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user-inactivated  ·  2556 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How French “Intellectuals” Ruined the West: Postmodernism and Its Impact, Explained

Foucault: Society imposes the identity of "a homosexual" on people who have sex with people of the same sex, it comes with an awful lot of baggage that has nothing to do with what a person does with their naughty bits. Society's idea of what a homosexual is tells us little about people who have sex with people of the same sex, but tells us things about society.

Said: The colonizing west imposes its exotic fantasies onto the colonized east, which have very little to do with life in the east. Society's idea of what the exotic east is tells us very little about the east, but tells us things about society.

Judith Butler: Society imposes an awful lot that has nothing to do with plumbing onto {men,women}...

Those are all bad summaries, but yes, the essay is either deliberately misleading or there's a whole lot of whooshing in the background.