Sunday, April 03, 2022

"Queer Theory" Defined

There's a new Critical Social Justice Theory out there called "Queer Theory."  It has to do with sex, of course, but not using the traditional definition of "queer."  It's likely to fail in the long run for reasons you'll see in the quotation.

Follow this carefully:

...What it refers to in Critical Social Justice is relatively straightforward and easy to understand and derives from this use while adopting a new activist commitment: queer is that which is disruptive of normativities, which is to say that which rejects both the normal and norms as a matter of principle, particularly but not entirely limited to matters of sex, gender, and sexuality.

Queer, then, doesn't mean gay or even weird in queer Theory and Critical Social Justice. It means that which defies being normal and makes the normal seem absurd or chauvinistic. Thus, as homosexuality became decriminalized, then normalized, and especially as gay acceptance proceeded, culminating in particular with the acceptance of gay marriage, queer activism had to assert itself against these developments, which it seems superficially to work for. This is because homosexuality (LGBT, broadly) became part of the broad umbrella of that which is considered within the norm for contemporary liberal societies, and thus became, to queer Theory, useless for activism, indeed part of the dreaded status quo. (Though he certainly wasn't a queer Theorist, Paolo Freire's remark comes immediately to mind: that for a revolution to remain authentic, it must be perpetual, for otherwise its changes become part of the status quo and it's no longer a revolution.)...

Now we see that child-rape and child-torture is becoming 'normalized' in the judicial system.  It used to be unthinkable and punishable by VERY long prison or psychiatric hospital confinement (if not death of maiming by citizens.)

In a few years, will child-rape/torture become normalized enough for Queer Theory to oppose it?

Not likely. 

Depravity is the point.  Queer Theory practitioners will be ignored or eliminated so long as The People That Count want libertinism to remain--which libertinism is the Soma of the population.

They'll get their 15 minutes.  That's all.

HT:  AOSHQ

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