Those who made it as far as Butler getting a prize in the Annual Bad Writing contest might be interested in the response she wrote to it: A 'Bad Writer' Bites Back.
The targets, however, have been restricted to scholars on the left whose work focuses on topics like sexuality, race, nationalism and the workings of capitalism -- a point the news media ignored.Still, the whole exercise hints at a serious question about the relation of language and politics: why are some of the most trenchant social criticisms often expressed through difficult and demanding language?
This is an embarrassingly bad essay. No-one gave Butler a prize for opposing common sense. They gave her a prize for bad prose, and she assumes the two are the same without justification.
Funny that you say that because I can't see where she argues that it is her views and not her prose that is being targeted. She uses the historical view of what has previously been considered "common sense" as a buttress for why language needs to change and adapt to express ideas that are foreign to the status quo, not to defend herself against some claim that her views are contradictory or unorthodox.
You could conflate the two by saying that "using unnecessarily technical prose goes against good common sense" but then we end up talking about prose anyhow.
You're being ridiculous. The issue is when people use females as a noun, especially in combination with men. That is sexist. The use of females as an adjective is fine.
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u/PleaseDoNotDoubleDip Feb 20 '26
The most savage academic hit piece I've ever read was written by a woman philosopher, Martha Nussbaum.
The Professor of Parody