I will not go into specifics because I’m only tangentially connected with the situation and I don’t know all the details and wouldn’t tell you if I did, but something to do with Judith Butler is coming up soon, and basically — as always with the gender-identity movement — there is no organized counter-argument. Part of the problem is no one’s got the time to sit down and write any sort of coherent response to the claims she makes in her works. Part of the problem is… well… it’s Judith Butler. J.K. Rowling famously described the reading of Butler’s works as being akin to wading through concrete (I forget her exact phrasing). She’s not wrong. I’ve tried it. I was reliably informed in my adolescence that I have good reading-comprehension skills, and Butler is still painful and mostly incomprehensible. At least if I don’t have a dictionary immediately to hand. But my impression thus far is that Judith Butler amuses herself by trying too hard to sound clever and overcomplicating everything.
My source about the impending Butler event lamented the lack of material to point people to in order to give them both sides of the story. No one she knows has the time to put it together. I thought, well, I’m between jobs at the moment and I’m a pretty fast typist and I wonder if I can come up with something. I make no promises, but this is something I would like to do. Call it my little contribution to a larger movement back towards sanity.
I don’t know how much material I will put here or if I will continue this effort past the Butler event. I suppose it’ll depend on how much this wrings out my brain or what else comes up in my life and commands my attention. But unless there’s some compelling reason to delete this Substack, I will leave it up as a reference for others.
I don’t have any bona fides. I completed one quarter of community college and everything else past high school has been me educating myself. However, Butler adequately demonstrates what happens when one is too educated. I would like to see us aim for a happy medium. So if you disagree with my arguments here or find them lacking, you are more than welcome to write your own material and demonstrate your superior intellect. At least it might be more readable than Butler’s is.