Transfeminine Rat

Like sure, I think Butler the person is probably very nice, and has probably accepted many of the criticisms of their work in the last 36 years, but Butler the academic is the type of Liberal cisfeminist who talks around trans issues purely for the liberation of (cis) women without advancing a kind of transfeminist politics which is actually for the most oppressed, which is actually radical, or even which meaningfully challenges transphobic and misogynistic violence.

Their seminal work, gender trouble, never actually talks about transgender people. Ever. in a book about gender. How do you even do that. (yes, I understand it was the 90s.)

The social constructivist framework which was produced as a result, where gender is reduced to performance (in the performative statement sense) is incapable of understanding gender as a goal, as telos, nor even gender as a biopolitical force of categorization and ordering of bodies. It's completely toothless analytically. Their framework advances a totally impotent notion of gender "abolition" which ignores the very real material functions and bodily nature of gender in modern society.

And yet they saw widespread acclaim from the entire Liberal cisfeminist movement, and even trans people saw their work positively, despite it's exclusion of us, and complete inability to actually understand our experiences or our oppression.

Academics have since realized this, and begun to correct for it. The fact that we haven't is an indictment on the state of the "queer community".