The Phantasmagoric World of Judith Butler

A Masterclass in Bad Faith

This week, MIT philosopher Alex Byrne reviews Judith Butler's Who's Afraid, of Gender?, her new "dog's breakfast of a book." He finds bad faith, apocalyptic rhetoric, sloppy scholarship, and plagiarism.

Fairer Disputations
 

The Phantasmagoric World of Judith Butler

ALEX BYRNE

In Butler’s phantasmagoric world, the oceans are boiling, bisexuals lie dying in the streets, and the empty shelves of school libraries gather dust. On a hillside, J. K. Rowling stands between Vladimir Putin and the Pope, the papal cassock flapping in the breeze. The trio gaze with grim satisfaction at the devastation below, under a glowering sky.

Plagiarism aside, there are many reasons to be irritated with Who’s Afraid of Gender?. One is Butler’s delusional insinuation that gender-critical feminists have engaged in “bullying” and “censorship campaigns” (135), when they and their sympathizers have so plainly been on the receiving end.

The Weekly Round-up

Fairer Disputations
 

This Week: "Assigning" Sex, Responding to Rape, and Interdependence

THE EDITORS

This week: Alex Byrne and Carole Hooven in the New York Times on "The Problem With Saying 'Sex Assigned at Birth,'" Larissa Philips on responding to rape, Victoria Smith on interdependence, PCOS, perimenopause, what featured author Eliza Mondegreen is reading—and more!

From the Archives

Now is the perfect time to revisit Mary Harrington's prescient piece on the "abortion-oppression-eugenics trilemma."

Fairer Disputations
 

Liberal Feminism Can't Resist Eugenics

MARY HARRINGTON

Where IVG is concerned, progressivism faces a trilemma. If universal personhood is conceded in the name of protecting all vulnerable people, abortion is untenable. But this would be to abandon a crucial cornerstone for the whole modern progressive project: the right to pursue sameness via technology. Conversely, though, if universal personhood is rejected, we are left only with relatively weak secondary objections to eugenics—especially if what we oppose is eugenics of a hygienic kind, whose victims are “clumps of cells” whose humanity has already been foreclosed.

Something will have to give. My hunch is that it will be the Christian residue in mainstream secular liberalism—the one that continues to insist on the moral importance of protecting the vulnerable. There are, after all, other frameworks that may be mobilized to legitimize the onward march of biotech than a desire to use its power to make life better for the weak.

Debate: Is Sex Binary?

Watch Alex Byrne and Featured Author Holly Lawford-Smith team up to debate the question "Is Sex Binary?"

April 17  •   7 pm EDT  •.  MIT's Wong Auditorium
Livestream available on Youtube

We Need Your Support

Fairer Disputations relies on donors to keep us running. Give here, or contact info@fairerdisputations.org to discuss how you can help.