who's afraid of gendercide?

a guest poast

Oct 16, 2024

dear reader

please note that my criticism of trans and non-binary writers should not be taken as an endorsement of efforts to make life for gender minorities any more difficult than it already is. that being said, fuck the soft bigotry of low expectations.

lots of love (especially to my grrrrrrrrrrrrrls on the l.g.b.t.q. spectrum)

m.j.a.

agonist

i finally picked up a copy of the deliciously delirious agonist by friend-of-the-blog

Udith Dematagoda

at a lovely little literary salo(o)n arranged by hyperidean press. on the tube on the way back home, i l.m.f.a.o.’d at the discussion of d.f.w.’s purported penchant for the bucharest method, listening to brat and it’s completely different but still brat in my AirPods, yeah.

for more information about the book, please read john pistelli’s review. lemme just say it elevates shitposting to the level of philosophical theatre.

i thank/blame u.d. for emboldening my inner schizoposter.

you need to calm down

a further inspiration for the style and to some extent the substance of this poast was the viral-among-the right on millennium snot by a dude named dudley newright from the new right poast (it always helps to subtly signal one’s allegiances). it may be a clever article, but it is definitely not cute: a few astute observations about the annoying verbal tics liberals develop from spending too much time online to feed the toxic white male ressentiment that their language and culture has become too black, too girly and too queer.

écrire dans la langue de l'ennemi mais la corrompre

in my increasingly frequent spenglerian moments, i do worry about the degradation of language (and therefore of thought) but for the moment, the nut of problem lies not in the coarseness of online rhetoric but in its meanness of spirit. the internet has made us all more annoying, and also, perhaps not coincidentally, more easily annoyed.

the internet has dehumanised our interactions

[we will write this on the internet twenty-seven million three hundred thousand times]

the internet has dehumanised our interactions

et cetera, et cetera

a dereliction of duty

i don’t begrudge the average overcredentialed, underemployed n.p.c. p.m.c. for being annoying. i do begrudge the philosophers who were supposed to help us make sense of the world but instead decided to construct a psychological defence against it. i have not read judith butler’s new book who’s afraid of gender (i read gender trouble and bodies that matter a lifetime ago, when my queerness was still theoretical), but grace byron’s thought-provoking essay (first published in the gorgeous-looking issue 003 of the whitney review) provides a clear and comprehensive summary which is consistent with j.b.’s essay why is the idea of ‘gender’ provoking backlash the world over? published by the the guardian in October 2021.

tellingly, g.b. does not mention this essay when she claims that j.b. ‘even faced censorship for an interview in the guardian where they denounced […] gender-critical feminists.’ the guardian issued a statement to say that the interview was edited after publication for legal reasons and then proceeded to allow j.b. to publish an essay-length t.e.r.f.s-are-fascists tirade. censorship sure ain’t what it used to be.

she said that they faced censorship, not that they were actually censored!

hooray! the fact-checker has checked in!

i’ve also benefited from blake smith’s seminal essay judith butler vs judy!, which suggests that the subtitle to the book should have been: me!

in addition to neatly summarising j.b.’s projections (i assume), g.b.’s essay is also instructive on just how entangled thinking about gender, ‘radical’ politics and international relations has become. so let’s attempt a little close/(queer) reading of the text to try and tease apart some of the underlying annahmen.

unless otherwise stated, photos are from the zanele muholi exhibition on at the tate modern until 26 january 2025. their portraits of queer south africans offer a humanising view of the complicated reality behind the distorted abstractions of the gender debate.

phinal phantasy

g.b. starts with a useful overview of j.b.’s main thesis:

Who’s Afraid of Gender? hypothesizes that “gender” is not just an ideology but a phantasy. A phantasy in the Laplanchian sense, a repository for the Right’s ghosts. Such constructions can hold, are even made, for contradictions. The abuse of children is hidden through the fear that “gender” is itself child abuse. The Right destroys and limits freedom in the very name of freedom. These dichotomies short-circuit any possible logical arguments, such passions are meant to stir up trouble and unite unlikely allies on the Right. Radical feminists, Republicans, and fascists abroad unite over “children’s safety” while denying trans children any of the same rights. Rights are stripped in the name of infringing on others’ rights. The Other is foreign, the Other is a threat.

there is, as my gen z boyfriend said when I moved in, a lot to unpack here.

at the outset, i’ll acknowledge that various actors on the political right have attempted to use concerns about so-called gender ideology for demagogic purposes (similar to how they’ve tried to capitalise on the backlash against so-called critical race theory).

but j.b.’s conceptualisation of the RIGHT as an alliance held together by an obsession with GENDER, engineered by the CHURCH to distract from their little pedo problem, strikes me as a laplanchian phantasy of its own. let’s call it what it is: yarvinism from the left.j.p. has pointed out that the so-called “bad writing” of j.b. and c.y. is part of a (rather successful) rhetorical strategy: intimidating and flattering the reader into believing that they are being let into an exciting, perhaps even dangerous, secret.

for a scholar of hegel, j.b. seems stubbornly blind to the dialectical manner in which public conversations around gender have (d)evolved over the last few decades. was it the jesuits who put laverne cox on the cover of time magazine in 2014? the trans rights movement, like the gay rights movement and the women’s/womyn’s/womxn’s rights movement(s) and the o.g. african-american civil rights movement, has only partly been about rights in the legal sense: it has also been about respect, and in our increasingly mediated culture, about fair representation. the internet might have increased the visibility of l.g.b.t.q. individuals, but you know what they say about familiarity…

gender theory and ACTUAL GENOCIDE

g.b. continues:

The Other becomes “ideology,” linked to genocide. Anything can be genocide these days it seems — except actual genocide. The Pope has linked “gender theory” to both Hitler and the nuclear arms race. Gender theory, the Right argues, is a form of annihilation. Instead of perceiving its own war on bodily autonomy as destructive, it is the Left’s freedom that is seen as murderous.

funny that social constructionists insist that sex is something that is assigned, but genocide is a simple matter of fact.

fwiw, i agree with j.b. that there is no such a thing as ‘biological sex’ in nature, just like there is no such a thing as a ‘gamete’, large or small. these are labels that we attach to phenomena that we perceive as occurring with a certain regularity, they are not things in themselves. but i don’t think this fact prevents us from using a word such as ‘woman’ or ‘mother’ in a general sense which does not take into account the infinite complexity of the world. language is not mathematics.

justin smith-ruiu said it best:

I’m sorry, but if human beings are alive a few centuries from now, they are not going to be identifying themselves as “ace/aro” or whatever. They probably won’t be thinking in terms of “gay” or “straight” or “cis” or “trans” either. There’s a good chance they won’t even be thinking in terms of “human” and “animal” and “machine”. Things are going to change, radically. I think almost everybody knows this, and acknowledges it at least sotto voce. But the general rule in our current elite circles is to maintain a grim face of what might be called “performative realism”, as if political justice for marginalized communities depended on our acting as if the language currently used to describe those communities tapped into fundamental reality.

w.r.t. the potential dangers of gender theory, it is not my place to speak for the pope (he already has his hands full with the frociaggine), but you don’t have to be a rightoid to have noticed that when j.b.’s theories leaked from the grad seminar room onto the internet, they sometimes got entangled with a very online hatred of this world.

for a pretty innocuous example, take the song immaterial by SOPHIE, the music producer and friend of charli xcx who died in a tragically romantic accident at the age of 34.

this song (which I adore) would make a perfect closing theme to an episode of MAJOR ARCANA (it also inspired a gen z intern at google):

immaterial girls, immaterial boys (I could be anything I want)
immaterial girls, immaterial boys (I could be anything I want)
immaterial girls (anyhow, any place)
immaterial boys (anywhere, anyone)
immaterial girls (any form, any shape)
immaterial boys (anyway, anything, anything I want)

of course the gender spectrum long predates the gnostic accelerationisn of the internet, so it is difficult to draw a straight line of causation.

straight? you’re as queer as a three-dollar bill!

oh, democracy!

g.b. turns to j.b. concern about another phantasy :

Words like “gender’ and “ideology” become dumping grounds that can mean nearly anything in the rhetoric of the Right. “Rather than warding off destruction, the anti-gender ideology movement is dedicated to making an ever-more-destructive world.”
For Butler, this signifies the erosion of democracy. They argue that the religious Right sees reading as a form of feminized submission, recalling the emergence of trad-theory and trad-wives who wish to return to simpler times. Simpler times almost always mean a time without feminism. “This attitude is part of the broader anti-intellectual trend marked by its hostility to all forms of critical thought,” Butler points out.

does the rejection of critical theory necessarily imply an anti-intellectual hostility to all forms of critical thought?

one of the most important reminders in l.a.a.w.o.l is that liberalism is not a synonym for democracy, but somewhat of an antidote. i’ve long been bugged by the conflation of the two, especially when it comes to l.g.b.t.q. rights, because i believe it obscures the true nature of the problem. the anti-queer tactics of right-wing demagogues target widespread (i.e. democratic) prejudices. countries like uganda don’t lack democracy — they lack liberalism.

which is why it bothers me when those who have the most to fear from the erosion of liberal norms insist that from the squishy shell of boring old liberalism there needs to emerge a younger, sexier, more radical version of freedom (more on this later).

worthy of exterminating

g.b. makes some bold, broad claims about t.e.r.f.s and zionists:

It isn’t coincidental that Palestine comes up in Butler’s new book, nor is coincidental that many prominent TERFs and Zionists are one and the same. Both movements use displacement and condensation to assuage their guilt, claiming the Other is the one who is truly monstrous. Both use scant mythologies to claim trans people and Palestinians are evil, worthy of exterminating. Both ignore the ethical demand of living in a pluralistic society. The Nationalist Right would like to see a heterosexual, nationalist, conservative, homogenous world.

the mother is mothering of language is all fun and cute until we lose the ability to make fine distinctions about serious matters. the less said about t.e.r.f.s the better, but I find it rather unhelpful that the contemporary use of the term zionist elides support for the idea of israel and support for specific actions carried out by the state of israel. i don’t know whether g.b. sincerely believes that a substantial portion of the t.e.r.f. and zionist ‘movements’ think ‘trans people and palestinians are evil, worthy of exterminating’, or whether this is meant as a rhetorical flourish. but what i have noticed with some pro-trans and some pro-palestine activists is a conflation between the right to exist and the right to exist as x.

[i should note that i don’t know how it feels to have part of my core identity challenged by the reactions of strangers. if someone assumes I’m straight, i’m likely to question their powers of observation, but I’m also likely to feel a little bit flattered (internalised homophobia is a hardy weed). but my inability to truly emphasise with the experience of being trans says nothing about the legitimacy of the experience.

i realise that a term such as ‘core identity’ rests on shaky ontological grounds, but I’m using it in the subjective sense of how a person makes sense of themselves. the gender critical sometimes make fun of the ‘unscientific’ concept of a ‘gendered soul’ that ‘transgender ideology’ expects us to accept. but subjective experience is by nature ‘unscientific’]

a reparative reading of the trans penis

g.b. doesn’t sound convinced, but i think this is j.b. at their most based:

There is a seance performed on the penis. Yes, curiously, Butler tries to do a reparative reading of the trans penis, arguing that it is a phantasy perceived as inherently violent even before violence has been done. “None of us were violated by an entire class, even if it sometimes feels that way.” Trauma, Butler says, is not social reality. Instead it can warp our ideas of what is really happening.

make love, not class war!

one wonders if this reparative reading extends to the cis penis as well.

probably not.

unbearable images

When something is diabolical, Butler points out, the only way to get rid of it is to burn an effigy or perform an exorcism. Trans people, particularly trans women, are unbearable images to the Right. We are uncanny — known colloquially as traps and dolls. Things. Objects. Problems. This issue is further complicated in A Short History of Transmisogyny, where Gill-Peterson points out the way white supremacy enforced these gender norms and further constructed non-white femininity as deviant. Trans feminine people like travestis are seen as too much, or as Gill-Peterson paraphrased on a recent episode of Death Panel, “the most woman.”

far from being unbearable images to the right, as j.p. has pointed out, almost every major faction of the right now has its own trans icon in caitlyn jenner, blaire white or pariah the doll (who caused quite a tiff among online right if sam kriss is to be believed).

church and state

Gender becomes a powerful enemy, even a “dictatorship,” a “lavender mafia,” or a group of “homofascists,” in some cases. But in truth, Butler points out, gender is merely a proxy for numerous “social dissatisfactions.” Instead of rallying around material issues of class, healthcare, or racism, the Church turns its citizens against a common enemy. When so many rely on the Church to fill in the gaps that austerity has left, it’s no wonder many have fallen in line.

more like a DICKtatorship, am I right, girls?

everybody knows the most powerful lavender mafia in the world is inside the vatican and as a thin white queen, I’m more likely to be called a homofascist from my left.

[not that these insinuations are entirely baseless. when i first used grindr there were plenty of profiles with no fats/no femmes/no asians signs. not anymore. now the signs say no cops/no terfs/no tories [watermelon emoji]. progress, I guess.]

it’s worth dwelling on j.b.’s (and/or g.b.’s) understanding of the relationship between church and state: apparently, in the natural order of things, everyone is amply taken care of by the benevolent state, but the wicked spirit of austerity has driven many people to become citizens of the CHURCH, which feeds them lies about them dirty queers. it’s as if, for the sake of argument, j.b. assumes that the regime change of adrian vermeule’s wet dreams has already come to pass. there’s no way ordinary citizens could develop doubts about queer theory all by themselves.

those bloody bene gesserits!

actual queens

g.b.’s main critique of j.b. is that they don’t pay enough attention to the work of young trans scholars or the emancipatory potential of (trans) femininity:

One possible way forward begins by decentering a Western notion of transness, a kind of trans politics that focuses on legibility in the eyes of the state. Instead of shrinking, trans feminine people can, in colloquial terms, become ungovernable by being the most feminine, the most woman, as Gill-Peterson phrases it when discussing travesti culture. “Feminity [sic] is the reward, here and now.” Elsewhere in A Short History of Transmisogyny, she asks “What if the trans queens of the gay world were actual queens, sovereign figures meant to lead all sorts of exiles from American culture labeled deviant?” It’s important to note that for Gill-Peterson this is not the tokenization or sacrificial artifice of utilizing Black trans women as a material, “a preface to someone else’s work, used up in memoriam.” This is about who’s actively leading the movement, not about invoking symbols. The aim is “to transform what is already here, instead of hoping one day the world will be redeemed.”

is femmemaxxing an acceptable reason to take one’s eyes off rafah?

did you notice my watermelon earrings?

if femininity is the reward, who confers it? i fully support the founding of a trans liberia where the ‘trans queens of the gay world’ can be sovereign, but writing from brexitland i can tell you: independence from the imperium comes with its own drawbacks.

you are the matrix

we can’t create a banner on our back legs

g.b. turns on the charm:

If we want to create a banner that is more seductive than the Right’s homogeneity, it can’t be one we create while on our back legs. We must move forward and play offense. The revolution must be sensual. It must be a warm, vigorous, inviting alternative that promises more, not less—not the least amount of rights we can claw back from the State.

more like right’s HOMOgeneity, am I right, girls?

was the revolution of 68 not sensual enough? what about 69? did the sexual revolution fail? or was it an unfortunate success? if the right’s nostalgia for an imagined past serves as a romantic mist obscuring the ACTUAL GENOCIDE that accompanied the rise of the WEST, does the left’s pink utopianism (since we’re mixing metaphors) not serve to obscure the empirical results of its various experiments in living?

to choose your neighbours is genocide

g.b. ends on sombre note:

No one gets to choose their neighbors, as Butler discusses in Parting Ways, to do so is genocide. Yet too many are attempting to do this right now both in America and Israel. In February, Aaron Bushnell self-immolated in protest against the Zionist war machine. Many have considered what it means to self-sacrifice in the name of making life more livable for others. Tenzin Paldron recognizes the “virtue and remaking of suffering” in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of resistance through flames. Erik Baker calls the legacy of immolation “a challenge to the rest of us to prove with our own freedom that there are other ways to meaningfully resist a society whose cruelty has become intolerable.” This is the gauntlet. To make the world more sustainable for all. We must create a world where all are free to live and settler-colonialism has no place. Cohabitation is not merely humanism, but the very basis of the ethical demand of the other.

unlike my sister m.j.e., you can’t mistake me for a cultural christian. there are a few elements of our abrahamic traditions that i would love to see repaganised.

enough with the martyrs!

i would also like to note my dissent from m.j.e’s ad feminem characterisation of our beloved simone weil as ‘the patron saint of the twink who stopped taking his h.i.v. meds in protest against the war in gaza.’

slander!

in her notebooks, weil wrote that non-violence is only good when it is effective, that one must avoid both suicide and murder and that it is permissible to go to war if you, while wanting to live, are ready to die at the same time as the enemy.

‘the ethical demand of the other’ sounds like slave morality to me

quant à moi, je préfère lacan