fucktheory: Bad Faith The idea that having a penis obligates me to a certain kind of professional courtesy to women but not to men is sexism, pure and simple. If I refer to Lacan as “that old bastard” rather than “’dr.’ or even ‘professor’” it would never occur to anyone that my disdain is motivated by Lacan’s gender. To assume that my disdain for a female academic is automatically thus motivated is to assume that I couldn’t possibly be annoyed or offended by the content of what Ms. Puar is saying; in other words, to dismiss her work on the basis of her sex. Furthermore, the assumption in question is made on the basis of my gender. In short, this response is doubly sexist, which by a quick finger count is roughly twice as sexist as the “bad faith” supposedly under critique. Sometimes, Dolores, being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on to. Even if that woman is a dude. The way that I read mewmewfoucault’s comment, the reference to you as “dude” referred less to your junk than it did to the general aura of dudeliness and really, masculinism, that seem to come across through your rhetorical posture, habits of language, etc. Your response here is a case in point. And I say that knowing nothing more about your gender than what you’ve posted here. But if you read MMF’s use of “dude” simultaneously as reference to your junk and threat to your “avowed” feminist credentials, well, that’s an interesting—complex—identification you’ve got going on there as well. Are we to read one as an extension of the other? If I refer to Lacan as “that old bastard” rather than “’dr.’ or even ‘professor’” it would never occur to anyone that my disdain is motivated by Lacan’s gender. I don’t know if your motivation is on trial here. I think your actions are being questioned. Turning that into a question of motivations may—I’m saying may, not is, because I want to mark my uncertainty—be a distraction. Or, for that matter, a way for you to settle the matter in advance in favor of your own demonstrated mastery of psychoanalysis.

Bad Faith

The idea that having a penis obligates me to a certain kind of professional courtesy to women but not to men is sexism, pure and simple.

If I refer to Lacan as “that old bastard” rather than “’dr.’ or even ‘professor’” it would never occur to anyone that my disdain is motivated by Lacan’s gender. To assume that my disdain for a female academic is automatically thus motivated is to assume that I couldn’t possibly be annoyed or offended by the content of what Ms. Puar is saying; in other words, to dismiss her work on the basis of her sex. Furthermore, the assumption in question is made on the basis of my gender. In short, this response is doubly sexist, which by a quick finger count is roughly twice as sexist as the “bad faith” supposedly under critique.

Sometimes, Dolores, being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on to. Even if that woman is a dude.

The way that I read mewmewfoucault’s comment, the reference to you as “dude” referred less to your junk than it did to the general aura of dudeliness and really, masculinism, that seem to come across through your rhetorical posture, habits of language, etc. Your response here is a case in point. And I say that knowing nothing more about your gender than what you’ve posted here. But if you read MMF’s use of “dude” simultaneously as reference to your junk and threat to your “avowed” feminist credentials, well, that’s an interesting—complex—identification you’ve got going on there as well. Are we to read one as an extension of the other?

If I refer to Lacan as “that old bastard” rather than “’dr.’ or even ‘professor’” it would never occur to anyone that my disdain is motivated by Lacan’s gender.

I don’t know if your motivation is on trial here. I think your actions are being questioned. Turning that into a question of motivations may—I’m saying may, not is, because I want to mark my uncertainty—be a distraction. Or, for that matter, a way for you to settle the matter in advance in favor of your own demonstrated mastery of psychoanalysis.