Queer theory resisters

[Awayfromitall]

As has been noted before on this forum, trans activism has appropriated academic queer theory for its own political ends. This explains its success on university campuses. Finally, some scholars within queer theory have begun to resist.

blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/conversion-therapy-v-re-education-camp-open-letter-grace-lavery/

This piece is really worth reading. It makes many points noted by posters on here, but grounds these in queer scholarship. Some interesting quotes:

"the conundrum of why race, which has far less biological grounding than sex, should be socially constructed in the current moment as much more fixed and immutable than gender ..."

"Those who justify aggression as a response to the “violence” of being misrecognized fail to notice that everyone shares this experience on various registers of gender, race, age, class, professional status, nationality, religion, disability, attractiveness — the list goes on."

On TRAs:
"Imagining itself as standing up to authority, this cohort falls eagerly into quasi-medical discourses of diagnosis and cure and rushes to invoke juridical structures of rules and punishment. Calling itself progressive, this cohort presents an uncanny mirror image of rightwing politics with its exaggerated outrage, divisive us-and-them rhetorics, and attacks staged as self-defence."

"Is this demand to suppress voices that questions perhaps because you have no answers to our queries, starting with this one: what does it mean to clam to be “in fact” a woman? That question is grounded in a rich and complex body of feminist and queer scholarship — from Simone de Beauvoir, through Monique Wittig and Judith Butler, to the broad project of deconstructive linguistic theory that is central to queer theory in — that argues that no one is “in fact” this social and linguistic category of “woman.”

"How different are today’s medical regimes of “gender confirmation” from those diagnoses, or other forms of doctoring aimed at altering individuals to conform to — and thus reinforce — holistic norms of gender?"

And this scorcher:
"Our perspective leads us to challenge the deployment of pronouns as a marker of any kind of stable gender identity. We are particularly skeptical of the specialist-approved “they/them” as a marker — a euphemism really — for gender fluidity. Pausing to note the oxymoron of a stable category of fluidity, we observe that this one does more to unsettle distinctions between singular and plural than between masculine and feminine."

"Further, we reject the rituals of social interaction that require a confession of stable gender identity as a precondition of speech (my name is such-and-such and my pronouns are blah, blah, and blah)."

"Ultimately, if we truly value diversity, we have to be allowed our differences." [And that includes difference based on sex. Amen.]

I take your word for it that this is a critique. All I see is salade de mots.

On TRAs:
"Imagining itself as standing up to authority, this cohort falls eagerly into quasi-medical discourses of diagnosis and cure and rushes to invoke juridical structures of rules and punishment. Calling itself progressive, this cohort presents an uncanny mirror image of rightwing politics with its exaggerated outrage, divisive us-and-them rhetorics, and attacks staged as self-defence."

I like this.

Really interesting. Thanks for posting.

Oh, no, vaginafetishist, this is actually a well-made argument, just in very academic language.

• The first point the authors make is about the "Rachel Dolezal problem": if it's offensive when people (such as Rachel Dolezal) claim to be black when in reality they are white, why is it not offensive when males claim to be females?

• the second point is: no person has a right for others to see exactly what they see in themselves. I might think of myself as a great artist but others think my paintings are rubbish - I'll just have to live with that.

• TRAs think they are rebelling against some 'gender system' and are really courageous rule breakers when in reality what they want to do is to use the law and the state to coerce others into a very restrictive set of rules. That makes them very conventional authoritarian bores.

• The next point might not be shared by everyone here but in a nutshell, there is no such thing as a 'real woman' - because we are all different and shaped by social norms and our feelings about ourselves also change with the passing of time. But a lot of TRA rhetoric assumes a stable identity of 'woman' that can be held by biological females and males. This assumption is actually very restrictive - and queer theory was originally about mocking such restrictions.

• The next point is essentially 'non-binaries are self-important so-and-sos' and if you say your gender identity is fluid and undefined, why do you insist on a particular pronoun?

• And finally, those 'pronoun rounds' that force everyone to talk about their gender identity when this might be not something they actually want to talk about are really the epitome of coercive, peer pressure BS.

That would be my translation - hope it makes sense.

Those who justify aggression as a response to the “violence” of being misrecognized fail to notice that everyone shares this experience on various registers of gender, race, age, class, professional status, nationality, religion, disability, attractiveness...

The writer may be on 'my side' regarding TRAs, but queer theory is still bollocks in my humble STEM view. What does 'the experience of being misrecognized on registers of attractiveness' even mean? That I identify as a supermodel and nobody shares this perception?

God, how I hate Queer Theory.

All I see is salade de mots.

Yes.

Thanks for the translation, my brain gets blurry reading that kind of thing. I can see there is some criticism there but still no such thing as a real woman.
'The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house'

the second point is: no person has a right for others to see exactly what they see in themselves. I might think of myself as a great artist but others think my paintings are rubbish - I'll just have to live with that.

No, Away, just no. This stops making sense as soon as you use anything more objectifyable than art.

Nobody who has ever achieved something objectifiable will agree with that. You cannot identify as a biotechnologist if you can't produce a clone. You can't identify as a swimmer if you'd instantly drown in any 2 meter deep pool. You can't identify as a computer programmer, if you have never touched a computer. And you are not the first man on the moon, if you have never been higher up than 1000 meters from sea level.

I'd sure like to know how devoid of achievement the life of Queer Theorists is that they cannot grasp that.

I think this observation is worth quoting:

"But what we too often face today in the academy is something that looks like less like activism or scholarship and more like adolescent acting-out. Now that scientists have decided that adolescence — itself a recently invented identity closely linked to advanced capitalism — persists into the third decade of human life, perhaps we should not be surprised to find behaviors associated with adolescents proliferating, tolerated and sometimes even encouraged within educational institutions. To be specific, we identify as adolescent the furious response to the discovery that others do not perceive you exactly the way you’d like to imagine to yourself. Those who justify aggression as a response to the “violence” of being misrecognized fail to notice that everyone shares this experience on various registers of gender, race, age, class, professional status, nationality, religion, disability, attractiveness — the list goes on."

deepwatersolo

I think that para means that we all have to accept that people see who we are in those factors, and therefore men claiming we are misrecognising their female identity are ignoring the fact that we all deal with the impact of being judged on those factual registers all the time, their trans problem isn't any different/special to the rest of us.

But nobody misrecognizes anything, Bubonic. If I can't see the female in a male or the young in the old or Napoleon in the guy in the psych ward, I am not misrecognizing anyone, I am simply not being delusional.

What I see is a discredited theory trying to shore itself up by introducing epicycles.

'Susan Cox on Queer Theory
Excerpts from a January 2017 interview with Susan Cox and Derrick Jensen about queer theory'

concludes:
"So this is what queer theory does. There are no material relations of power or exploitation or harm. There are merely these phantoms of social norms that are causing the harm, these categorizations of people, the categorization of pedophile, or the BDSM or the sadist, even.”

“This is actually a real problem, because as Mary Daly said, “We cannot fight against oppression when there are no namable oppressors.” So this is a real problem for feminism, and also for any sort of activism or revolution, political revolution, when we cannot establish class consciousness and identify the division of classes. Who are the exploiters, who are the exploited?”

“And postmodernist theory argues that we need to deconstruct the creation of the category of “other” and make it so that there is no distinction between groups, and everybody is recognized as infinitely unique individuals who are irreducible to any social category of description. But in reality you actually need to identify yourself as member of an exploited class and unite together in class interest to be able to fight any power that is oppressing you.”

“We see this throughout history, throughout any act of slavery, colonization, or oppression. The dominant group can’t subordinate another group merely through brute force. They also need to engage in this sophisticated process of dismantling the group as a group, and this is done through banning their language, their religion and destroying their way of life.”

“This is also what happens in any strategy of oppression. The oppressed group is turned into nothing more than a parody of what they once were, and a commodity, like sacred cultural symbols are turned into this exotic pattern that the dominant group will tile their bathroom with. Or religious garb will just turn into this fun costume that the dominant group will use when they’re at a costume party and play. So it reduces the people, the oppressed group to nothing more than a performance, and a parody.

And this is what it’s being advocated for in queer theory, that a woman is nothing more than a performance, she is just a citation of a norm, and anyone can put on this costume. It’s basically the obliteration of the oppressed group.”

therearesomanythingswrongwiththis.com/2018/03/22/susan-cox-on-queer-theory/

(ht Glinner)

Yes, I think the point being made is that being "misrecognised" and angry about it is stupid adolescent acting out, when it is just normal behaviour to see reality.

Misrecognition, as an idea is bollocks. It's so obviously false, having to give out a badge saying my pronouns are nob and nobber proves it.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that we all have to agree with queer theory now but it's important to note that the dogmatic views of some TRAs are a poor misinterpretation of the theory. And if trans dogma is ever to be opposed in the humanities, this point is important.

I've seen too many self-satisfied humanities scholars whip out theory jargon, Judith Butler et al. to shore up their nonsensical points. Let's direct this scholarship back at them.

And deepwatersolo, of course there are measurable achievements. Facts. There is a reason why my iPhone doesn't work or why the days get shorter in winter.

I think the authors implicitly acknowledge this when they talk about "linguistic and social categories". And historically, it is true that the biological categories of men and women did not always match with the social categories of men and women.

Its refreshing to see this actually.

I working in a uni at the moment and like other organisations where people are socialised culturally into "listening" to every view point meetings and interactions can get dominated and diverted occasionally by one person talking shite, no one will tell them to shut up because they don't know what they are on about. It's hugely time wasting and unproductive, and I sit looking at the silent listeners thinking FFS say summat. When I do say summat they are blindsided by my apparent rudeness. I dont care. My attitude is "stop wrecking my meeting, you are embarrassing yourself and making fools of the rest of us."

Let's direct this scholarship back at them.

This scholarship is shit, though, OP. This is "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" type of stuff that, as vaginafestishist said, will not 'dismantle the master's house.' It is like arguing Galileo Galilei should not be punished, because God is merciful and will forgive him putting the sun into the center in his flawed model, not acknowledging that Galileo is fucking right. I just can't.

I think the authors implicitly acknowledge this...

And here is where the problem starts. Verbose obfuscation and headfuckery to a point where nobody can really know what the authors meant, probably not even themselves. Nailing jelly to the wall comes to mind.

Well, that phrase about the master's house was written by someone who has been incorporated into queer and intersectional feminism. So if we say all queer theory is crap, we're potentially giving up on useful intellectual resources. Also actually, I think there's some interesting stuff to be learned from historical trans experiences about male and female socialisation and so on.

I'm guessing you're in STEM, deepwatersolo, so you are free to go back to your microscopes or lasers or whatever it is your are working with when you like but by some unfortunate circumstance, I'm stuck in the humanities and I somehow have to survive this collective madness that is trans dogma.

I enjoyed this bit:

Tellingly your refusal of our humor is phrased to lock us into stable gender categories of your own devising: “You sound nothing like Oscar Wilde, my dude,” you assert. To the extent that we, who have been playing with gender for a long time, are “dudes,” we are indeed your dudes: your fantasy antagonists whose imagined dude-iness is necessary for your claim to be “in fact, a woman” to authorize the anger you are so eager to perform.

It is fascinating to see queer theory used to critique TRAs. I have always thought that TRAs didn't really have an internal logic, and this underscores that.

I think the authors know what they mean, deepwatersolo. They are literary scholars, dealing with words, not genes or hormones. So they know they can only talk about linguistic and social categories. I actually appreciate the humility. Not enough of that around, in my opinion.

Exactly, PineappleSunrise.

If everything is a performance anyway, why do we have to take this particular performance (shall we call it "TRA outrage medium rare") so terribly seriously? Gah ...

a lot of TRA rhetoric assumes a stable identity of 'woman' that can be held by biological females and males. This assumption is actually very restrictive - and queer theory was originally about mocking such restrictions

This, I think, is the core translation of what I agree is the usual word salad-y fare from queer theorists.

Whatever one thinks of queer theory - and I am a materialist, so most certainly not a fan - it is entirely true that it's been colonised and mutilated by a bunch of idiot authoritarian know nothings who are mostly ruled by the desires of dicks.

In that respect, actual queer theorists should be as pissed off as anyone else by this supremacist invading force that fucks up everything it touches.

Ah, those meetings ... Bubonicpanic, now you know why academics hate meetings so much. And why everybody secretly loves a meeting chair who has the guts to cut someone off. Keep on not caring.