Anyone into Queer Theory- Explain this, I'm confused

Further than that things like prostate / ovarian cancers, pregnancy and childbirth and so on.

Cross posted with you, trekkie - I don't know, I think it is interesting to discuss one theory from the POV of another. We often end up discussing socialism from the POV of feminism here, so why not queer theory?

Hopefully someone who's a committed queer theorist will come along and set us to rights soon!

Yes, I think they are useful. This is one reason I'm not wild about Judith Butler or gender theory.

I think gender is a totally unhelpful and crappy concept that we should get rid of. I think talking about 'performing' gender attributes agency to people who do not have that agency.

I am aware Butler herself sees both similarities and differences between gender 'performance' and theatrical 'performance', but many people who use her work only focus on similarities. And this tends to lead to a really unpleasant situation in which 'gender performance' is seen as something comparable to theatrical entertainment, whereas for many women (and men, and perhaps especially homosexuals), it can be a matter of life and death and extremely stressful.

I think that claiming (eg) cross-dressing as an exciting subversive 'performance' of femininity, as Butler does, totally misses the point that much cross-dressing is pretty misogynistic. And it misses the point that these activities do not create a new and excitingly fluid concept of 'femininity', they further entrench the old, patriarchial, tradition ideas about what 'femininity' is.

I think it's a massive pile of toss.

There are some aspects of queer theory and of JB/JB's disciples' work that occasionally seem quite interesting and valid. None of them seem to me anything that we couldn't do from a radical feminist perspective, and do much better that way. So, for example, someone I know did a talk about how cultural assumptions about gender shape biological teaching in schools. Radical feminists know this is true. We've talked about the myth of the hymen on this forum loads of times. It'd be possible to discuss that either as a gender theorist ('ooh, look, it's all performativity cos the body isn't how biologists used to think it is!'), or it'd be possible to discuss that as a radical feminist ('look, the patriarchy lied about our bodies'). IMO the latter is simply more useful.

Actually retract that - I don't know anything about queer theory and the chances are that it has a totally different focus to feminism and thus the points that it raises are not to be thought about from a feminist POV! eg may not pertain to babies.

Just got carried away as in the feminist section.

Aren't the categories of biological sex useful in feminism though, to identify the group that is being oppressed?

When a baby is born there is a recognition of "it's a girl" or "it's a boy" and that moment has an enormous effect on their life (with the statement "it's a girl" meaning the ending of that life in some parts of the world) - this is irrespective of what gender / combination of gender roles the child may adopt as they grow up.

That's the bit that confuses me with this.

I only know a couple of queer theorists and they both work in English Lit departments, so it might be this isn't representative. But my understanding is that they interpret biological sex as being something that doesn't really exist in the way that people think it does - they look at the cultural and social assumptions that shape biology, for example. So it's not that they wouldn't study biological sex, but they would tend to disagree that the categories of 'biological male' and 'biological female' are useful ones to use.

People can do a lot of work on physical bodies, and on the cultural understanding of a gendered body (which obviously is something that involves a lot of reference to what you or I might call 'biological sex'), so when I read queer theory it often has a lot to say about biological sex. It just says it in what seems to me a slightly sideways way.

I'm not a queer theorist, but I think I might understand what is going on?

For one thing, Butler is one queer theorist, and she is (IMHO) slightly strange on occasion.

Some people would say that it is offensive to transpeople to say there is any difference between being biologically male (or female), and identifying as 'male' or 'female'.

What Butler is saying (as I understand her) is that gender is something we all create, by living our lives. We all contribute to the concept of 'femininity' (or 'masculinity') by performing as feminine or masculine agents. Gender is not something that results from our physical bodies, it's something we act out. The positive side of this is that, if gender isn't innate and is something we perform, we do have a certain amount of power to subvert the cultural norms and to perform gender in new and innovative ways.

This isn't actually a million miles from the first position, because both Butler and the people who support the first position are trying to say that our physical bodies need not determine our gender. Butler is also keen on the idea that it's not helpful to talk about two biological sexes, but it's better to think about a spectrum of gendered performances, which construct (or deconstruct, or reconstruct) concepts of 'femininity' and 'masculinity'.

(NB: This is my understanding. I am not a queer theorist, and I am not very keen on Judith Butler, although I do recognize she has done some influential work.)