Wednesday, January 19, 2022

What is Queer Theory?

An essay from some sort of leftist encyclopedia:
Queer Theory exists, in a nutshell, to antagonize norms, normativity, and the normal—that is, anything that can be considered normal by society (even in accurate, neutral description) and thus that carries or can be construed to imply a morally normative expectation about it, which it deems intrinsically oppressive. This attitude is probably most clearly understood in the binary dichotomy “normal” versus “abnormal,” noting that there is a relatively positive connotation to “normal” as compared to a relatively negative connotation to “abnormal.” ...

Queer Theory seems to deliberately confuse anything that is descriptively normal, in the sense of being commonplace, e.g., heterosexuality or the sexual binary, with that automatically carrying an implication that any variation from that sense of falling within the general norm must be understood pejoratively and seen as somehow illegitimate. It views society has carrying strong expectations, if not requirements, for people to fall within the “normal” range and not to be “abnormal” in any way, and sees these expectations as a central application of dominance to create oppression. ...

Thus, many people mistakenly understand queer Theory as somehow relevant to LGBT civil rights and acceptance—including most queer Theorists—but this is not at all the case. Queer Theory has nothing positive to say about lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender rights except to the degree that those can be made useful for breaking societal norms, and it has no interest in lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender acceptance at all, as that would make them fall within the reach of acceptable societal norms (i.e., normal) and thus a necessary location for disruptive and subversive queer activism. That is, while it seems because of its name that queer Theory is activism on behalf of LGBT rights, it is actually not; it is actually about destroying normalcy in all its forms, including for LGBT people, most of whom don’t like or want this. Queer Theory elevates only one identity as authentic: the queer identity, which ceases to be queer the moment it is accepted or even able to be categorized.

This has the effect of making queer Theory self-defeating and simultaneously self-concentrating in a peculiar way.

I post this for those wanting to understand the Q of LGBTQ.

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