Queer theory - origins of the madness.

Thanks OP - factoring in queer theory, and Selina Todd's point about the policy-makers having been fed this at uni, makes so much sense in terms of explaining how we got to this point.

I had assumed it was the fault of social media spreading ideas in only 140 characters (i.e. with no space for evidence or explanation, merely for feelings), but it seems that this has been 30+ years in the making.

Since the theory has been percolating in academic spheres up until now and the shifting definition of woman is the first time it's been put into practice in front of such a wide and mainstream audience, it could be a really positive thing as it's a chance to expose it for the nonsense it is.

I think the article was confusing things though birdsfoot - there is a very real problem of underfunding of mental health and support services for people with neuro-diverse conditions (hopefully that phrasing is okay) in Scotland. The National Autism Society has commented at some point about children pretty much having to be excluded to get any support. But I would refute the idea that complex trauma and attachment issues get any further - the same issues exist I.e that managing this and getting support is outsourced to the parents (and the author himself does not provide any evidence to support the claim that certain diagnoses get more attention, although I will go back and check this). I think that is part of a broader problem of under-funding of services.

I am not sure ‘lived experience’ has become a way of privileging certain voices, rather than privileged groups have co-opted a methodology and/or language to get heard (speaking of lived experience in particular not post-modernism as I would argue that giving voice to marginalised groups goes back to the 1960s at least). Take my example of disabled women - I am not seeing their experiences foregrounded in policy, although excellent qualitative work exists advice to why problems should be addressed. Whereas men already occupy a position of privilege to get their voices heard. So I don’t think it is the method - there is a lot to be said for considering subjective experience and qualitative research - but the agendas of those using it.

I entirely agree about robust data - qualitative or quantitative- which should have been clear in my original post.

Finally, the way Scottish government makes policy is interesting and worthy of research in itself - If anyone has the inclination. My feeling is that it starts with talking to a select group of people (triggered by some factor or another), getting their issues and then expanding out, guided by the issues this group has raised. These are then consulted on - possibly with areas missing (for reasons known to the Scottish government) - and this then guides the (under-advertised) consultations, which shape policy. Is this a post-modern way of government? I need to give this some thought. It is certainly an interesting question whose voices are being heard and represented and how.

Should say, case studies, not care studies

"Lived experience" has become a way to privilege certain voices.

I think it's a temptation, like chocolate cake, think how often it's used here about women's experience.

Talking to affected communities, detailed care studies, that kind of thing is an important part of research and politics, it can give a lot of insight. But it doesn't mean one particular viewpoint understands a situation and doesn't have to justify its claims with data, or by being rational.

Pom-mo, has always seemed to me to be:

"What you can get away with."
And
"Make it up as you go along, and impose it on others".

Ditto Queer Theory bollocks.

But its insidiousness in current society is alarming.

KTara to a large point I agree about lived experience ; including the voice of the subject where before it was lacking. But the article seemed to suggest Pomo thinking was more than this - that the lived experience (perception of the individual) transcended any objective truth which then ceases to exist. Ergo if an individual with a voice has no problem with something then no one else does either. Thus it is reasonable for the Scottish Government to refute a quantitative study into exclusion of children from school with a qualitative study. Or to listen only to trans identified men. Maybe I read it wrong - this whole area is new to me as I studied science and this Pomo thought to me is simply weaving the cloth for the emperor’s clothes. Don’t you see the fine thread and the intricate patterns? What splendid clothes this fabric will make!

After Derrick Jenssen's Queer Theory Jeopardy, which I saw a time back (thanks for posting the link ProbablyshouldntBut), I have come to the conclusion that Queer Theory is nothing but Foucault&Co building a whole philosophy around their obsessive wish to fuck children without censure.

Sorry, I am only up to birdsfootrefoil ‘s post about ‘lived experience’

I genuinely do not think this is meant to be anecdote over objective evidence but giving voice to groups who are usually marginalised and would not normally have a voice.
So traditionally social scientists, anthropologists, researchers would come along and do their research on a community or group, without involving that group in the research or how findings were interpreted.

So I think - and I may be wrong - that the phrase lived experience is in part an ethical commitment to involve the people who are being researched, legislated for, or policy and practice otherwise created around and avoid further marginalising groups.

I am tired so cannot think of a good example but I am thinking of work which might do qualitative research with women living with disability. Every one of those women will offer insights into the lives experience of disability, their interactions with services and the judgements, barriers and stigma which they face.

Those experiences should not be the beginning and end of research but if you want to design policy which works for people, ‘lived experience’ is pretty key to understanding the issues they face.

Of course there are more ethical issues about whose voices you hear, how they are recruited, how what they say is used - but qualitative research has a place.

Sorry that is nothing to do with queer theory.

It's 'An Oak Tree' by Michael Craig-Martin (1973) - didn't realise it was that old.

I guess queer theory has one thing right, QUESTION EVERYTHING.

Indeed!!!

Turbo & Terry - what the gender stuff made me think of in art terms was the guy who put a glass of water on a shelf & said it was an oak tree (have I got this right? I've just been gardening in the sun...).

placemarking - will come back & give it a go.

Gawd Turbo that's hit me like a lightening bolt - I never made the connection either...and I was a fucking art student!........thank you for that!

That's interesting stumbledin, I'll check out the link.

PoMo/Queer Theory was what I remember being taught in art school at the end of the 80s - I was often to be found mindlessly intoning "There is no such thing as absolute truth", and thinking I was so smart (what a wanker!) so it's certainly had time to percolate into all our institutions.

As you say the lack of any critique of power and who actually has it is one of my main problems with QT and it is why it's an absolute joke that all the so called queering is so ground breaking and radical when it never challenges power.

No wonder the great and the good in all our institutions love the ideology - change yourself and don't bother challenging those with power at the top.

I went to see John Gray speak because I read his book Straw Dogs and it made me really angry (I actually can't remember why now!) so I wanted to see what else he had to say. I enjoyed the talk and it did make me think, which is always a good thing.

I wonder if the prominence of science has tended to make people extrapolate to other areas.

I think there's a lot of truth in this.

You really can't have progress without an end, you have to be getting to something.

I wonder about this too...is the end point some kind of Utopia, and if so what will it look like, or more importantly whose vision will prevail...?

Just to add that what is important in her speech is she is saying that this is the dominant culture in universities and so over the past 30 / 40 years those educated / influenced by this theory are now those in positions of power in the media, politics and schools.

I wonder how much longer we will be allowed to talk about sexism / sex discrimination.

That's interesting, I wonder if the prominence of science has tended to make people extrapolate to other areas. It has obviously in terms of things like social Darwinism, but maybe in the wider sense too. I find John Gray interesting, it's maybe notable here that many would consider him to be a conservative philosopher.

What I find particularly surprising about the emphasis many today put on the idea of progress is how many of them are materialist atheists, which seems quite compatible. You really can't have progress without an end, you have to be getting to something. Nature itself can't progress, it's like saying evolution has an end, it just changes.

Have any of you listeded to the speech Selina Todd gave at WPUK meeting? it is (as someone else said) a socialist feminist historian accurately describing what radical feminisms were saying as it happened that queer theory is part of the male backlash against women's liberation.

It is about trying to say that there is no shared experience of women as a sex class at the hand of men as a sex class. It tries to say that we all have personal choice and so aren't oppressed (ie making Margaret "there is no such thing as society" Thatcher a queer activists!). ie it enable's men to say we are equally victims and have the right to demand to be acknowledged as such.

The speech is about 20 minutes, and talks about how women's activism over the past few hundred years show that queer theory (bourgoise individualism / neo liberalism) only benefits those with actually power ie the real world not what we pretend it is. ie it benefits men. Queer theory is a tool of MRAs.

On the video link page there is also a link to the transcribed speech.

What seems to be happening is that there is an idea that more liberated = progressive = positive for society. Very little thought seems to be given about what this really means, and whether there is a point at which "more liberated" will actually have a negative effect on society and cause harm to some members of society, rather than just making us more free and more civilised and tolerant.

More liberated over time has seen some benefits for women and other marginalised and/or oppressed groups but mostly it seems to benefit the usual subject - white, middle class men - and can have unintended negative consequences for more vulnerable members of society.

I feel the ideas espoused by Queer Theory as I understand them are very masculine in nature and really do centre the cock and whatever it wants at the expense of everyone else who happens to be in the non-men category.

Ideas around progress are interesting - are we always going forward in a straight line or can gains be lost. I saw the philosopher John Gray speak about this years ago and it really made me think.

He seemed to be arguing that it was only really science that could progress in the linear way we usually understand the word.

He used the example of torture to illustrate how progress could be lost. Torture in the West has been almost universally condemned as beyond the pale for the decades since WWII but returned with the advent of the Iraq war and the use of torture techniques like water boarding and the atrocities at Abu Ghraib - all conducted by the so called "good guys".

What seems to be happening is that there is an idea that more liberated = progressive = positive for society. Very little thought seems to be given about what this really means, and whether there is a point at which "more liberated" will actually have a negative effect on society and cause harm to some members of society, rather than just making us more free and more civilised and tolerant.

People make some interesting assumptions, and I think this link is one of them. A similar example is I've seen people assume that "real" human rights can't conflict with each other, which leads to some real errors in reasoning. I don't think they are being disingenuous at all, they really think their logic is sound.
The idea of "progress" is itself rather a problem. Progress to what? Is this supposed to be some kind of movement of the World Spirit?

Freedom is also always conceived in terms of more choices which isn't particularly obvious unless you've been trained to think of it that way. An older view says that when you give people the change to make untrue choices you are actually curtailing their freedom, because you create bad habits and neglect the development of virtue which allows real choice. It's a language many don't find natural now but it dovetails into the idea that too much freedom can create a society where people are damaged by it, like an addiction. There is also some interesting research on choice fatigue that might be relevant.

What seems to be happening is that there is an idea that more liberated = progressive = positive for society. Very little thought seems to be given about what this really means, and whether there is a point at which "more liberated" will actually have a negative effect on society and cause harm

Yes! And, the danger is the Thermidorian swing. There was a thread last year on Kaufman's: The End of Traditional Civil Rights

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3448119-Excellent-Essay-The-End-of-Traditional-Civil-Rights-Kaufman

Is more freedom always good?

What seems to be happening is that there is an idea that more liberated = progressive = positive for society. Very little thought seems to be given about what this really means, and whether there is a point at which "more liberated" will actually have a negative effect on society and cause harm to some members of society, rather than just making us more free and more civilised and tolerant.

In the early part of the 20th century, homosexuality was illegal, sex outside of marriage was something that respectable people didn't do (or at least didn't talk about), and a woman becoming pregnant outside of marriage was seen as shameful. Most people think our move away from these views is positive, but this can result in a view that it follows that becoming more tolerant and liberal about sex and sexuality must always be positive.

So we have drag queens reading stories to small children, and the liberal-minded say how progressive and inclusive that is. We have the rubber-clad fetishist at the NSPCC and his liberal-minded employers protect him. We see the rubber-clad 'pups' at the pride parades playing with unsuspecting children, and the liberal-minded see no problem with that.

It's the no boundaries and no limits aspect which is the problem. At what point should we draw the line? At what point does 'progressive' start to go backwards and people's behaviour becomes less civilised? If we remove all restrictions and inhibitions about sex, we revert to being animals. Is that the logical end point of queer theory?