So I’ve scheduled an event on “X” to discuss postmodern philosophy. Postmodernism has been blamed for all the excesses of “woke” politics, particularly the idea that women are identified for oppression based on our adherence to sex stereotypes (gender) rather than our sex. But is postmodernism, actually, to blame, or are the genderists misreading postmodern philosophy as they have misread feminism, Marxism, intersectionality, and everything else?
I have selected as the first article for discussion “Points Against Postmodernism,” by Catharine MacKinnon. This has been an extremely influential article, which began circulating circa 2012 among radical feminists disgusted by the abusive behavior of the genderists. I accepted it uncritically when I first read it, being primed to hate anything “postmodern” since the 80s, when the word (to most of us) only meant bad poetry.
MacKinnon has since published a position paper endorsing all the talking points of the genderborg, but that doesn’t change the immense influence of the earlier paper amongst radical feminists. Thus, I chose this article as a starting place for discussion of the actual ideas of Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, Deleuze, etc. Does postmodern theory actually support the contentions of gender ideology?
Reading Postmodern Philosophy from a Gender Critical Framework. Sunday, March 2, 2025 at 1:00 pm EST.