I. Intro to Queer Theory
The sexual revolution paved the way for more honest and transparent discourse around areas of sexuality usually obscured or ignored in public society. This new variety of frank, sex-positive discourse coincided with women’s and gay liberation movements of the 1960s, promoting the sexual and personal autonomy of individuals previously suppressed by the anti-sex moralism of Christian cultural hegemony and repressive family structures. Naturally, these liberation movements were founded on the value of freedom.
As the decades have passed, there’s more open discourse around sexuality in almost every area of American culture. Yet, in practice, traditional sex-negative values seem to be cropping up within the very communities supposed to be more sexually liberated than ever. Political and academic “queerness” has posed itself as an alternative to - yet simultaneously an umbrella for - any and all non-normative sexual orientations and gender identities. Within the modern queer movement, ambiguity is held as a lofty value at the fore of an understanding, if there is any, of queerness.
Queerness seeks to funnel every aspect of life and reality into a state of boundary-less ambiguity. It’s important to recognize that queerness is related to but not synonymous with LGBT or even non-cis-hetero-normative identity. American author bell hooks describes this concept: “queer not as being about who you are having sex with, that can be a dimension of it, but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.” Queer is not gay. Queerness, rather, is an amorphous quality that cannot be defined, can hardly be described, rejects hard lines and boundaries, yet remains in a paradoxically constant state of “at odds” with its surroundings.
The intellectual experiment of “queering” media illuminates this distinction. Queer theory in academe centers a post-structuralist approach to media, philosophy, psychology, and whatever else. In essence, “queering” a text presents it in a deconstructed form, superimposing fluidity over its language, and analyzing its meaning as devoid of static principles but rather wide open to reader interpretation. Often, simply transgressing norms is the goal of queer theory, rather than reaching an understanding of meaning or reality.
There can be no stability or fixed nature in queerness. It exists as a concept, first and foremost, and any related practice or manifestation of queerness comes from its ideological basis. Queerness in literary criticism, like post-structuralism, can expand the possibilities of meaning within a text to the point of absurdity or even annihilation. Intended meaning can be so thoroughly strained through the sausage grinder of subjectivity, semantics, and ambiguity to come out the other side mangled and in many pieces, often to be rendered worthless and discarded entirely.
Sometimes, of course, the intention of queer theory is well conceived. The rigid structures of socially acceptable sexual and gender roles prior to the sexual revolution sought to deny non-normative behaviors and actions - and those who may practice them - the right to exist, openly or at all. Recognizing variant modes of sexuality or gender expression is an acknowledgement of reality, not an attack against it. Through sexual liberation and its effects on women’s and gay liberation movements, there is undeniably more freedom in the realm of sexual autonomy and identity, and more general acceptance of independent women and LGBT people than in many eras past.
There are, or can be, aspects of the self that necessarily reject classification or definition, that exist “at odds with everything around” them. However, I worry that taking this concept to extremes, as is happening in current American culture, subverts the nature of meaning itself.
II. Beyond Acceptance
In some areas of modern society, LGBT people enjoy a newfound freedom to exist openly with few negative repercussions. When considered in conjunction with the currency of victimhood, I see a new paradigm of “queerness” where the practices of and subsequent identities stemming from variant sexuality or gender expression have moved in the mainstream culture from being widely reviled to being recognized as “cool,” or at least socially useful. This sort of cachet has its rewards and drawbacks.
Mainstream acceptance of gay identity is in its cultural infancy, yet forces within the movement that precipitated this acceptance are already sabotaging its staying power. This is happening on two fronts, which seem philosophically opposed yet in practice work in tandem. On one front, the goal of “gay liberation” gives way to “gay acceptance,” and thus, assimilation within normative society. On the other more dangerous front, every possible variant of sexual orientation or gender expression is gunning for recognition and similar acceptance.
As such, justice for queerdom can only be achieved when the freakiest, fringiest, most fetishistic aspects of gender or sexuality are fully normalized. Seemingly contradictory aims are par for the course within the queer movement.
On one hand, you must accept that “we’re just like you!” The primary political topics involving gay issues in the modern era have been religion, family, and the military. In essence, the question of how gay people can fit into the least gay aspects of society has become paramount. Today, walking around a major city, one can see Christian churches flying rainbow flags. The fight for gay marriage subsumed activism that could have focused on disproportionate levels of poverty and homelessness among LGBT people. Political fervor for gay people’s right to sacrifice their lives for the machinations of the American military is framed as human rights advocacy. The Buttigieg-ification of the gay movement has been a resounding success.
On the other hand, with increasing acceptance and cultural cachet afforded to gay people, more and more groups want to jump on the bandwagon. Today, asexuals, pansexuals in straight relationships, nonbinary individuals, and otherkin march out of the woodwork upon hearing mention of the word “Queer” to declare not only their horrifying oppression within society at large, but also their plight within the LGBT community. While gay men, now seen by this faction as morally worse than evangelical Republicans, are still legally murdered in many areas of the world, an asexual heteroromantic enby with Manic Panic hair was once asked by her/their grandmother if she/they had a boyfriend. And the gays refuse to cater to these types in their hard fought spaces and cultural centers! Such suffering must be incomprehensible because I just can’t understand it.
As more specific and more absurd definitions of sexual/gender identity minutiae emerge, they demand full acceptance. “Equality” cannot be achieved until a cupiosexual furry sub transbian is president. With these demands comes the enshrinement of nu-queer ideology as the only proper way of viewing “queer issues.” Further, any deviation from this ideology is tantamount to hate crime.
A butch lesbian art historian who identifies as transgender lecturing on androgyny and transgenderism in ancient art? Cancelled! Women advocating discussion around the importance of single sex spaces? Transphobic! Actual trans people discussing their concerns regarding the medical transitioning of children? How dare they! Detransitioners sharing their experiences of exploitation and harm from the medical establishment? Heresy!
Historical figures such as Joan of Arc, Marsha P. Johnson, or Stormé DeLarverie are posthumously identified as transgender. Of course, the ideologues will tell you, they only didn’t identify as such because society hadn’t invented this terminology yet! According to the orthodoxy, using the wrong pronouns is discrimination. Hurting someone’s feelings is oppression. Thus, engaging in open discussion, even in good faith, is actually enabling harmful right-wing bigotry.
Outside of the echo chamber, the absurdity of rewriting language and reality to kowtow to the delusions of nu-queer ideologues is common sense and obvious. Within the queer orthodoxy, however, these inanities are propagandized as scripture. And its followers are called to evangelize. This new way of defining LGBT issues is strict and very self-assured. The orthodoxy insists that the current nu-queer model with its recently defined terms must be the absolutely correct and most accurate framework to control nuanced concepts of sex, gender, and sexuality that have existed since time immemorial.
III. Contradictions and Trans Homophobia
Stark contradictions and paradoxes are rife within the modern queer movement. These inconsistencies are so pronounced that I believe the ideology needs further criticism if not outright rejection. The way I see it, the logical failure of nu-queer ideology rests in its nonsensical superimposition of post-structuralist thought onto material reality. While it’s true that many struggle with contrived cultural norms and processes based around invented social structures, the fundamental nature of life on Earth is not a man-made text that can be genuinely altered by changing the language one uses to describe it.
Of utmost importance to nu-queer ideology is the obscuration of the reality of biological sex, particularly in regards to the sex binary and sexual dimorphism in humans. In line with a value of ambiguity, sex and gender are conflated. Simultaneously, sex characteristics and hormones are inconsequential to one’s biological sex (overwritten by one’s internal conception of their gender identity), yet also, one’s natural sex characteristics and hormones must be medically altered to properly align with their gender identity.
Strikingly, despite the insistence that queerness exists “at odds with everything around it,” modern queer identities are static and rigidly defined. The queer ideologues create new and ever more specific labels of one’s most personal identifications. There’s a dozen or more sub-identities under the label “asexual” alone. Gender is simultaneously a social construct and also a rigid, immutable aspect of one’s identity. In a twisted way amplifying conservative values, queer ideologues enshrine gender roles and sex stereotypes as moral law and primary indicators of one’s “gender identity.” A boy or girl exhibiting personality characteristics of the other gender must actually be trans.
This begs the question: what is a boy or a girl — a man or a woman? To adherents of reality, the answer is obvious and physical. To queer ideologues, the answer is a convoluted mess primarily concerned with one’s fashion choices, hobbies, physical or vocal expressions, and general interests. It’s a world where traditionally conservative conceptions of masculinity and femininity reign paramount. Has American queerness reached a point of existing so fully at odds with everything, even itself, that it’s done a full 180° into 1950s-Christian-Leave-It-To-Beaver principles regarding sex and gender?
Young gays and lesbians often face the plight, beginning in childhood, of having to prove their manhood or womanhood despite their variance from gender norms. For decades, we’ve insisted that we are men or women, even if we stray from stereotypes. A boy’s gentleness, interest in dolls or an Easy Bake Oven, and desire to wear a skirt or dress doesn’t make that boy actually a girl. Likewise, a girl’s interest in trucks, sports, or wearing pants and short hair doesn’t make her actually a boy. Is this basic precept of gay acceptance really sacrilege to the queer movement?
One of the most glaring rifts in the queer movement is the natural tension between homosexuality (being attracted to the same sex) and trans ideology regarding biological sex. Today, it seems the majority of trans people now identify as “gay.” That is, men who identify as women are attracted to women, or women who identify as men are attracted to men. The gay and lesbian communities have been reeling from this infiltration of their hard fought spaces. Yet, any pushback against an ideology telling gay women that turning down dick actually reveals their problematic genital preference is deemed transphobic.
Traditionally, the typical person exhibiting gender dysphoria was a young boy whose intense discomfort with the social confines of masculinity presented at an early age in childhood. Now, the predominant group of trans women are autogynephiles - heterosexual men with a sexual fetish for being perceived as women - who transition well into adulthood and demand entry into women’s spaces. The predominant group of trans men are heterosexual girls going through puberty, newly experiencing discomfort with their changing female bodies.
Trends of self-harm, eating disorders, or other forms of body discomfort have long been rife among pubescent girls. It’s not a far jump to see the new craze of transgenderism (with its 4000% increase in recent years) as a social contagion filling the same role as the aforementioned past reactions against female puberty. Rather than, following the ethos of the women’s liberation movement, pushing for a society in which womanhood is valued, respected, and understood, girls are rejecting womanhood entirely. On its face, it’s easy to label this new trend as blatantly anti-feminist.
Now, the trans movement exists diametrically opposed to the sorts of values fought for by gay men and lesbians for decades. Homosexuality, one’s exclusive sexual attraction to the same sex, is deemed a transphobic and fetishistic “genital preference” that must be interrogated and eradicated. Is this not just a new incarnation of conversion therapy? “Gay” trans women (heterosexual men) demand access to women’s changing rooms and lesbians’ sex lives - maybe they haven’t tried the right dick yet! “Gay” trans men (heterosexual women) base their desire for gay men on boys love fanfiction written by and for women. Gay men are now decried as transphobic for not wanting to lick pussy.
The point of sexual liberation was to confront the realities of sexuality without the shroud of anti-sex puritanism. While lesbians and gay men once championed the idea that homosexuality is not a choice, or even that we were “born this way,” gender ideology insists on a new shroud that obscures even the observable realities of biological sex and anatomy. Even after being popularized in a Lady Gaga song, the “born this way” slogan is under attack. Now, people are told they’ve been born wrong and must become lifelong medical patients to correct the inherent defects of their sexed bodies. This is the polar opposite of promoting the acceptance of one’s natural form, even if it differs from stereotype or the majority.
In this way, the trans movement explicitly promotes homophobia.