Retrofitting "Henwood before Butler"

[kelley]

and another thing:  where in _gender trouble_ does judith butler ever once
address the issue of class [not to mention ethnicity]?  why does she just
ignore it?  why on earth would she think that it was a-okay to not even
bother to address the issue somewhere to at least explain why it wasn't
going to be part of a consideration of how identities are socially
constituted?  it's not as if she was ignorant of the topic or can, in my
view, reasonably be able to claim that she was in 1990 --there were and had
been reams and reams written on the subject --the critique of the 'woman
qua woman' discourse that predominated in so much of 60s and 70s feminism.
did she,  like, totally miss the huge fiasco of the women's studies
conference in, what was it, 84 or 87?, where these identity issues
surfaced?  by 1984 alison jaggar had already written a tome in which she
examined competing feminism and the problems attending humanist feminist
politics--ignoring lesbians, bis, working class white women, women of
color, third world women.  and, of course, how could she have missed
lugones' and spellman's "have we got a theory for you"   lugones and
spellman, of course, wrote some pretty good stuff from a queer feminist
position, but they didn't just focus on queer identies because even they
could see that this wasn't going to fly.

furthermore, just a wee bit unconscionable in my view to ignore the whole
camp scene and not notice that most of the participants in those affairs,
as Paris is Burning points out, are poor men of color whose desire to dress
up as women isn't about gender alone but about class.  they don't dress up
like roseanne barr.  they work their asses off and spend all their spare
cash so they can dress likely wealthy women!  but that got ignored.

so, sorry, but i'm queer and i appreciate queer theory, but i cannot stand
the irresponsibility sometimes.  there was no excuse for not including at
the very least some sort of defenseive "i can't adress all these issues
here, but i'm aware of them"  in book that is barely 150 pp long she can
hardly claim 'lack of space and time'

so i read butler, take her seriously as much as possible, but i still
thinks she's ridiculous for that kind of really  awful scholarship --and in
general i think her scholarship standards stink to begin with.  she's
pretty pisspoor at acknowledging her debts.

ragging'
kelley