the athletes "trans women." He just flat out calls them men.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Yes.
People have pointed out "Why don't they have a troon division in sportsball?" Troon goes REE!! That's invalidating! I'm a wammen!
Also troons: "I'mtransI'mtransI'mtransI'mtrans stop ERASING muh transnes!! I'mtransI'mtransI'mtransI'mtrans By the way did I tell you I'm trans?"
Can't have it both ways you fucking freaks.
People have pointed out "Why don't they have a troon division in sportsball?" Troon goes REE!! That's invalidating! I'm a wammen!
Also troons: "I'mtransI'mtransI'mtransI'mtrans stop ERASING muh transnes!! I'mtransI'mtransI'mtransI'mtrans By the way did I tell you I'm trans?"
Can't have it both ways you fucking freaks.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Alcohol, and therefore butterbeer, is haram, and having youths commit such acts such as drinking in defiance of Allah is Islamophobic.
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2016
The culture wars will go hot by then. Probably LotR fanboys.
But they can as long as identitarian leftist politicians tell them they can.
- Joined
- Aug 16, 2019
Part of the entire fevered fantasy is just that, though. I mean, there are I guess straight men who are so inobservant that they get fooled because every once in a while they kill a troon who faked them out, but women and in particular lesbians? Lesbians are I’m fairly certainly the world’s greatest experts in telling the difference, even more than straight women. They just don’t seem to realize that women can tell due to evolutionary reasons. The only troons who might fly under my radar only do so because there is nothing about them that makes me take that first actual look. So, small gays. A small gay might not hit my radar because of small size and the fact that he isn’t vibrating with sexual intent in a female space since as an HSTS being in the female space isn’t an act of sexual gratification for him in and of itself. But a troonbian is, and women can feel it radiating from him, and we take a real look, and there it is. Evolutionary reasons, it is a critical skill to be able to sense predatory sexual intent. The HSTS only gets by because he doesn’t vibrate with anything that causes us to look more closely. At that point, y’all, the skin alone...there’s just that thick greasier look to male skin, and makeup makes it stand out even more, as we all know from tranny porn. And very few men gay or straight aren’t bigger with a heavier frame. A taller guy could weigh the same as a very short obese woman and there is still something more solid and dense at the core about the way he moves and connects to the ground, while she just seems out of balance and like a big fat ball teetering around.
But imagining fooling a woman, and a lesbian in particular, is like the final boss they all think they can defeat.
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2018
The queen of gender woo woo theory, Judith Butler, DESTROYS the TERFs with fact and logic () http://archive.md/D1Qps
Judith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in “anti-intellectual times”
The philosopher and gender theorist discusses tensions in the feminist movement over trans rights.
Thirty years ago, the philosopher Judith Butler, now 64, published a book that revolutionised popular attitudes on gender. Gender Trouble, the work she is perhaps best known for, introduced ideas of gender as performance. It asked how we define “the category of women” and, as a consequence, who it is that feminism purports to fight for. Today, it is a foundational text on any gender studies reading list, and its arguments have long crossed over from the academy to popular culture.
In the three decades since Gender Trouble was published, the world has changed beyond recognition. In 2014, TIME declared a “Transgender Tipping Point”. Butler herself has moved on from that earlier work, writing widely on culture and politics. But disagreements over biological essentialism remain, as evidenced by the tensions over trans rights within the feminist movement.
How does Butler, who is Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature at Berkeley, see this debate today? And does she see a way to break the impasse? Butler recently exchanged emails with the New Statesman about this issue. The exchange has been edited.
Alona Ferber: In Gender Trouble, you wrote that "contemporary feminist debates over the meanings of gender lead time and again to a certain sense of trouble, as if the indeterminacy of gender might eventually culminate in the failure of feminism”. How far do ideas you explored in that book 30 years ago help explain how the trans rights debate has moved into mainstream culture and politics?
Judith Butler: I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. If you are right to identify the one with the other, then a feminist position opposing transphobia is a marginal position. I think this may be wrong. My wager is that most feminists support trans rights and oppose all forms of transphobia. So I find it worrisome that suddenly the trans-exclusionary radical feminist position is understood as commonly accepted or even mainstream. I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen.
AF: One example of mainstream public discourse on this issue in the UK is the argument about allowing people to self-identify in terms of their gender. In an open letter she published in June, JK Rowling articulated the concern that this would "throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman", potentially putting women at risk of violence.
JB: If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life. The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. The fact that such fantasies pass as public argument is itself cause for worry.
AF: I want to challenge you on the term “terf”, or trans-exclusionary radical feminist, which some people see as a slur.
JB: I am not aware that terf is used as a slur. I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women's spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists? My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples. My sense is that we have to renew the feminist commitment to gender equality and gender freedom in order to affirm the complexity of gendered lives as they are currently being lived.
AF: The consensus among progressives seems to be that feminists who are on JK Rowling’s side of the argument are on the wrong side of history. Is this fair, or is there any merit in their arguments?
JB: Let us be clear that the debate here is not between feminists and trans activists. There are trans-affirmative feminists, and many trans people are also committed feminists. So one clear problem is the framing that acts as if the debate is between feminists and trans people. It is not. One reason to militate against this framing is because trans activism is linked to queer activism and to feminist legacies that remain very alive today. Feminism has always been committed to the proposition that the social meanings of what it is to be a man or a woman are not yet settled. We tell histories about what it meant to be a woman at a certain time and place, and we track the transformation of those categories over time.
We depend on gender as a historical category, and that means we do not yet know all the ways it may come to signify, and we are open to new understandings of its social meanings. It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women... Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity. The trans-exclusionary radical feminist position attacks the dignity of trans people.
AF: In Gender Trouble you asked whether, by seeking to represent a particular idea of women, feminists participate in the same dynamics of oppression and heteronormativity that they are trying to shift. In the light of the bitter arguments playing out within feminism now, does the same still apply?
JB: As I remember the argument in Gender Trouble (written more than 30 years ago), the point was rather different. First, one does not have to be a woman to be a feminist, and we should not confuse the categories. Men who are feminists, non-binary and trans people who are feminists, are part of the movement if they hold to the basic propositions of freedom and equality that are part of any feminist political struggle. When laws and social policies represent women, they make tacit decisions about who counts as a woman, and very often make presuppositions about what a woman is. We have seen this in the domain of reproductive rights. So the question I was asking then is: do we need to have a settled idea of women, or of any gender, in order to advance feminist goals?
I put the question that way… to remind us that feminists are committed to thinking about the diverse and historically shifting meanings of gender, and to the ideals of gender freedom. By gender freedom, I do not mean we all get to choose our gender. Rather, we get to make a political claim to live freely and without fear of discrimination and violence against the genders that we are. Many people who were assigned “female” at birth never felt at home with that assignment, and those people (including me) tell all of us something important about the constraints of traditional gender norms for many who fall outside its terms.
Feminists know that women with ambition are called “monstrous” or that women who are not heterosexual are pathologised. We fight those misrepresentations because they are false and because they reflect more about the misogyny of those who make demeaning caricatures than they do about the complex social diversity of women. Women should not engage in the forms of phobic caricature by which they have been traditionally demeaned. And by “women” I mean all those who identify in that way.
AF: How much is toxicity on this issue a function of culture wars playing out online?
JB: I think we are living in anti-intellectual times, and that this is evident across the political spectrum. The quickness of social media allows for forms of vitriol that do not exactly support thoughtful debate. We need to cherish the longer forms.
AF: Threats of violence and abuse would seem to take these “anti-intellectual times” to an extreme. What do you have to say about violent or abusive language used online against people like JK Rowling?
JB: I am against online abuse of all kinds. I confess to being perplexed by the fact that you point out the abuse levelled against JK Rowling, but you do not cite the abuse against trans people and their allies that happens online and in person. I disagree with JK Rowling's view on trans people, but I do not think she should suffer harassment and threats. Let us also remember, though, the threats against trans people in places like Brazil, the harassment of trans people in the streets and on the job in places like Poland and Romania – or indeed right here in the US. So if we are going to object to harassment and threats, as we surely should, we should also make sure we have a large picture of where that is happening, who is most profoundly affected, and whether it is tolerated by those who should be opposing it. It won’t do to say that threats against some people are tolerable but against others are intolerable.
AF: You weren't a signatory to the open letter on “cancel culture” in Harper’s this summer, but did its arguments resonate with you?
JB: I have mixed feelings about that letter. On the one hand, I am an educator and writer and believe in slow and thoughtful debate. I learn from being confronted and challenged, and I accept that I have made some significant errors in my public life. If someone then said I should not be read or listened to as a result of those errors, well, I would object internally, since I don't think any mistake a person made can, or should, summarise that person. We live in time; we err, sometimes seriously; and if we are lucky, we change precisely because of interactions that let us see things differently.
On the other hand, some of those signatories were taking aim at Black Lives Matter as if the loud and public opposition to racism were itself uncivilised behaviour. Some of them have opposed legal rights for Palestine. Others have [allegedly] committed sexual harassment. And yet others do not wish to be challenged on their racism. Democracy requires a good challenge, and it does not always arrive in soft tones. So I am not in favour of neutralising the strong political demands for justice on the part of subjugated people. When one has not been heard for decades, the cry for justice is bound to be loud.
AF: This year, you published, The Force of Nonviolence. Does the idea of “radical equality”, which you discuss in the book, have any relevance for the feminist movement?
JB: My point in the recent book is to suggest that we rethink equality in terms of interdependency. We tend to say that one person should be treated the same as another, and we measure whether or not equality has been achieved by comparing individual cases. But what if the individual – and individualism – is part of the problem? It makes a difference to understand ourselves as living in a world in which we are fundamentally dependent on others, on institutions, on the Earth, and to see that this life depends on a sustaining organisation for various forms of life. If no one escapes that interdependency, then we are equal in a different sense. We are equally dependent, that is, equally social and ecological, and that means we cease to understand ourselves only as demarcated individuals. If trans-exclusionary radical feminists understood themselves as sharing a world with trans people, in a common struggle for equality, freedom from violence, and for social recognition, there would be no more trans-exclusionary radical feminists. But feminism would surely survive as a coalitional practice and vision of solidarity.
AF: You have spoken about the backlash against “gender ideology”, and wrote an essay for the New Statesman about it in 2019. Do you see any connection between this and contemporary debates about trans rights?
JB: It is painful to see that Trump’s position that gender should be defined by biological sex, and that the evangelical and right-wing Catholic effort to purge “gender” from education and public policy accords with the trans-exclusionary radical feminists' return to biological essentialism. It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society.
AF: What do you think would break this impasse in feminism over trans rights? What would lead to a more constructive debate?
JB: I suppose a debate, were it possible, would have to reconsider the ways in which the medical determination of sex functions in relation to the lived and historical reality of gender.
) http://archive.md/D1QpsJudith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in “anti-intellectual times”
The philosopher and gender theorist discusses tensions in the feminist movement over trans rights.
Thirty years ago, the philosopher Judith Butler, now 64, published a book that revolutionised popular attitudes on gender. Gender Trouble, the work she is perhaps best known for, introduced ideas of gender as performance. It asked how we define “the category of women” and, as a consequence, who it is that feminism purports to fight for. Today, it is a foundational text on any gender studies reading list, and its arguments have long crossed over from the academy to popular culture.
In the three decades since Gender Trouble was published, the world has changed beyond recognition. In 2014, TIME declared a “Transgender Tipping Point”. Butler herself has moved on from that earlier work, writing widely on culture and politics. But disagreements over biological essentialism remain, as evidenced by the tensions over trans rights within the feminist movement.
How does Butler, who is Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature at Berkeley, see this debate today? And does she see a way to break the impasse? Butler recently exchanged emails with the New Statesman about this issue. The exchange has been edited.
Alona Ferber: In Gender Trouble, you wrote that "contemporary feminist debates over the meanings of gender lead time and again to a certain sense of trouble, as if the indeterminacy of gender might eventually culminate in the failure of feminism”. How far do ideas you explored in that book 30 years ago help explain how the trans rights debate has moved into mainstream culture and politics?
Judith Butler: I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. If you are right to identify the one with the other, then a feminist position opposing transphobia is a marginal position. I think this may be wrong. My wager is that most feminists support trans rights and oppose all forms of transphobia. So I find it worrisome that suddenly the trans-exclusionary radical feminist position is understood as commonly accepted or even mainstream. I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen.
AF: One example of mainstream public discourse on this issue in the UK is the argument about allowing people to self-identify in terms of their gender. In an open letter she published in June, JK Rowling articulated the concern that this would "throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman", potentially putting women at risk of violence.
JB: If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life. The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. The fact that such fantasies pass as public argument is itself cause for worry.
AF: I want to challenge you on the term “terf”, or trans-exclusionary radical feminist, which some people see as a slur.
JB: I am not aware that terf is used as a slur. I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women's spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists? My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples. My sense is that we have to renew the feminist commitment to gender equality and gender freedom in order to affirm the complexity of gendered lives as they are currently being lived.
AF: The consensus among progressives seems to be that feminists who are on JK Rowling’s side of the argument are on the wrong side of history. Is this fair, or is there any merit in their arguments?
JB: Let us be clear that the debate here is not between feminists and trans activists. There are trans-affirmative feminists, and many trans people are also committed feminists. So one clear problem is the framing that acts as if the debate is between feminists and trans people. It is not. One reason to militate against this framing is because trans activism is linked to queer activism and to feminist legacies that remain very alive today. Feminism has always been committed to the proposition that the social meanings of what it is to be a man or a woman are not yet settled. We tell histories about what it meant to be a woman at a certain time and place, and we track the transformation of those categories over time.
We depend on gender as a historical category, and that means we do not yet know all the ways it may come to signify, and we are open to new understandings of its social meanings. It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women... Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity. The trans-exclusionary radical feminist position attacks the dignity of trans people.
AF: In Gender Trouble you asked whether, by seeking to represent a particular idea of women, feminists participate in the same dynamics of oppression and heteronormativity that they are trying to shift. In the light of the bitter arguments playing out within feminism now, does the same still apply?
JB: As I remember the argument in Gender Trouble (written more than 30 years ago), the point was rather different. First, one does not have to be a woman to be a feminist, and we should not confuse the categories. Men who are feminists, non-binary and trans people who are feminists, are part of the movement if they hold to the basic propositions of freedom and equality that are part of any feminist political struggle. When laws and social policies represent women, they make tacit decisions about who counts as a woman, and very often make presuppositions about what a woman is. We have seen this in the domain of reproductive rights. So the question I was asking then is: do we need to have a settled idea of women, or of any gender, in order to advance feminist goals?
I put the question that way… to remind us that feminists are committed to thinking about the diverse and historically shifting meanings of gender, and to the ideals of gender freedom. By gender freedom, I do not mean we all get to choose our gender. Rather, we get to make a political claim to live freely and without fear of discrimination and violence against the genders that we are. Many people who were assigned “female” at birth never felt at home with that assignment, and those people (including me) tell all of us something important about the constraints of traditional gender norms for many who fall outside its terms.
Feminists know that women with ambition are called “monstrous” or that women who are not heterosexual are pathologised. We fight those misrepresentations because they are false and because they reflect more about the misogyny of those who make demeaning caricatures than they do about the complex social diversity of women. Women should not engage in the forms of phobic caricature by which they have been traditionally demeaned. And by “women” I mean all those who identify in that way.
AF: How much is toxicity on this issue a function of culture wars playing out online?
JB: I think we are living in anti-intellectual times, and that this is evident across the political spectrum. The quickness of social media allows for forms of vitriol that do not exactly support thoughtful debate. We need to cherish the longer forms.
AF: Threats of violence and abuse would seem to take these “anti-intellectual times” to an extreme. What do you have to say about violent or abusive language used online against people like JK Rowling?
JB: I am against online abuse of all kinds. I confess to being perplexed by the fact that you point out the abuse levelled against JK Rowling, but you do not cite the abuse against trans people and their allies that happens online and in person. I disagree with JK Rowling's view on trans people, but I do not think she should suffer harassment and threats. Let us also remember, though, the threats against trans people in places like Brazil, the harassment of trans people in the streets and on the job in places like Poland and Romania – or indeed right here in the US. So if we are going to object to harassment and threats, as we surely should, we should also make sure we have a large picture of where that is happening, who is most profoundly affected, and whether it is tolerated by those who should be opposing it. It won’t do to say that threats against some people are tolerable but against others are intolerable.
AF: You weren't a signatory to the open letter on “cancel culture” in Harper’s this summer, but did its arguments resonate with you?
JB: I have mixed feelings about that letter. On the one hand, I am an educator and writer and believe in slow and thoughtful debate. I learn from being confronted and challenged, and I accept that I have made some significant errors in my public life. If someone then said I should not be read or listened to as a result of those errors, well, I would object internally, since I don't think any mistake a person made can, or should, summarise that person. We live in time; we err, sometimes seriously; and if we are lucky, we change precisely because of interactions that let us see things differently.
On the other hand, some of those signatories were taking aim at Black Lives Matter as if the loud and public opposition to racism were itself uncivilised behaviour. Some of them have opposed legal rights for Palestine. Others have [allegedly] committed sexual harassment. And yet others do not wish to be challenged on their racism. Democracy requires a good challenge, and it does not always arrive in soft tones. So I am not in favour of neutralising the strong political demands for justice on the part of subjugated people. When one has not been heard for decades, the cry for justice is bound to be loud.
AF: This year, you published, The Force of Nonviolence. Does the idea of “radical equality”, which you discuss in the book, have any relevance for the feminist movement?
JB: My point in the recent book is to suggest that we rethink equality in terms of interdependency. We tend to say that one person should be treated the same as another, and we measure whether or not equality has been achieved by comparing individual cases. But what if the individual – and individualism – is part of the problem? It makes a difference to understand ourselves as living in a world in which we are fundamentally dependent on others, on institutions, on the Earth, and to see that this life depends on a sustaining organisation for various forms of life. If no one escapes that interdependency, then we are equal in a different sense. We are equally dependent, that is, equally social and ecological, and that means we cease to understand ourselves only as demarcated individuals. If trans-exclusionary radical feminists understood themselves as sharing a world with trans people, in a common struggle for equality, freedom from violence, and for social recognition, there would be no more trans-exclusionary radical feminists. But feminism would surely survive as a coalitional practice and vision of solidarity.
AF: You have spoken about the backlash against “gender ideology”, and wrote an essay for the New Statesman about it in 2019. Do you see any connection between this and contemporary debates about trans rights?
JB: It is painful to see that Trump’s position that gender should be defined by biological sex, and that the evangelical and right-wing Catholic effort to purge “gender” from education and public policy accords with the trans-exclusionary radical feminists' return to biological essentialism. It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society.
AF: What do you think would break this impasse in feminism over trans rights? What would lead to a more constructive debate?
JB: I suppose a debate, were it possible, would have to reconsider the ways in which the medical determination of sex functions in relation to the lived and historical reality of gender.