Editing Slavoj Žižek (section)

====Transgender issues====
In his 2016 article "The Sexual Is Political", Žižek argued that all subjects are, like transgender subjects, in discord with the sexual position assigned to them. For Žižek, any attempt to escape this antagonism is false and utopian: thus, he rejects both the reactionary attempt to violently impose sexual fixity and the "[[Postgenderism|postgenderist]]" attempt to escape sexual fixity entirely; he aligns the latter with 'transgenderism', which he claims does not adequately describe the behaviour of actual transgender subjects, who seek a stable "place where they could recognise themselves" (e.g., a bathroom that confirms their identity). Žižek argues for a third bathroom: a "GENERAL GENDER" bathroom that would represent the fact that both sexual positions (Žižek insists on the unavoidable "twoness" of the sexual landscape) are missing something and thus fail to adequately represent the subjects that take them on.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Žižek |first1=Slavoj |title=The Sexual Is Political |url=https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-sexual-is-political/ |website=The Philosophical Salon |date=August 2016 |access-date=8 May 2022 |archive-date=3 August 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160803083821/http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-sexual-is-political/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In his 2019 article "Transgender dogma is naive and incompatible with Freud", Žižek argued that there is "a tension in LGBT+ ideology between [[social constructivism]] and (some kind of [[Biological determinism|biological]]) determinism", between the idea that [[Social construction of gender|gender is a social construct]], and the idea that gender is essential and pre-social. He concludes the essay with a "[[Freudian]] solution" to this deadlock:
{{blockquote|...psychic sexual identity is a choice, not a biological fact, but it is not a conscious choice that the subject can playfully repeat and transform. It is an unconscious choice which precedes subjective constitution and which is, as such, formative of subjectivity, which means that the change of this choice entails the radical transformation of the bearer of the choice.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Žižek |first1=Slavoj |title=Transgender dogma is naive and incompatible with Freud |url=https://spectatorworld.com/book-and-art/transgender-dogma-naive-freud/ |website=The Spectator |date=31 May 2019 |access-date=11 June 2022 |archive-date=30 November 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221130083115/https://spectatorworld.com/book-and-art/transgender-dogma-naive-freud/ |url-status=live }}</ref> }}

[[Che Gossett]] criticized Žižek for his use of the "pathologising" term "transgenderism" throughout the 2016 article, and for writing "about trans subjectivity with such assumed authority while ignoring the voices of trans theorists (academics and activists) entirely", as well as for purportedly claiming that a "futuristic" vision underlies so-called "transgenderism", ignoring present-day oppression.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Gossett |first1=Che |title=Žižek's Trans/gender Trouble |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/zizeks-transgender-trouble/ |website=LA Review of Books |date=13 September 2016 |access-date=8 May 2022 |archive-date=6 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220506194143/https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/zizeks-transgender-trouble/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Sam Warren Miell and Chris Coffman, both psychoanalytically inclined, have separately criticized Žižek for conflating transgenderism and postgenderism; Miell further criticised the 2014 article for rehearsing homophobic/transphobic clichés (including Žižek's designation of [[Zoophilia|inter-species marriage]] as a possible "anti-discriminatory demand"), and misusing Lacanian theory; Coffman argued that Žižek should have engaged with contemporary Lacanian trans studies, which would have shown that psychoanalytic and transgender discourses were aligned, not opposed.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Miell |first1=Sam Warren |title=Slavoj Žižek is wrong about stuff |date=3 August 2016 |url=https://differentcolouredhats.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/slavoj-zizek-is-wrong-about-stuff/ |access-date=8 May 2022 |archive-date=19 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221019013432/https://differentcolouredhats.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/slavoj-zizek-is-wrong-about-stuff/ |url-status=live }}; {{cite book |last1=Coffman |first1=Chris |title=Queer Traversals |date=2022 |publisher=Bloomsbury |location=London |isbn=9781350200005 |page=98}}</ref> In response to the title of the 2019 article, [[McKenzie Wark]] had t-shirts made with the [[transgender flag]] and "Incompatible with Freud" printed on them.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Erlij |first1=Evelyn |title=McKenzie Wark: reinventing the future |url=https://palabrapublica.uchile.cl/2019/07/31/mckenzie-wark-reinventing-the-future/ |access-date=11 June 2022 |archive-date=30 November 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221130042000/https://palabrapublica.uchile.cl/2019/07/31/mckenzie-wark-reinventing-the-future/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Žižek defended his 2016 article in two follow-up pieces. The first addresses purported misreadings of his position,<ref name="A Reply to My Critics"/> while the second is a more sustained defence (against Miell) of the article's application of Lacanian theory,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Žižek |first1=Slavoj |title=A Reply to My Critics, Part Two |url=https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/reply-to-my-critics-part-two/ |website=The Philosophical Salon |date=14 August 2016 |access-date=8 May 2022 |archive-date=3 November 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161103135557/http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/reply-to-my-critics-part-two/ |url-status=live }}</ref> to which Miell responded in turn.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Miell |first1=Sam Warren |title=Interrogating the père's version: a response to Slavoj Žižek |date=15 August 2016 |url=https://differentcolouredhats.wordpress.com/2016/08/15/interrogating-the-peres-version-a-response-to-slavoj-zizek/ |access-date=8 May 2022 |archive-date=8 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220508122849/https://differentcolouredhats.wordpress.com/2016/08/15/interrogating-the-peres-version-a-response-to-slavoj-zizek/ |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Douglas Lain]] also defended Žižek, claiming that context makes it clear that Žižek is "not opposed [to] the struggle of LGBTQ people" but is instead critiquing "a phony liberal ideology that set up the terms of the LGBTQ struggle", "a certain utopian postmodern ideology that seeks to eliminate all limits, to eliminate all binaries, to go beyond norms because the imposition of a limit is patriarchal and oppressive."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Lain |first1=Douglas |title=The Fate of Slavoj Žižek |url=https://thoughtcatalog.com/doug-lain/2017/01/the-fate-of-slavoj-zizek/ |website=Thought Catalog |date=25 January 2017 |access-date=11 June 2022 |archive-date=11 June 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220611210722/https://thoughtcatalog.com/doug-lain/2017/01/the-fate-of-slavoj-zizek/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In a 2023 piece for Compact Magazine, Žižek took a hard stance against access to [[puberty blockers]] for trans youth, and against trans adults being sent to prisons matching their gender, citing the case of [[Isla Bryson]], whom he referred to as "a person who identifies itself as a woman using its penis to rape two women". Both of these things were attributed by Žižek to [[wokeness]] (the wider subject of the article).<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Žižek |first1=Slavoj |url=https://compactmag.com/article/wokeness-is-here-to-stay |work=Compact Magazine |date=February 22, 2023 |title=Wokeness Is Here To Stay |access-date=13 May 2023 |archive-date=22 February 2023 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20230222090353/https://compactmag.com/article/wokeness-is-here-to-stay |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last1=Zelle |first1=Melanie |url=https://swarthmorephoenix.com/2023/03/02/zizek-has-lost-the-plot/ |work=The Swarthmore Phoenix |date=March 2, 2023 |title=Žižek Has Lost the Plot |access-date=13 May 2023 |archive-date=13 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230513120052/https://swarthmorephoenix.com/2023/03/02/zizek-has-lost-the-plot/ |url-status=live }}</ref>