Late to the take-party as always. But, two things to point out about Butler's magisterial replies here: 1) trans people have been saying these same things for years yet, sadly, we still need a Judith Butler to say them to outlets like the NS... (Thread>) newstatesman.com/international/…
and 2) Ferber's interview makes clear how deeply TERFism has intellectually impoverished the mainstream media discussion of feminism in the UK (and, to a nontrivial degree, elsewhere too).
Look at how narrow the terms of discussion are. The same two TERF talking points and JKR.
Ferber's sad questions reveal a feminism stripped of any intellectual content or moral horizon beyond the comments on JK Rowling's tweets.
Butler's replies are, make no mistake, excellent, eloquent, and worth quoting but she was also hitting home runs off a tee. The TERF talking point that "feminists" and "trans activists" are irreconcilable opposites, are completely different groups, is an obvious lie for instance.
But it's an obvious lie that nevertheless commands miles worth of column inches, particularly in the British media, which has reduced nearly all discussion of feminism to a carnivalesque referendum on whether trans women are a threat because we need to pee.
This fatal narrowing of horizons has been obvious for a long time but Alona Ferber's interview makes it plain; it's as if she didn't know what else to ask, how else to phrase these things. The alpha is the bathroom predator myth, the omega is JKR's Twitter.
And while I am grateful for Judith Butler, I lament that someone of her intellectual stature is *reduced* to having to answer these insipid questions, and that we're all supposed to pretend they exhaust the issue of trans civil rights or trans feminism.
To no one's great surprise, a group of reactionaries who claim to support free expression have actually narrowed it to the point of suffocation. TERFs have eroded centuries of feminist work into a few memeable talking points repeated by pliable British hacks.
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Since I'm taking a break from my Twitter holiday and have therefore already made bad choices let's have a brief chat about the current drama.
Yes, Avery Edison had a take about Everything, Everywhere so nuclear that it is subject to a SALT treaty. No, she doesn't deserve threats
One of the many, many, *many* problems with this platform is that it has no discursive brake lines. And dogpiles, even deserved ones, quickly degenerate into threats of violence and assorted bits of cruelty that vastly exceed whatever transgression they're meant to punish.
She had a really bad take that was like white lefty mad libs, sure. And this kind of nonsense happens a *lot* with movies or other media that centre POC. There's a rich discussion to be had about this. It merits criticism.
Musk's capricious and idiosyncratic approach to content moderation is exactly the sort of thing that cries out for transparency. But we won't get it without a raft of lawsuits or leaks. Leaks which Musk has already threatened his staff over.
Anyone who seriously argues that Musk is committed to transparency or "disinfecting sunlight" is speaking in bad faith. We shouldn't be mincing words at this point.
I'm not going to lie: I don't know what's going to happen next. While an indefinite shutdown of Twitter feels inconceivable... we're in pretty uncharted territory here.
I can't think of another instance where a platform *this huge* suffered such a catastrophic loss of talent all at once, including the people charged with literally keeping the lights on.
Nor one where such catastrophic mismanagement slammed the ship into every iceberg at once.
But it's hard to imagine Twitter emerging unscathed from all this. Outages are likely. How long will they last? Who can say? Catastrophic data loss? It might be in the cards. Dark possibilities abound.
What's most hilarious here is the huffing of Musk's fans in the comments whenever anyone replies "what about free speech?"
Suddenly they're *very* earnest about how free speech has limits and there may even be... *gasp* "harm" involved? All sorts of new words they're learning!
Really, the mass impersonation of Musk by verified accounts was a magnificent satirical art project that achieved its purpose: demonstrating Musk's hypocrisy, the impossibility of speech absolutism, *and* the utter foolishness of the Twitter Blue revamp.
Making Musk beet red and mad on his own website is hilarious, and yet, like all good satire, emphasises a more serious point:
With the utmost respect to Dr. Flowers, I can't agree with this admittedly rousing and cinematic call for us to donate our energies and our eyeballs to offsetting Musk's losses (because, realistically, that's nearly all our presence here will do, when all's said and done.)
Once the takeover looked like a real possibility I vowed to use this site way less--and probably quit it entirely. Hence why I've been uncharacteristically quiet on here.
But I thought I should explain my reasoning a bit as I begin to pack up here.
First and foremost, the "Stay and Fight" approach is futile when what's being sold to advertisers and investors is your very presence.
What you say (mostly) doesn't matter, only that you're here saying it and viewing the scroll. Social media is indifferent to your intent.
Secondly, if you have any power or influence in the physical world, however minor, you are a value-add to this platform, making it more attractive to users and advertisers alike. That helps Musk's bottom line. wired.com/story/twitter-…