I'm thinking of writing a book or essay called "The Postmodern Assault On Objectivity And Truth".

[Tooting Carmen]

That's a straw man. Have you read Foucault and Judith Butler?

In bits, yes.

The so-called "queer theory" that you're referring to is pretty much entirely based on their writings and, trust me, their arguments are not ridiculous as you're making them sound. I've also had to write an essay "attacking" some of their theories for a midterm project, and it was no trivial task.

You will need to decide if what you want to attack is the actual arguments or the right-wing strawman made of them. The first will demand a lot more work and will probably be a lot less popular than the latter.

You do not have to be an advocate for 'traditional' gender roles or sexuality to realise that the attack on the concept of biological sex is an attack on science itself. We should not discard reality in favour of a fantasy where anyone can say they are anything.

[RogueState]

I don't want to be rude but do you have the sufficient knowledge in philosophy to be able to write, beyond IRL or online discussions or some little dissertation, about postmodernity in a serious book?

Your epistemological question has been a basic metaphysical debate since the Antiquity in Ancient Greece (the classic sophist Protagoras VS Plato, the first Idealist)

Spoiler!

Protagoras also is believed to have created a major controversy during ancient times through his statement that, "Man is the measure of all things," interpreted (possibly wrongly, since he disagreed) by Plato to mean that there is no objective truth; Protagoras seems to have meant that each person's own personal history, experiences and expectations, developed over their lifetime, determine their judgments, opinions, and statements regarding "truth" (which is the title of the book in which Protagoras made this statement). When a person makes a judgment about a certain thing—good or bad or beautiful or unjust—that person will differ from other people's judgments because their experience has been different.[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protagoras

More specifically, to be able to understand the epistemological foundations of postmodernity, it requires a solid background on what is modernity first and how, postmodernity emerged out and against it (as a dialectical evolution in the Hegelian sense). In other words, a topic densely covered by thinkers from the 19th and 20th centuries, from Nietzsche's criticisms of metaphysics and warning about nihilism, to Kierkegaard's existentialism, to Husserl's phenomenology, to Foucault/Derrida/Althusser deconstructionism, to Freud's psychoanalysis, to Frankfurt School, to Zygmunt Bauman's sociology ?

It's a huge work, but I wish you good luck because at least, you are thinking about the right philosophical problem in our current world

[Petalpusher]

Says it all



https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2107848118

[Aldaris]

You do not have to be an advocate for 'traditional' gender roles or sexuality to realise that the attack on the concept of biological sex is an attack on science itself. We should not discard reality in favour of a fantasy where anyone can say they are anything.

That's perfectly said for the most part. But I'd go further than that. Psychological differences between men and women are almost just as significant as the physical ones. Evolution isn't only about giving one person a pair of tits and a pussy and another one a dick. We like each other, but that's exactly because we are different.

[Albertón]

Objective and subjective ideas are both important. You can also be subjective and objective at the same time, it is called intuition.
So, things are not just black and white.

[Tooting Carmen]

I don't want to be rude but do you have the sufficient knowledge in philosophy to be able to write, beyond IRL or online discussions or some little dissertation, about postmodernity in a serious book?

Your epistemological question has been a basic metaphysical debate since the Antiquity in Ancient Greece (the classic sophist Protagoras VS Plato, the first Idealist)


More specifically, to be able to understand the epistemological foundations of postmodernity, it requires a solid background on what is modernity first and how, postmodernity emerged out and against it (as a dialectical evolution in the Hegelian sense). In other words, a topic densely covered by thinkers from the 19th and 20th centuries, from Nietzsche's criticisms of metaphysics and warning about nihilism, to Kierkegaard's existentialism, to Husserl's phenomenology, to Foucault/Derrida/Althusser deconstructionism, to Freud's psychoanalysis, to Frankfurt School, to Zygmunt Bauman's sociology ?

It's a huge work, but I wish you good luck because at least, you are thinking about the right philosophical problem in our current world

Postmodernism emerged after WWII in large part (understandably) as a reaction against Fascism and Colonialism, which were seen as problematic because they were interpreted by said thinkers as being too absolutist and rigid, leading eventually to tyranny. Therefore, postmodernists believed that the way to obtain a better world of sorts would be to "deconstruct" hitherto unquestioned or underquestioned conventional norms, power structures and methods, showing that they are as they are not because they are objectively good or true, but because they serve the interests of a particular elite. As a result, the way to happiness was for each individual or group (depending on the circumstances) to live by their own morals and truths and that none should prevail over any other.

[Token]

You do not have to be an advocate for 'traditional' gender roles or sexuality to realise that the attack on the concept of biological sex is an attack on science itself. We should not discard reality in favour of a fantasy where anyone can say they are anything.

It is precisely an attack on science because the main argument is that 18th-century science itself fabricated sexuality, and Foucault aims to prove it by doing a "genealogy" (in the Nietzschean sense) of the modern discourses on sexuality, showing that they are historically contingent. All of this is done in a 4 volume book series named "History of Sexuality" (there would be 4 more volumes, but he died before he completed them). It will follow that scientific papers showing different "natural" inclinations for male and female will not prove anything because they will necessarily fall into a circular logic (you will need to attack Foucault's genealogy of knowledge to show otherwise). The attack is not on the biological reality of male and female, but on the idea that they necessarily correspond to a naturally determined sexual "essence" and corresponding "gender roles".

Again, you need to know the arguments of the other side on their own terms before you try to refute them. Blatantly ridiculous theories do not convince people who are vastly more intelligent than me and you combined, they may be wrong theories but never ridiculously evidently false.

[Tooting Carmen]

That's perfectly said for the most part. But I'd go further than that. Psychological differences between men and women are almost just as significant as the physical ones. Evolution isn't only about giving one person a pair of tits and a pussy and another one a dick. We like each other, but that's exactly because we are different.

I am certainly no believer in 'traditional' gender roles or sexuality. A man can be a nurse, a woman can be a mechanic, a man can play netball, a woman can play rugby etc etc. Nonetheless, we should avoid conflating this with the notion that biological sex either doesn't matter at all, is what we say it is or even is a complete fiction altogether.

[Tooting Carmen]

It is precisely an attack on science because the main argument is that 18th-century science itself fabricated sexuality, and Foucault aims to prove it by doing a "genealogy" (in the Nietzschean sense) of the modern discourses on sexuality, showing that they are historically contingent. All of this is done in a 4 volume book series named "History of Sexuality" (there would be 4 more volumes, but he died before he completed them). It will follow that scientific papers showing different "natural" inclinations for male and female will not prove anything because they will necessarily fall into a circular logic (you will need to attack Foucault's genealogy of knowledge to show otherwise). The attack is not on the biological reality of male and female, but on the idea that they necessarily correspond to a naturally determined sexual "essence" and corresponding "gender roles".

Again, you need to know the arguments of the other side on their own terms before you try to refute them. Blatantly ridiculous theories do not convince people who are vastly more intelligent than me and you combined, they may be wrong theories but never ridiculously evidently false.

OK, let me break it down to you: do you believe that lesbians can have penises? Yes or no?

[Token]

OK, let me break it down to you: do you believe that lesbians can have penises? Yes or no?

Do not expect to be taken seriously while building strawmen, that's the only thing that I'm trying to tell you since the first post.