academic queer theory has been a catastrophe for trans people, our allies dont know how to coherently defend us even when they want to, everything is immaterial HR training modules. validity as a substitute for rights
But Butler has refused to engage in fair public debate with trans scholars that critique them and they have used their position in academia to keep all trans theory unmoored from material economic realities
Idk I feel like ppl make it harder than it needs to be w/ post structuralism. After a deconstruction. Why can’t we have a bunch of reconstructions? Near the end of Gender Trouble Butler talks abt a way of circumventing gender is creating numerous genders, which some trans ppl have already done.
I don’t think academia is bad I think some ppl are too overly focused on binaries and not enough focused on what it means to actually disengage with them. I’ve had plenty of profs talk abt not feeding into binaries and how “reversing” them doesn’t liberate ppl but reinforces power and oppression.
its giving emilia perez over tv glow. its giving pronouns in bio and nowhere else. everyone wants to wear the flag until the moment youre asked to consider stepping into our shoes
i was just thinking that. even if i somehow ended up adamantly disagreeing with *everything* in the book (very unlikely lmao) it’ll still be one of the best purchases i’ve made in ages
Admittedly as a person too poor to go to college and learning most of what I know from Wikipedia and Youtube, as well as being friends with a bunch of trans people, how has academia failed us non-cis people in a way that I could explain to a layperson?
In humanities academia, there is pressure for all scholars to coin a neologism and write something that is not connected to material conditions so it can be taught in philosophy and literary criticism classes! Trans social science is smaller and is mostly liberal policy nonsense.
Some of the problem is nonprofit industrial capitalists capturing the language of social movements and turning it into individualist navel-gazing and social media trans theory like “gender accelerationism” has the same issue of becoming individual navel gazing
It’s partially just the usual cooptation of the aesthetic without challenging power relations that also happened with critical race theory.
Academics are definitely stuck in symbols more often than they should be, but part of the problem is also just how easily ideas are defanged and coopted.
I'm not even saying it was good btw. It was kinda bioessentialist (he knew btw just thought it strategic). But it didn't pre-excise trans people from the gays, like most of ours do now.
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we *need* to be speaking for us
Yet… the moment she’s displeased she talks down to me.
Stand up for myself and tell her it’s unacceptable.
Threatens to kick me out saying I should be grateful.
Our humanity is a privilege.
Academics are definitely stuck in symbols more often than they should be, but part of the problem is also just how easily ideas are defanged and coopted.
Like nothing was inverted people are just like that