What a colossally stupid question.
What’s the wound to lesbianism, really, if, um. the category of women is expanded to include trans women, what’s the wou – what – where – how do any of the people who live in that category, how are they actually suffering, it seems to me that what they’re suffering from is a kind of hatred or phobia that is overwhelming to them.
Gee, I don’t know, prof, what’s the wound if the category of workers is expanded to include bosses, what’s the wound if the category of poor people is expanded to include rich people, what’s the wound if the category of Black people is expanded to include White people, what’s the wound if the category of indigenous people is expanded to include invaders, what’s the wound if the category of rape victims is expanded to include rapists?
Butler actually wrote a book about power (which I haven’t read and won’t read because I cannot stand her way of writing). You’d think she’d at least know enough not to ask an abysmally stupid question like that.
Comments
7 responses to “It seems to her/them”
See, you’re clearly bigoted against inscrutable, impenetrable prose. It’s a hated or phobia that’s overwhelming to you. For shame.
To be more specific, against carefully, deliberately, ostentatiously, needlessly impenetrable prose. I have an overwhelming hatred of performative fake-profound jargony prose that is jargony FOR THE SAKE OF being jargony. I hate the vanity of it.
“Lesbian” and “woman” all just arbitrary “categories” and “labels.” They don’t actually mean anything. They are simultaneously powerful (in that they create Reality), and meaningless, in that you can redefine them, or replace them entirely with other words like “wombat” or “corpuscle.’ What’s the wound?
The real category of women cannot be expanded to include men, and the real category of lesbian women cannot be expanded to include men, therefore dismissive hypotheticals such as this are only an attempt at misdirection. If you want clarity, you’re not going to get it from JB. She’s a dishonest sham.
I am wounded by crimes against language and sense.
What is the wound if the category of “man” is expanded (or more accurately, “finally recognized”) to include those currently calling themselves “transwomen?”
John Reed: the wound is to the feelings of those currently calling themselves “transwomen”, and THIS CANNOT STAND.