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.]

is because there are rigid social norms which necessitate that to achieve something, or they are doing it as the exception which proves the rule - ?

Yes I’d agree with that.

And also that primary sources for individual motivations are rare. You can’t apply modern transgenderism to historical eras. I think at least one of the women pirates or soldiers wrote a book? The one who went off looking for her husband iirc ?

I think one of the reasons I find retrospective transing so annoying is that it denigrates women. Elizabeth I - couldn’t possibly have been a multilingual, highly intelligent and capable ruler as a boring old woman - must be trans (there are even conspiracy theories she was Male ffs.) it denies that women, even in times when they were horribly repressed, actually did stuff

Grr.

If you seriously want to use history to make claims for the rights of men who identify as women,

But again this is an illogical argument on their part. Even if men have been ‘identifying as women’ since the dawn of time it doesn’t make them women, and it doesn’t entitle them to rights over women

What rights is this trying to argue for?wgat rights do transpeople NOT have that everyone else does? None I can see.

You can find a historical precedent for anything. If there were Roman transwomen, so fucking what? We don’t look to Rome for moral lessons on slavery or incest.

My understanding is that the concept of gender identity originated in 1950s psychoanalysis, which aligns with what you say Away about the second book you reference in your post at 10.56. I would be interested to read it. But this was not identical to sex identity which is what we are meaning when we talk about dysphoria, I think, or the modern ‘trans umbrella’ - so even since then, understandings have changed.

My personal view is that any use of the term or concept of transgender prior to the 1950s is anachronistic and even thereafter we would need to be careful to understand how concepts are being used at the time and the meanings people attach to them. Because ideas and movements come out of specific historical circumstances. It would be like calling Joan of Arc a feminist when the concept of feminism did not exist at that point (maybe not the best example but hopefully you get the point). Of course we can find cross-dressing people or people living as the opposite sex, but to call them transgender is imposing a modern day category and historically inaccurate, I think.

I agree that we cannot look to Ancient Greece or Rome for understanding present day concepts or problems but the examples are illustrative to show that understandings of sex and gender are historically contingent and not fixed.

Note I say understandings of sex - actual bodily sex is unlikely to have changed much!!

I guess I am saying that there cannot have been Roman transwomen Aspie because transwomen as a category did not exist, they were whatever the Romans and they understood themselves to be. So the question is how they understood themselves and not how we understand them which as Babel says may be impossible to know.

I think we are all agreeing in different words?

What I meant when i said the evidence must be sparse is indeed that it would only come from a small number of individuals.

That said, I think it could be of interest if any of that evidence showed someone feeling "wrong in their body" in a way similar to how the experience of 'gender dysphoria' or sex dysphoria is described today - I do think it is possible that this is a psychological phenomenon that could be independent of culture and era, so historical evidence could be of interest for that purpose.

Some historians argue that this sort of evidence does exist, kesstrel. DM me for specific references, if interested.

But then, would a reputable medical practitioner diagnose someone without having ever met them? Not really (see recent news items). Otherwise, I am very much in agreement with your points.

I'm open to the idea that this is a psychological phenomenon occurring in different cultures across time but it would be good to have solid data. But in this current climate, when some research is deemed inconvenient or offensive, it might be difficult to procure.

In any case, even though I think much of the political trans rights agenda is extreme and anti-women, trans experiences are worth studying and trans voices are worth hearing. We're all human after all (sorry, it's that time of the year ...)

Looking at Roman cross-dressers as an example of historical gender dysphoria (a modern psychological condition) makes as much sense as trying to understand bulimia in terms of Roman ‘vomitoria’ (in reality the exit of a Roman theatre, not a ‘toilet’ for the mouth).

I see what you are saying kesstrel but it is even difficult to diagnose diseases we recognise historically and fraught with problems - consumption for example is generally accepted as being TB but does that mean it was experienced or diagnosed in the same way as today? What about chlorisis or ‘green sickness’? I guess doctors would read case notes and try to turn it into medical language today, but what does that tell is about either the people suffering that disease at the time or the experience of those people today? It only tells us that doctors think ‘green sickness’ is anaemia.

Not sure if that parallel works, my point is that you cannot retrospectively diagnose physical illnesses so how can you retrospectively diagnose psychological ones?

If we are saying people have always lived and presented as the opposite sex at some places and times in the past, yes, that can be evidenced. Does that mean they were transgender - no, because the category did not exist.

I imagine there have been people feeling ‘wrong’ in terms of their sex for a very long time. What we can’t then do is assign modern notions of transgenderism - not least because only a tiny proportion of what’s under the stonewall umbrella is diagnosable gender dysphoria

I imagine dysphoric thoight disorders are integral to humanity. how they manifest is dependent on the current sociological environment.

We should be very wary of overlaying our modern society on the past. Even current day anthropology shows huge differences in the ways of very fundamental aspects of society. As an example - child rearing - the book ‘cherubs, chattels amd changelings’ for example examines child rearing across a number of human societies in the modern era. Huge differences in practice and even the way children are seen and viewed.

But I suppose if a field doesn’t require any concrete, objective evidence it can theorise out of it’s arse.

Going off on a tangent here, but regarding your point about historic diagnoses Katara: it is not at all clear whether all death waves attributed to the bubonic plague were indeed caused by Yersinia pestis, or whether some epidemics were misattributed.

YY. There’s a great theory that the Black Death was actually a haemorrhagic plague. The epidemiology fits and there are clues like the fact the Iceland was hit but didn’t have rats atcthe time

Ah, now that is interesting. I remember learning that the plague could have been anthrax although I think that theory has now been disputed, it was a while ago. I had not heard the theory of it being a haemorrhagic plague. It makes sense because not all outbreaks fit the spread and symptoms of bubonic plague in the evidence left, as you say, but then diseases also evolve.

assets.cambridge.org/97805218/01508/frontmatter/9780521801508_frontmatter.pdf

Their case is compelling - particularly the epidemiology. This is the textbook but I’m sure they wrote a popular science laywoman style book as well.

I am going to read that in the morning! Cheers, Bowl!

YY. There’s a great theory that the Black Death was actually a haemorrhagic plague. The epidemiology fits and there are clues like the fact the Iceland was hit but didn’t have rats atcthe time

I'm sure I remember seeing a display on that in Eyam.

not least because only a tiny proportion of what’s under the stonewall umbrella is diagnosable gender dysphoria

Am I the only one who thinks we should start talking about sex dysphoria?

I imagine dysphoric thoight disorders are integral to humanity. how they manifest is dependent on the current sociological environment

Foucault actually said something similar. At the start of the queer studies movement there was actually some really interesting research into the history of homosexuality (male, naturally) that looked at aspects such as this. At the same time there was some research into anorexia and whether this was a modern disorder and some scholars noted that in medieval times there were many women who went on religiously inspired famines and insisted that with Jesus' love they could survive only on communion wafers. There were outbreaks of such behaviour in convents apparently.

That is interesting. I’m interested to see if anorexia rates drop during this fad.

YetanotherSpartacus in the 1960s, it was sex identity disorder as far as I am aware. Gender identity referred in psychoanalysis to the concept of how you felt or acted as male or female, it was all about socialisation growing up and gendered norms (whether you played with appropriate toys). I remember being surprised that the concept of gender came from psychiatry and not second wave feminism, as I had thought. It may have come from somewhere else before that, I don’t know.

Sex identity was about dysphoria with your body. What I do not know as I have not had time to look at this properly is when sex identity and gender identity got mixed up or rather the latter replaced the former - because everything hangs on that. Body dysphoria for sex reasons (male/female genitalia and sex characteristics) makes far more sense than gender dysphoria which is about socialised behaviour. I guess scholars must have looked at this, I have not had time to read up properly although I would like to be able to understand more than I do.

KataraJean

Freud's ridiculous ideas about 'penis-envy' etc are all based on girls becoming neurotic due to not accepting their socialisation into their gender. I can see how easily 'penis envy' could become the basis of other theories about rejecting your sex/gender. Despite being based on zero serious evidence, psychoanalytic theory was still hugely influential in psychotherapy at the time the Tavistock was set up. There was a discussion on this thread

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a3413518-Observer-articles-on-fast-tracking-at-the-Tavistock-clinic#82319625

about the founding principles of the Tavistock: the founder was Domenico Di Ceglie, whose underlying view was Freudian.

I don't know if you saw that thread, but this PDF available on Google Scholar give some idea of what his thinking was:

D Di Ceglie - Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2002 - journals.sagepub.com

V interesting thread. I read the linked article and really enjoyed the way that the authors debunked the trans madness in a queer theory context.

That is interesting. I’m interested to see if anorexia rates drop during this fad

Yes. I think that there is a range of complicated connections between self-harm and religious flagellation, anorexia nervosa, anorexia mirabilis amedievalwomanscompanion.com/holy-anorexia-how-medieval-women-coped-with-what-was-eating-at-them/ and patriarchy and sexual violence and abuse. Body dysmorphia has likely always been a 'thing', but its modern incarnation, and particularly amongst young women, is something contemporary and I think linked with self-harm (in the same way that different anorexias have been linked with self-harm). The material on medieval anorexia is interesting btw.

This is a fun thread to read. I like this:
“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.”

Materialist is like Elizabeth in “The Americans”