This is (as I've come to expect from your blog) a very concise and insightful essay that's got me thinking a lot. So thank you
I had heard the idea that Margaret Atwood had said something "TERF-y" thrown around on some of the very few parts of the internet I still frequent, and didn't pay it any attention until I read this essay (note: I…
This is (as I've come to expect from your blog) a very concise and insightful essay that's got me thinking a lot. So thank you
I had heard the idea that Margaret Atwood had said something "TERF-y" thrown around on some of the very few parts of the internet I still frequent, and didn't pay it any attention until I read this essay (note: I still have never met an actual "TERF" in real life). It really helped to actually go and read both articles that Atwood posted and see how unambiguously inoffensive they both were. It is striking that these ridiculous campaigns get picked up by major news sources now; it's no longer just a small fringe of people who freak out about things on the internet. Which I find extremely concerning, for a whole bunch of reasons.
But here's what your article left me with most of all, in regards to what Butler is putting forward. I'll frame it as a question; does the capitalist class/predator class/dominator class have an interest in promoting a very specific brand of hyper-poststructural gender ideology because they think human bodies are legacy systems? As something that is no longer profitable, that is "out-of-date" with comparison to a world where more and more parts of our selves are "online" (and therefore surveilled), as less and less of our experience is direct, immediate, and open to the aliveness of the cosmos?
"...does the capitalist class/predator class/dominator class have an interest in promoting a very specific brand of hyper-poststructural gender ideology because they think human bodies are legacy systems?"
I wondered the exact same thing. At first glance, I wouldn't see why woke idealogy and 'gender' in particular would interest them. But perhaps there is something to what you said... Silvia Federici writes that bodies present hard limits to capitalist exploitation which capitalists were never quite able to get around. Not that I think 'gendering' is going to actually work in that way, but maybe this is their latest attempt to somehow get around the reality of the body?
I'm a yoga teacher, so the way I see it (and I think Rhyd would agree with me) is that if they can get us to dismiss physical reality, we will be completely ungrounded, and we will then be easy to manipulate. And since we access physical reality through our bodies, if they can get us to think that our physicality should have no bearing on how we feel, then there will be nothing they can't implant in our minds.
This is (as I've come to expect from your blog) a very concise and insightful essay that's got me thinking a lot. So thank you
I had heard the idea that Margaret Atwood had said something "TERF-y" thrown around on some of the very few parts of the internet I still frequent, and didn't pay it any attention until I read this essay (note: I still have never met an actual "TERF" in real life). It really helped to actually go and read both articles that Atwood posted and see how unambiguously inoffensive they both were. It is striking that these ridiculous campaigns get picked up by major news sources now; it's no longer just a small fringe of people who freak out about things on the internet. Which I find extremely concerning, for a whole bunch of reasons.
But here's what your article left me with most of all, in regards to what Butler is putting forward. I'll frame it as a question; does the capitalist class/predator class/dominator class have an interest in promoting a very specific brand of hyper-poststructural gender ideology because they think human bodies are legacy systems? As something that is no longer profitable, that is "out-of-date" with comparison to a world where more and more parts of our selves are "online" (and therefore surveilled), as less and less of our experience is direct, immediate, and open to the aliveness of the cosmos?
"...does the capitalist class/predator class/dominator class have an interest in promoting a very specific brand of hyper-poststructural gender ideology because they think human bodies are legacy systems?"
I wondered the exact same thing. At first glance, I wouldn't see why woke idealogy and 'gender' in particular would interest them. But perhaps there is something to what you said... Silvia Federici writes that bodies present hard limits to capitalist exploitation which capitalists were never quite able to get around. Not that I think 'gendering' is going to actually work in that way, but maybe this is their latest attempt to somehow get around the reality of the body?
I'm a yoga teacher, so the way I see it (and I think Rhyd would agree with me) is that if they can get us to dismiss physical reality, we will be completely ungrounded, and we will then be easy to manipulate. And since we access physical reality through our bodies, if they can get us to think that our physicality should have no bearing on how we feel, then there will be nothing they can't implant in our minds.