Slavoj Žižek: The Sexual Is Political

lol this will make /r/socialism have a fit

Sounds like Michéa.

he sounds like an outright reactionary here. "if we have gay marriage, people can multiple marry and we can't have that can we ;_;"

nothing

Ayy: reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/4vup5q/marxist_slavoj_zizek_writes_offensive_poorly/

based wordfilter

so much ideology

All this shows me is that Zizek has no clue about the nature of gender dysphoria and its psychological implications.

Shit article tbh

BASED ZIZEK

KeK xD

That wacky Ziz has done it again.

so that isn't gender dysphoria

Actually, the thread comments are surprisingly even handed. Most of the comments point out quite rightly that the article is sloppy and meant to provoke, and the only real source of supercilious butthurt is from OP, who is naturally a faggot.

This deadlock of classification is clearly discernible in the need to expand the formula: the basic LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) becomes LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual) or even LGBTQQIAAP (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Allies, Pansexual). To resolve the problem, one often simply adds a + which serves to include all other communities associated with the LGBT community, as in LGBT+. This, however, raises the question: is + just a stand-in for missing positions like “and others,” or can one be directly a +? The properly dialectical answer is “yes,” because in a series there is always one exceptional element which clearly does not belong to it and thereby gives body to +. It can be “allies” (“honest” non-LGBT individuals), “asexuals” (negating the entire field of sexuality) or “questioning” (floating around, unable to adopt a determinate position).

Should we not do the same with toilets? Since no classification can satisfy all identities, should we not add to the two usual gender slots (MEN, WOMEN) a door for GENERAL GENDER? Is this not the only way to inscribe into an order of symbolic differences its constitutive antagonism? Lacan already pointed out that the “formula” of the sexual relationship as impossible/real is 1+1+a, i.e., the two sexes plus the “bone in the throat” that prevents its translation into a symbolic difference. This third element does not stand for what is excluded from the domain of difference; it stands, instead, for (the real of) difference as such.

"Tim Cook can easily forget about hundreds of thousands of Foxconn workers in China assembling Apple products in slave conditions; he made his big gesture of solidarity with the underprivileged, demanding the abolition of gender segregation… As is often the case, big business stands proudly united with politically correct theory."

I WANT TO FAP TO THIS!

zizek totally hates transgender people, it's dripping off of every word

"I don't want to be free, I just want a different kind of chains, the ones I chose".

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AKA Neoliberalism.

"You are not part of the Reserve army of labor, you are NEETs".

I sincerely don't understand why Zizek writes like this. He must realize that using sexual identities to describe economic relationships is not actually useful or intuitive. Like the distinction between the gay and lesbian position is entirely arbitrary.

just fyi

I think he does it precisely because it is unintuitive, or at least that's what I like about his analogies.

Not at all. Exploitation between between dominant class (capitalist) = homosexuality between dominant sex (male)

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Or he just knows the proper materialist theory of subjectivity (psychoanalysis that is) and doesn't care for the bullshit produced by the contemporary academia and being espoused by the 'progressive' liberals.

aren't I cucking you technically by taking one extra off the market or something retarded like that?

Of course they don't understand what Zizek is actually saying, just that he isn't saying what they want to hear, which means he isn't just wrong, but insulting.

More spooks than a Coney Island fun-house.

I think leftypol is the only place on the internet who takes Zizek this seriously.

Sloppy article, but a lot of good bits. My favorite part:

If Zizek is the only person in "academia" you're willing to listen to, while moaning about how biased academia is, you probably shouldn't be posting here.

Yeah, I did a double take when I read it at first, almost stopped reading it. Glad at I continued.

But the conservative position is that of a moralistic slippery slope, whereas Zizek is trying to make a point that whatever line we draw in this area would be completely arbitrary

If the only thing you do is whining about how shit every single person on this board is, you shouldn't post here.

Go change your mooncup, retard.

You call me a retard and yet you're taking Zizek this seriously and combing everything he says with a fine comb for meaning.

B-but… leftypol = Zizekian fandom, oh new harbinger of what leftypol should be, that noone asked for.

I think you underestimate how many people here accept stuff besides Zizek, because the Zizek crowd is loud and has memes.

Make a thread on an article you want to discuss and I'll read it if I see it. What's wrong with people discussing an article from a writer they particularly enjoy?

You're right, we should've shitposted about it right out of the gate.

Sorry Qweeeeeeeen

So Zizek's entire point is "let's not focus on other issues related to identity, I am not at all afflicted with anything related to identity, everyone in collectivism has ADHD and can't focus on multiple topics on once", according to leftypol. Which honestly doesn't sound too far off from what Zizek would joke about.

I haven't even read the article yet. I like Zizek. I don't obsess over him.

My point is that you're obviously so fucking butthurt about anyone providing even a principled, Left-wing criticism of queer theory that you need to hang around leftypol all day complaining about almost every other poster here.

I think you could be using your time better, like idk shilling for capitalists with vaginas or smearing menstrual blood all over yourself as a performance art piece.

...

Zizek is not in academia. Academia is not biased, it is retarded.

"If anything, most of the idiots that I know are academics. That's why I don't have any interest in communicating too much with academics." — le slovenian philosophy man

Most academics don't sell the rights of their joke documentary to Netflix, so I suppose they are different.

capitalists selling the rope, and whatnot.

Probably mainly because academics get paid to dick around, while zizek doesnt get paid by universities.

I wonder why

Because he is not in academia.

Idiot.

We're officially approaching Holla Forums-levels of asspain here, lmao

I was making a joke about how sloppy Zizek is in argumentation that wouldn't hold up under scrutiny, and actually proving the meat of what he's saying; but sure, people in universities are the ruling body over if people are worthy or not.

FEMINIST LOGIC!

Not really. I don't find what Zizek is saying here entirely convincing. He's saying that leftism should focus more on the material aspects of itself and disregard issues of identity, which is right up leftypol's ally. However, he doesn't bring up the material problems identities have, working on the idea that all people are created equal in the same contexts and places. A rich woman in America should have the same right to shut up as a woman sweatshop laborer somewhere in South America, or a mother of a tribe being harassed by the Brazilian government. It goes on and on.

What Zizek is essentially saying is leftism cannot focus on issues of identity because leftism, or people, are too incompetent to handle multiple topics at once. Or these things will magically stop if we just somehow focus entirely on his specific Netflix brand of collectivism.

Yes, they will, pretty much, that's all, next question.

Wut?

tbh this just seems like total nonsense. I hate it when theorists talk about gender and race and shit in such lofty terms.

Everything is fixed. Thank you comrade Zizek, please release another documentary on Netflix :)

Hope he does. I'll be happy to download it or illegaly stream it.

If only he played vidya and made the pervert's guide we never completed.

not taking sides in this particular issue, but some posters here really show an attitude of a Holla Forumsyp who just recently traded "jew" for "porky"

shit like this just proves that irrelevant shiting producing the worst offspring
happas are insane

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I take the lolbert stance on this one.
Marriage is a religious institution, not a political or judicial one.
Inheritance rights should be determined by a Will alone and family ties should be disregarded completely, giving a man's wealth to the brother, children or cousin he either hates or doesn't know is an outdated notion, requiring a sexual or a romantic relationship to direct property is nonsensical.
We need to end Bourgeois marriage, since it is hurting the family by forcing people who don't love each other to get married.
Also adoption shouldn't be restricted to couples since women can already easily get a child of their own without the commitment of any male, the opposite is only fair, pedos are already able to adopt by getting married.
In short:
BRING MARRIAGE BACK TO THE CHURCH

This is as stupid as the concept of cultural Marxism. Conspiratards, please.

Except Capitalism is the world's current mode of production while Marxism is a dying heterodox school of philosophy.

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stemfag pls

I've argued with people on /r/socialism about this before. It seems they cant into academic language or flexible language of any kind and insist on using "transness" instead.
They even deleted the comment chain in that argument. Somehow I remain non-banned, we'll have to see how long that lasts.

It's not even about STEMfags. I was in linguistics, so am not STEM, but the problem is modern western academia, especialy in countries where higher education is not public, has become the soviet Nomenklatura. A class of intelectuals that create "problems" only so that they can keep the status quo intact while they remain in their places, even if they are no longer needed.

Again, my perfect example is the overseer of Fallout 1.

Am trans, and I think this article is spot on, brilliant even, especially in regards to the kinds of sexual antagonisms that establishment discourse likes to inflate. Also, to the people who think this article is indicative of transphobia or hatred of transpeople, Žižek says elsewhere, in a lecture, that his problem isn't with them but with their academic guardians who make them their innocent sweethearts; it's utterly revolting and shows just how patronizing the PC crowd hopes to be. Even the last paragraph is telling of how the transgendered phenomenology fits within his Lacanian framework.

C'mon Yui. Zizek, and even Bauman, have used this term to define the so called "late stage capitalism" that we live currently.

I didn't say humanities are retarded as such.

Žižek doesn't like the term late capitalism, because for him capitalism is already late from its beginning. He has a joke about it that goes like "Marx was saying capitalism is rotting. As a matter of fact, the first guys saying capitalism was rotting was the British romantics! Then Lenin said imperialism is the final stage, rotting capitalism. Then Mao said American imperialism in 1950s got so absolutely rotten, you know, like… yeah, but unfortunately the more it is rotting the better it is doing, and so on."

fantastic article, not only is the content top-notch, but the tone and voice as genuine and comforting, while his other work can often take a brash and indifferent tone which can be mistaken for bigotry. Zizek will be remembered for centuries to come.

Ayy, gooberghazi on the job now as well: reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/4vxmfk/philosopher_slavoj_zizek_knows_next_to_nothing/
It's…just…I'm just gesturing at my screen. He wrote this and he knows so little. There are people with knowledge and a background in this having a discussion and he just runs over with his dick hanging out screaming 'I HAVE A THING TO SAY! I HAVE A THING TO SAY!' This isn't even 'oh, you haven't read enough' (which is valid here, reading is part of his feckin' job!), this is '…you aren't even making an attempt to listen.'

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Lets raid that pathetic shithole

I-I just want to fit in

It's not all bad, r/socialism is a liberal hellhole but the retards in that thread seem to be getting btfo

wew lad
next you'll say universities are liberal indoctrination machines
So close to being conservatard

We obviously need to be posting there. The problem is some people that are very obviously from here post and discredit anyone similar by using the 4chan tone of discourse on reddit.
When posting there you need to use a more sterilised tone, and censor yourself from using anything that constitutes a slur; or the mods will outright delete your post and ban-warn you. They tend to take offense especially to bitch and cunt too for some reason despite them being mostly non-gendered in my dialect.

I read those comments and I feel I am on another lefty-planet. Maybe I am not their comrade.

I just don't understand where they are coming from.

They come from a position of probably previously being a full-blown liberal with certain hangups still present from then.
While some of them are so far in idpol it would be hard to pull them out of ideology; I try to be sympathetic to some of it as they may just be people used to having their identity attacked by the alt-right crowd.

zizek pls, there's no time, i need to piss

I do think Zizek has identified the difficulty and limitations of LGBT+ politics in that, much like conventional politics towards class, they are circling a material, binary divide and doing everything to pretend they are not.

Running with what Zizek wrote, if we think of proletarian and bourgeois as P/B they are not classes, they are castes: there is no movement between them and they are rigid, distinct categories; however, if we think of them as PB+, then we see the tension, with the "+" representing complications like the petit bourgeoisie, the lumpen proletariat, or perhaps the precariat. Also, there is obviously movement between classes, with either being able to ascend or descend depending on various factors and changes. And it is these complicating factors which make class tension obvious and immediate.

This also concerns the left and the right. The latter desires clear and stable hierarchies of class and sex; the former sees the complicating factors and argues endlessly over how best to overcome them. A lot of people around here make gestures towards the abolition of gender, just as many talk about the negation of capitalism. Zizek is right to emphasize the link between the two, if, in his usual indirect fashion, suggesting that the latter is the essential starting point for either of these fantasies to be realized.

It seems like Zizek is saying that trying to solve the problems of lgbt+ is a fool's errand because between the points of "man" on one side and "woman" on the other you have what is essentially an infinite number of possible "genders" which could never hope to be specifically satisfied in any material way, so the only way to really deal with the "problem" is to attack the source.

By analogy, if you apply that logic to the dichotomy of prole and bourgeois, you have potentially infinite degrees of material relation between either pole and so once again the only hope of effecting any sort of meaningful change would be to erase the dichotomy that creates the circumstances to begin with.

So, the only solution for the "gender problem" is to eliminate the status of gender, and for the "class problem" the elimination of class, and for both the only answer is to alter the material circumstances which give rise to both: capitalism.

>reddit.com/r/transgendercirclejerk/comments/4w0pzx/thank_god_an_aging_white_man_and_professional/

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He's not, but good bait anyway purpleflag.

I want to kill myself lmao

>Marx was a hack who couldn't even anti-authoritarian right
JUST

Inclined to agree, though:

Was relatable to me tbh.
Waiting for all my libtard groups to go mental over this article.

I'm guessing it's because psychoanalysis solidly asserts that the individual does not exist.

Except conservatards are literally just conservative liberals, so yeah.

Psychiatry and modern psychology are largely consumerist disciplines and bourgeois by nature ("suffering from the alienation of capitalism? take this pill!"). youtube.com/watch?v=vtfBl79hs-M

Most trans people come out into the trans community first. That community is full to the hilt of tumblr. The vast majority of trans people then leave the "trans support groups" because they don't care much for these fucks.
I got ostracised from the groups at my uni for telling them they were making mountains out of molehills and prioritising everyone giving them a hug to feel better over sorting their shit out.

These fucking libs turn the "the trans experience" into a state of existence which lasts indefinitely, rather than something which is to be worked through efficiently, before not being an issue anymore. They're like rabbits in the headlights.

Oh and all this shit about "vigils" and days of remembrance is just normalising suicide and serves the edgelord trans sec in the local LGBT association who would otherwise be standing on a high ledge, knife to wrist, listening to my chemical romance and crying, waiting for people to realise that pain is worse when its them feeling it.

God I hate the fucking lot of them.
/trans/ btw

Holla Forumsack here, always know Zizek is on our side, fampai.

But he isn't. He hates your ilk too.

Being something and having something that the opposite sex does not also implies that both male and female are both uniquely equipped to appreciate each other, with all the variances of gender on top of that. It's not all doom and gloom.

He isn't, though. youtu.be/XoOD57-T6O0?t=1h23m47s

Maybe in the US, where I live there is a significant pushback to overmedication.
There isn't a single psychiatrist I know whose primary treatment consists of simply prescribing drugs for depression.

If you think doctors aren't thought the social aspects of the psyche, you're dead wrong. We had an entire module last semester on the effects of endemic poverty on mental health, and it didn't fucking conclude in 'just prescribe SSRI's'.
So yeah, nah