but hes right about a lot of things. kind of sad that this 72 year old is one of the most influential intellectual on the left today

edit: I think this post was taken in the wrong way. You should read Zizek, he does have good ideas. I call him a "grifter" not to shut down his ideas, but rather as an acknowledgement of his limitations.

  • geikei [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Here is him on his own words about the subject. Goes of tangets and does some obtuse philosophy as he often does

    https://zizek.uk/a-reply-to-my-critics-re-the-sexual-is-political/

    First claim: “all Zizek is saying is that opposition to transgender people represents an anxiety which in his theory occurs because of sexual difference; i.e. transgender people disrupt the binaries we construct in order to place ourselves into discrete genders…” No, I’m not saying that at all: I don’t talk about the anxiety experienced by heterosexuals when they confront transgender people. My starting point is the anxiety transgender people themselves experience when they confront a forced choice where they don’t recognize themselves in any of its exclusive terms (“man,” “woman”). And then I generalize this anxiety as a feature of every sexual identification. It is not transgender people who disrupt the heterosexual gender binaries; these binaries are always-already disrupted by the antagonistic nature of sexual difference itself. This is the basic distinction on which I repeatedly insist and which is ignored by my critics: in the human-symbolic universe, sexual difference/antagonism is not he same as the difference of gender roles. Transgender people are not traumatic for heterosexuals because they pose a threat to the established binary of gender roles but because they bring out the antagonistic tension which is constitutive of sexuality. In short, transgender people are not simply marginals who disturb the hegemonic heterosexual gender norm; their message is universal, it concerns us all, they bring out the anxiety that underlies every sexual identification, its constructed/unstable character. This, of course, does not entail a cheap generalization which would cut the edge of the suffering of transgender people (“we all have anxieties and suffer in some way”); it is in transgender people that anxiety and antagonism, which otherwise remain mostly latent, break open. So, in the same way in which, for Marx, if one wants to understand the “normal” functioning of capitalism, one should take as a starting point economic crises, if one wants to analyze “normal” heterosexuality, one should begin with the anxieties that explode in transgender people.

    My identification as “man” or “woman” is always a secondary reaction to the “castrative” anxiety of what I am. One—traditional—way to avoid this anxiety is to impose a heterosexual norm, which specifies the role of each gender, and the other is to advocate the overcoming of sexuality as such (the postgender position). As for the relationship between transgender and postgender, my point is simply that the universal fluidification of sexual identities unavoidably reaches its apogee in the cancellation of sex as such. In the same way as, for Marx, the only way to be a royalist in general is to be a republican, the only way to be sexualized in general is to be asexual. This ambiguity characterizes the conjunction of sexuality and freedom throughout the twentieth century: the more radical attempts to liberate sexuality get, the more they approximate their self-overcoming and turn into attempts to enact a liberation from sexuality

    To recapitulate, not only do I fully support the struggle of transgender people against their legal segregation, but I am also deeply affected by their reports of their suffering, and I see them not as a marginal group, which should be “tolerated” but as a group whose message is radically universal: it concerns us all; it tells the truth about all of us as sexual beings. I differ from the predominant opinion in two interconnected points that concern theory: (1) I see the anxiety apropos sexual identities as a universal feature of human sexuality, not just as a specific effect of sexual exclusions and segregations, which is why one should not expect it to disappear with the progress of sexual desegregation; (2) I draw a strict distinction between sexual difference (as the antagonism constitutive of human sexuality) and the binary (or plurality) of genders. Both these points are, of course, totally misread or ignored by my critics.

      • AMWB [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I'm sorry what part of that makes you think he "hates" NBs?

          • AMWB [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Yeah I had to go back and read that line again. I like Zizek a lot but he could also be a cis philosopher that doesn't understand trans identity and if his Lacanian psychoanalytic terminology hurts more than helps, just throw it in the trash. I tied that back to his previous line about Marx:

            So, in the same way in which, for Marx, if one wants to understand the “normal” functioning of capitalism, one should take as a starting point economic crises, if one wants to analyze “normal” heterosexuality, one should begin with the anxieties that explode in transgender people.

            Bourgeoisie economists thought of capitalism as functioning normally during the "boom", but they thought of the sock market "bust" as an aberration, unrelated to the normal functioning of capitalism. In fact, the boom and bust are two sides of the same coin. During the boom, profits are soaring because capitalists think they can make more and more money with worse and worse investments until the snap back to reality. Marx was the first to show that the crash was also a constitutive part of capitalism. If you want to understand a system fully, you also have to understand the exceptions to the rules. To return to the matter at hand, when we talk about the way that our society fails trans people, it reveals the way that our way of thinking about sexuality as a whole is a failure, but it is easier to ignore that in heteronormative culture. It only becomes apparent at the point of crisis.

            my point is simply that the universal fluidification of sexual identities unavoidably reaches its apogee in the cancellation of sex as such. In the same way as, for Marx, the only way to be a royalist in general is to be a republican, the only way to be sexualized in general is to be asexual.

            The Marx reference is, I believe, a reference to the 18th Brumaire. Monarchists (who opposed voting and elections) turned out and voted for Napoleon III (to overthrow democracy). If they were true believers in monarchy, they would not have voted, and Napoleon wouldn't have won. Zizek is always interested in these sorts of contradictions. Young adults today are given more "permission" from society to engage in sexual freedom than any other time in history, but they are having less sex than their parents. He sees an anxiety that cannot be put it into words.

            Zizek is adamant that sexual anxiety is never going away, and that it will always be used as cannon fodder for the reactionaries. Part of the reason sexual anxiety will never go away is because sexual desire comes from the pre-linguistic, lizard part of your brain and so it can't be expressed in definitions, language, or binaries like male and female. We cannot understand our sexuality. All attempts to understand it are pathological. It is pathological for conservatives who project their sexual anxieties on trans people. Unfortunately, it is also pathological for leftists who want to help as well.

            We should do everything in our power to help our trans comrades, but in 15 years there will be another crisis of sexual anxiety. That's my take at least.

              • AMWB [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Maybe? I think his point more than sexual anxiety and sexual fantasy are two sides of the same coin and you can't have one without the other so you should learn to live with both. I think he is accusing post-gender theorists of heading down that path. But I haven't read enough gender critical theory to say (or volcel thought lol).