What is your opinion on queer theory & academic politics?

I read "Judith butler" as "Justin bieber" and for a split second my whole world was turned upside down.

That is all. I have nothing useful to contribute to this post.

 

Alright, so I don't know much about what you're describing to be honest, but I do read with Queer Theory. In fact, Queer, Marxist, and Deconstructionalism are my go-to theories.

In a political context, this just means that I think about how queer people fit into politics, how they(we) are effected by politics, and how they(we) are excluded as a minority. In social and pop cultural contexts, this means well kinda the same but in social roles/morays/norms/etc. versus laws. (I.E.: I'm pissed about the casting in Fantasic Four because I feel it's racist to make excuses to limit the 4 to 1 black hero as long as A) he's not the main hero and B) there's no interracial relationships. Versus. Being pissed about governments that seem to think same-sex marriage = equality.)

Also, if there is anyone who claims to be an activist that doesn't support the notion of 'intersections' in discrimination/power plays...wow. That's like a scientist that only supports the Nature in Nature vs/ Nurture...

As for your feelings about the 'queer' label being appropriated, I think it's kinda important to see Critical Theories as Schools of Thought, not personal identities. As long as they're saying they are Queer Theorists not just queer, then it's a different beast as far as I'm concerned.

 

There are a lot of TERFs, among second-wave feminist thinkers, and my opinion of them--as well as the majority of second-wave feminist thinkers--is not charitable.

Trans-exclusionary radical feminism - RationalWiki

It's not the fact that they are TERFs that make them offensive, but it is the fact that they are offensive that makes them TERFs. They are the Westboro Baptist Church of feminism, only Westboro Baptist Church is relatively tolerant and slightly more charming. They are an absolutely asinine and worthless group of people who are about as representative of feminism as the WBC is of Christianity.

Now, queer theory is really a lot more compatible with third-wave feminism because both queer theory and third-wave feminism are deeply informed by postmodernism. Now, while postmodernism has produced some truly asinine ideas, it is a useful device for exploring various topics. Furthermore, the culture associated with postmodernist thinking is historically exceedingly sex-positive.

A large part of why the postmodernists are more sex-positive really goes back to Michel Foucault's endless libido and wild shenanigans. Okay, Foucault was a French philosopher, but he spent some time in San Francisco. While he was there, he learned about the joys of BDSM and the local bathhouse scene, and he tripped some acid. However, Foucault was nevertheless a genius, and he produced a huge and diverse body of work.

One of the people who are responsible for queer theory is Judith Butler. Now, you really have to use your critical reading skills when reading Judith Butler's writings because she goes out on some limbs that I disagree with. I think she's a little bit nuttier than Foucault, in some ways. Like Foucault, she is also a genius, and because of the fact that she goes out on such limbs, she has been one of the most effective original thinkers of modern times.

Anyhow, queer theory has a very deep relationship with third-wave feminism, but I caution you against expecting second-wave feminist thinkers to be so agreeable. Second-wave thinkers tend to be very viciously anti-prostitution. They are usually a lot more sex-negative. Many of them are SWERFs, meaning "sex-worker exclusionary feminists," and rather than seeing sex-workers as people in a legitimate trade and deserving of dignity, they view sex-workers generally with contempt.

Anyway, to understand why there is such a conflict between some branches of lesbian feminism and queer theory, you have to understand that lesbian feminism came along before third-wave feminism, and many of the lesbian feminists never really embraced the sex-positive ideals of third-wave feminism or really accepted ideas like queer theory.

Cathy Brennan - RationalWiki

Cathy Brennan is one such individual. There are, unfortunately, a lot of feminists out there, including lesbians, who think and behave like Cathy Brennan. Being transphobic is only one of many ways in which she is not a very good person. She outs people against their will, which is deliberately evil and cruel. Even many feminists who still maintain their transphobic views think she is a horrible human being who seems to go out of her way to hurt others. Unfortunately, though, there are a lot of people who think like she does.

Basically, third-wave feminism and queer theory are really, at heart, an extension of postmodernism. At the heart of postmodernist thinking is accepting the individual worth of any person's ideas, even if they are not your own ideas. There are no bad ideas, but there are ideas that you choose not to adhere to because your own ideas work a lot better for you. You might have very good reasons for this, and the other guy might be walking over a cliff blindfolded, but remember that, if you intervene, you are choosing your own actions, not the other guy's actions. Only the other person can make a choice to embrace a new way of thinking.

In fact, that is why third-wave feminism is so emphatic about the idea of consent. Because, in postmodernist thinking, you really don't have a right to try to force another person to agree with you but only really have any business choosing and expressing your own ideas, the idea of consent really works very neatly into that picture, thus third-wave feminists tending to be very strongly pro-choice. The postmodernist mindset is a very specific intellectual discipline, and this is merely an application. It does have its limitations.

See the connection? Cathy Brennan does not give much credence to the idea of consent, and she doesn't really accept that people ought to have a right to come out on their own terms, for instance. Her way of thinking is, at a very deep level, extraordinarily incompatible with queer theory and its origins.

Does that clarify, or did I just make things more confusing?

 

:bang:

I'm not familiar with either queer theory or lesbian feminism, except for your basic Wikipedia articles. But from what I understand from what you've written, and from what Wikipedia has told me, very straightforwardly, lesbian feminism is much more exclusive in who it includes than queer theory.

What I don't understand is what is lesbian feminist's or lesbianism's place in queer theory? How do they connect? What does queer theory "dissect" about lesbianism? Or did my brain just fly over something really obvious?

Edit: Sorry if this is asking a lot. I do genuinely want to understand it though.

 

The thing is, there are lesbian feminists who have a very second-wave feminist mentality.

It really becomes a lot easier to grasp if you understand that third-wave feminism is really, at a certain level, an application of postmodernist intellectual discipline. Postmodernism is really hard for the uninitiated to understand, but once you start really learning about it, it seems like a very obvious point about human experience. It is really something that you apply every day, except that serious postmodernists apply it in a very studied, strict sort of manner.

There are lesbian feminists who do embrace third-wave feminist ideas, and they are a lot more likely to be friendly toward queer theory, which is very much associated and linked with third-wave feminism.

---------- Post added 3rd Jun 2015 at 07:59 AM ----------

Basically, queer theory is, more than anything else, a statement of, "I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself" (Oscar Wilde). We have a great diversity of ways in which we try to express ourselves, and many lesbians may identify as, for instance, "butch femmes" and things of that nature. In queer theory, that is accepted as a matter of principle, not because this is an official doctrine of third-wave feminism but because, at its roots, queer theory is about accepting people's individual identities as valid, even if the thinking that goes into forming them is a load of foolish nonsense. Their identities are still valid. You do not know what they experience that makes them feel this way. You don't know what they might have been through in life that makes them feel this way. You don't have exactly their genes.

Therefore, when you are talking about lesbian feminism, it is helpful if you are delineating which group of lesbian feminist thinkers you are most sympathetic with. Some lesbian feminists are not accepting at all of the postmodernist style of thinking.

---------- Post added 3rd Jun 2015 at 08:01 AM ----------

Excuse me, *not because this is an official doctrine of queer theory.

 

What exactly is a "diversity officer"?

Because so far, all I've heard is negative things about them. A "diversity officer" who didn't allow any white males at the "diversity festival" or whatever it was, and now a "diversity officer" who makes racist posts against white people being defended because "hey, it's just a joke!" So I guess if I say "killallblackmen" and "ghettotrash" it'll be all jokes and smiles, huh?

Like, who are these clowns? And how do they get to the position of "diversity officer"?

 

One thing I've always wanted to know is how traditional queer theory sits with transgenderism.

On one hand you appear to have queer theorists saying gender is a social construct, that we are all simply conforming to outdated gender roles, and we all have the potential to live essentially "genderless" and free from conformity and restriction. This seems to be a core idea from what I have read and heard re the theory.

And then on the other hand you have transgender people, who feel they are born into the wrong gender. That they definitely have an immutable sense of masculinity or femininity counter to their bodily gender.

Do queer theorists believe transgender people simply express themselves in typically opposite gender roles - that their desire to transition is simply a "symptom" of a statically binary gendered world? That transgender people should simply express themselves in their bio body (essentially living as "genderqueer" instead of "trans"). And is that not offensive to trans people?

 

Well, really radical post-structuralists can be pretty ridiculous, going to the extent of saying that scientists who point out CNS effects of testosterone and estrogen are really in some patriarchal conspiracy, and they are rejecting of science, in general, because it is the way of the Patriarchy (TM) to say that there is one truth and all that.

The structuralists were really wrong mostly because they viewed things in terms of opposite components, and they took the concept way too far. Structuralist reasoning was that "less feminine" was inherently "more masculine," and the structuralists had the concept that these were things that were the same all throughout nature.

The thing is, you can be androgynous or sexually undifferentiated, and both masculinity and femininity have diverse expressions and several dimensions. Even at the chemical level, there are many feminine hormones and a lot of diversity in how the receptors for them behave. Progesterone behaves differently from estrogen, and there are different estrogen receptors with different alleles that cause them to react differently, even with hard to detect, extremely complex downstream relationships with g protein-coupled receptors and the behavior of protein kinases and cyclic AMP, some of which we might not fully understand for many more decades. Prolactin is a hormone that has inconceivable complexity in how it behaves.

All that queer theory is really saying is that each of us is unique, and there is a lot to our sexuality and gender beyond simplistic binary interpretations. This is a matter of actual scientific fact. On close analysis, transgender people's brains are morphologically more like those of women.

Although some people who proclaim belief in post-structuralism deny the very existence of any distinction between men and women, insisting on the antiquated belief that we're born as some tabula rasa and have to be taught all concepts of gender, insisting that all feminine women are victims of patriarchal oppression, let me put it this way: they are the Westboro Baptist Church of post-structuralists. I have met these people. They are very hateful toward individuals who think differently from themselves. If you have your own way of looking at things, they automatically cast you as uneducated and insist that you are a misogynist and a hillbilly. They have an extremely arrogant holier-than-thou mindset. I have had very negative encounters with them, and I am only sorry that, at one time, I judged post-structuralists in general based on these encounters. Most post-structuralists acknowledge that men and women are born with differences, but they just also acknowledge that individuals are born with differences, with some women really being more like men and vice versa. At the heart of their way of thinking is that we are not bad just because we are different.

The reason that post-structuralism is really necessary is that people like "structural functionalists," especially, insist that those of us who behave outside of certain "social roles" are evil because we are going to cause the collapse of society and mass anomie, and post-structuralists are just calling this sort of thinking into question. I point out structural functionalism, in particular, because it's one of the central intellectual rubber-stamps of far right-wing politics, and those who advocate structural functionalism are really the most massively ultra-authoritarian, deliberately bigoted, loud-mouthed jerk-wads you can imagine.

 

I'm not really sure which side I'm on. Lesbian feminism kind of appeals to me because I'm getting kind of sick of everyone talking about fluid sexuality. I get that some people are fluid, but it really gets on my nerves when people act like everyone is fluid. Even Lisa Diamond's study shows that it's a minority. She also has an extremely small and skewed sample size. I think people who are sexually fluid or know someone who is sexually fluid are a vocal minority.

I do agree with certain aspects of queer theory. I like what they say about gender roles. I do look traditionally feminine, but I don't like it when people assume stuff because of that. I often feel like I'm not truly queer because of my apprearance or the way people react when I try to come out.

 

I've seen a lot of negative things about queer theorists to be honest. A huge part of queer theory is that sexuality is a social construction. It isn't entirely false, but a lot of theorists themselves try to push the everyone is bi thing and shame lesbians out of their sexuality (mostly the modern day teenagers that learn it).

And then there's the gender politics that get really bad. The idea that gender is socially constructed is 100% true, but a lot of people take it too far and believe that if you deviate from any gender norms, you're a new gender now.

Also, Foucault was a huge part of queer theory as well, and he had pro-pedophile views. He was against the age of consent (which was 15 where he was from) and wanted to abolish it to where sex was allowed between everyone of every age...so....

 

I don't think that age of consent should pass without examination. In fact, an enlightened and informed perspective on child development is actually one of several tools that are used by the German organization, Prevention Project Dunkelfeld. They actually explain, with a fair amount of depth, the problem with assuming that children are able to consent, specifically by pointing out how connections are actually formed in their brains at the physiological level. They cannot and should not be assumed to be able to weigh a decision in their minds in the way that adults do, at least not as effectively. In fact, even comparing them with animals of similar intellect, which are nevertheless sexually active, is fallacious: it's like assuming that a young watermelon is like a mature apple just because it's about the size of an apple. Adult animals, although they are lower-powered, nevertheless are completely developed. The idea of an "age of consent" does survive the test of examination, so relying on unexamined gut-reactions is not only destructive but unnecessary. Foucault was absolutely right that it's dangerous to create a villain class, of sorts, unnecessarily.

I do agree that it's sort of outlandish to push the theory that everyone is truly bisexual. A little bit closer to the truth is the Kinsey Scale. Although it is not a perfectly formed paradigm, it's a bit less mixed-up than the idea that sexual orientation is just something that is taught, which is rubbish. I'm gay as a bloody Christmas tree.

 

I'll admit I don't understand everything about it fully, but this quote basically shows why I don't really like queer theory. I've seen people before saying that trans people only transition because of gender roles or whatever, and that if we got rid of gender (an idea I already don't agree with), there would be no trans people. I don't agree with any of that. There's the people who don't think gender is real at all (certain parts of it are socially constructed but to argue that trans people only exist because of gender norms isn't true), and there's the people who think that any little oddity about their personality makes them a new unique gender.

I don't agree with the idea that sexuality is a social construct, or everyone is sexually fluid either.

 

Yes, the brain studies do seem to indicate something deeper is going on. What intrigues me though:

-Would genderqueer people also have similar "non-gender conforming" brains to transgender individuals? If so, what would explain the difference between one group being trans and one being genderqueer? Or perhaps genderqueer people have more gender conforming brains at birth but instead simply happen to reject the societal norms throughout their lives?
-Studies seem to show that at least some gay people also have gender-non conforming brains. What I would struggle to understand is how both a gay man and a MTF trans person could have a stereotypically "hetero female" brain structure, yet express and identify in their genders so differently (one group feeling male, the other female).

Anyway, thats probably off topic sorry. Fascinating nonetheless.

Bringing it back then:

My opinion on queer theory: well I think gender and sexuality are worthy fields for academic research and discussion. I do seem to disagree with a lot of the approach typically taken though (labelling "queer", ideas of "assimilation" and anti-marriage sentiment, radicalism etc).

 

Yeah, the reason that I am not happy with the anti-marriage sentiments, myself, is that marriage is really very much suited to some people, such as myself. Related animal species have been studied, and it's been found that natural behavior, in regard to monogamy, does vary throughout the animal kingdom, and I am sure that it does among humans. Some people feel more secure when they are in a marital bond. Just because I feel this way, myself, that doesn't keep me from being understanding and accepting of the fact that some people are happier in more open relationships. I could just no more do that, myself, than I could ever be happy in a relationship with a woman.

 

That was a loooooot of reading 0.o


I'm totally lost here. How many feminisms are there!?

No wonder people hate feminism so much it's a giant confusing mess filled with fancy words being yelled at another group of feminism that also uses fancy words and nobody is stopping to realize that random guy ( in this case me ) doesn't even know what they're talking about anymore. Atop of that while they're busy with all this Tumblr ( social media brand ) feminism ( because there isn't enoguh of these varying types and labels for feminism ) are running around and making it illegal for males to spread their legs in subway stations because 'patriarchy'


Maybe instead of fine tuning the drivel of nonsense ( as it appears to me ) you could take some of these concepts, apply them to something, see how it works out and then try and get a bigger megaphone than Tumblr has so that a brand of feminism which either makes sense ( or at lesat sounds smart ) is the one people hear about all the time.

Jus sayin.

( I apologize if this is rude in anyway, but you gave me a dang headache and I'm already having an annoying day. *rubs aching brain* soooo much of that conversation was built on the premise that you already had some understanding of the subject matter. There was no attempt even made to bridge the gap for those who didn't waste their life options on 'gender studies' or those who just flat out wasted their life options on 'doing nothing' like me )

 

Well, we're really talking about pretty advanced philosophy, sometimes, in feminism. The one thing that feminists mostly agree on is "Try not to be a dick over the fact that your coworker or the person working for you is a woman or looks like one." Everything else is nuance, bullshit or both. Either that, or it's politics, which is worse than either.

 

Unfortunately, feminism can be too complicated to have any easy simple guide for someone to easily dissect all topics and terms for you, because lots of these topics have differing vantage points and subsequent arguments. Feminism in practice is extremely diverse in content and accessibility and we can't realistically fully reduce everyone's views into one of the commonly known branches of feminism.

It's like literary analysis, really. Schooling and academia can help one express oneself more clearly or backed with facts, but anyone can analyze a book or story. And anyone can analyze life with a feminist viewpoint, regardless of if they've been formally taught in the subject or not.

With that said, I'm sure there are some "beginner"-friendly guides to feminism in general online, and if you are interested, I'm sure it's but a google search away. Most branches of feminism are not just about women (Common misconception) but are instead about all of us and how different groups of people are affected by certain historic and current power imbalances, and how standards that society has set can mould or limit us.

With that said, it has been clear that women have been oppressed and continue to be oppressed, and the fact remains that there is much work to be done in order for equality to be achieved, particularly for women as opposed to men.

 

In regards to earlier discussion on transgender expression as inherently reactionary to a societally-enforced gender binary:

Have people stopped differentiating between 'transgender' and 'transsexual' as two relatively separate identities? It seems to me that only in recent years has 'transgender' become the PC umbrella term to refer to individuals involved in any form of gender-related fluctuation, whether that be presenting in appearance or manner as non-normative or physically altering the body with hormones and surgery.

It's been my experience, however, that 'transsexual' used to mean something; it used to refer specifically to those who sought SRS for the purpose of inhabiting a body that could engage sexually as the desired sex, and gender and all its various manifestations had remarkably little to do with it. It was the difference between wanting to be a woman -- to be perceived and treated as a woman, to behave in interpersonal interaction as a woman -- and wanting to be female, in addition to then becoming, or perhaps being allowed to become, any sort of feminine personality. It was that females could behave in as masculine a fashion as they wanted and still be women.

Maybe I've just met a weirdly isolated group of people with unusual solidarity, or I've just read the wrong books, or something, but wasn't there a time when SRS was considered a burgeoning cure for homosexuality? Wasn't it understood and appreciated that there could exist people who literally believed the act of possessing a physical form, and all actions manifesting from it, could be the result of a physiological orientation, and that certain versions of the human body were better suited to certain consciousnesses?

I understand very little of the cultural designs of gender; I understand 'masculinity' and 'femininity' as tendencies towards methods of interacting with external stimuli only; but I have always completely understood, and utterly related to, this idea that there could be a 'more correct' body, and that some people feel wrong in their own skin... and I do literally mean skin-- not social perceptions or performative roles via cultural associations. And I understand how this most primal and direct and immediate way of anchoring one's sense of 'skin-correctness' -- via sex, the most physical form of human interaction -- could sometimes fix it.

So what on earth does that have to do with the social erasure of gender constructs? In what ways do the morphological differences of developed 'feminine' or 'masculine' brains influence gendered behavior? How would perceiving people without gender alter the way they interact with reality on a physical or sexual level?

---------- Post added 4th Jun 2015 at 07:42 AM ----------

Basically what I mean is there's a big difference between organs and physical forms as an expression of being in-itself versus the way those organs/physical forms might influence modes of being, and I think this aspect of queer theory marginalizes that.