Idiot's guide to Queer Theory

[Shedbuilder]

I thought I roughly knew what queer theory was about, but trying to explain it to a colleague it sounded quite deranged and now they think I'm joking.

Is there a relatively simple, relatively short read or a thread here that sums it up? I tried Jane Claire Jones but it was a bit too long and academic.

Gilnner just interviewed Heather on his channel. She talks about it on there. Worth a listen

I'm glad you asked OP. I feel like I have something of an understanding of it but I could do with learning more. I'm sure lots of people feel the same way. It's so important to get our heads around the part it's played in the whole trans rights movement.

I found this podcast with Helen Pluckrose to be quite helpful in understanding the theories behind social justice activism in general - worth a listen if you have an hour or so to spare She explains it well

this is long but good. And this idiot mostly understood it

uncommongroundmedia.com/the-trojan-unicorn-queer-theory-and-paedophilia-part-i-%EF%BB%BF-dr-em/

It's been discussed in the feminist book club - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminist_book_club/4040502-PODCLUB-The-Intellectual-Roots-of-Wokeness

The podcast is brilliant but quite in-depth and the thread gets a bit wordy (mostly my fault). I thought Heather Brunskell Evans was great on Glinner's podcast too.

We've been reading The Coddling of the American Mind in the bookclub (there's a thread there too) and I think we'll go on to talk abotu Cynical Theories. Heather Pluckrose and James Lindsay are excellent at explaining it all. Absolutely LOADS of James Lindsay all over youtube, and he has a website called New Discourses which has a woke encyclopaedia.

Will try the Glinner video, thanks. Is there anything that's just about queer theory? The person I'm thinking of isn't, at the moment, ready to start making links with paedophilia and social justice activism etc. Those links will come next. Meanwhile I'm trying to answer the fairly straightforward question of why students and universities seem to exist in a parallel universe to the rest of the world.

Sorry, posted and then saw queenofknives had added something. Thanks. Will have a lovely evening watching that one, too, and seeing if it's suitable.

(Glinner and Heather Brunskell-Evans)

This is from 2017 but is good, it's Derrick Jensen talking to the feminist Susan Cox who writes for Feminist Current.

I don't know if there's an idiot's guide or an easy to understand explanation.

This one is fairly detailed and more on an academic level, but useful. It might help you explain back to your colleague in more simpler terms.

newdiscourses.com/tftw-queer-theory/

Just listened to that Susan Cox interview and it sounds deranged, even when an expert philosopher talks about it in measured words.

@shedbuilder since you specifically mention students/universities, I highly recommend The Coddling of the American Mind. It's an easy read but packs a punch! Here's a youtube you might like -

I also highly recommend Greg Lukianoff's recent discussion with Bret Weinstein

Benjamin Boyce is a good person to look up as well - he has done some good short podcasts on specific aspects of queer theory, as well as all the Evergreen stuff which your friend definitely needs to know more about.

And if your brain isn't done in by all of that, Douglas Murray's book The Madness of Crowds is also excellent. He is also all over youtube. He's a conservative/centrist so you might need to work up to that one!

I thought the whole point of Queer Theory and that awful Butler woman was that it is all too intellectual for the likes of us to understand.

trying to explain it to a colleague it sounded quite deranged and now they think I'm joking.

This made me laugh OP. I've found myself in the same situation with DP. Thanks for starting the thread.

Queer theory is for idiots

@zanahoria

Queer theory is for idiots

Touche

there is nowt as queer as queer theory

When I was doing a dissertation about women's writing during my undergrad degree my tutor, a gay man, kept trying to shift my focus to queer theory, despite the module literally being called Women's Writing. It was utterly enraging and I couldn't understand it. Now I do.

Can't believe I've been on Mumsnet all this time and I didn't know about the feminist book club!

Me too!

Right, I had an intense evening's viewing last night and I'm going in with the Heather B-E interview, even though it's a bit rambly. Glinner, fortunately, is a good Everyman with his astonished questions and I think my co-worker will relate to his incredulity. The Greg/ Bret discussion was deeply depressing and there's too much referencing of shared experience and knowledge for it to be suitable for an absolute beginner. I'm hoping they're catastrophising with all the talk of civil war/ the end of civilisation in the US etc. If they're not we're all in the shit.

Helen Pluckrose is fascinating but it's too long for a novice and there's an expectation that the viewer will already have the basics of SJ and PoMo etc. But really fascinating and joined a lot of dots for me and I wish I'd discovered Pluckrose earlier. I'm a fan and will be looking out for her.

Susan Cox is clear and focussed and I think for anyone else that would be a good choice. I just wondered if the fact that she and the interviewer are American and there's no video would be off-putting as a first step. I'm holding this one in reserve, for after the Glinner/ Heather video.

I went looking for some video of the students who harassed Nicholas Kristachis at Yale and found it, and some commentaries, and I think I'm going to show my colleague those to start with because they show the nightmare of identity politics in action — the narcissism, the entitlement and the 'anything and everything you say will be held against you' nature of the witch-hunt. We were actually talking about the situation of Kevin Price at Clare College being hounded by students and so it will be pertinent. Here's the link for anyone else who might not be aware of it:

Thanks for the steers. I'm still not sure, after all that, that I could summarise queer politics in a short essay but I certainly know more than I did yesterday and I'm going to learn more.

Wow. That video. The snowflake complaining that the professor who has 500 students didn't know her name. Just unbelievable.

Bloody hell. That man is incredibly patient.

The woman who just yells at him for five minutes that he's disgusting... fucking hell. Unhinged.

He and his wife, who also taught at Yale, had to leave.

Jonathan Haidt in the video above makes several excellent points about this generation of young people who have been protected from all harms since birth and whose obsession with feeling safe all the time actually leads to everyone treading on eggshells and controlling behaviour. I could spend all day watching this stuff: suddenly all the weirdness of contemporary life is explained.

It's completely fascinating and terrifying at the same time. One of the points Haidt and Lukianoff make in the book (Coddling) is that young people are getting "younger" in terms of delaying all sorts of milestones in growing up, such as moving out, getting jobs, learning to drive and so on. They are emotionally and mentally more like children even though they expect to be 'treated like adults' - which apparently means 'get everyone to do, say, and think exactly what I want them to'. The students in that video were just having tantrums, screaming and bursting into tears - I think they ought to be extremely embarrassed about how they behaved, but instead they give each other validation and keep pushing it more and more. There must be other students looking on and thinking what absolute dicks they are.