Thank you for explaining queer theory and postmodernism in a very understandable way. You also confirmed my belief that these are essentially destructive, nihilistic ideologies that only seek to destroy civilization itself, apparently just for the fun of it, with absolutely no idea what to put in the place of what they have destroyed, and no interest in even trying to craft a replacement. The rest of us need to realize that civilized society is very fragile and once it has been broken, hundreds of years of chaos are likely to be the result. We must resist the societal breakdown that these people are trying to cause, or the disorder following the disintegration will be unimaginable.
I also do not understand why the intellectuals who peddle this idiocy apparently fail to realize that the first ones to die will be them when the thugs kill all the elites as they take over what is left. One would think that highly educated people have enough knowledge of history to realize that every revolution intended to destroy the current social order has turned out that way, and that basic self-preservation should not allow them to destroy themselves. Think Bolshevism in Russia 1917, communism and Mao in China 1949, to cite recent examples.
2nd para: I don't think they're trying to create Mad Max. They think they're ushering in Utopia (and the new world will, of course, preserve their status).
> apparently fail to realize that the first ones to die will be them
Some say it's a kind of apoptosis. Deep down these folks know they are better off dead. I don't disagree, the problem is that they want the rest of us dead too.
Like most people who want to burn shit down, they don't have consistent principles, it is selective based on or what they agree with. They are just fine inserting language changes to the(ir) current model and have zero issues with a binary truth when physically assaulted.
It's timely (and welcome) that this appears as the beginning of Pride month, because Pride has been hijacked by people who have very specific ideas about just what we should be proud about. (These are, of course, the same people who go on about smashing convention.) To them, gay rights must include opposition to capitalism, support for Palestine, disdain for police, and a whole suite of other social justice positions. And while I might sympathize with some of those positions, I certainly don't think it's my place to tell attendees *they* have to agree.
To my mind, Pride is for ALL gay and bisexual people: police and activists, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, capitalists and socialists. If we start picking and choosing who measures up, then we're just replacing one set of expecations with another. Not very "queer", is it?
No surprise that Pride organizations have imploded in city after city as battles over outqueering existing leadership drives out everyone competent to organize anything beyond a tantrum
Yes, everyone should have realized something had gone seriously wrong when organizers of pride events decided to exclude gay police and military. I'm not sure whether these ideologues' were eaten up with New New Left dumbass or, more likely, just a bunch of attention seeking narcissists. It's hard to credit the notion that they're so bloody ignorant they don't know what a milestone in the struggle for gay equality it was for us to be able to serve openly.
If destroying norms is the goal of queerness, then what happens when destroying norms is the norm? Does that mean the end of queerness? Or does it mean chaos rules?
And there you have it: the pretzel logic of “there should never be standing norms” and “there are no truths” runs straight into questions such as you have posed. Another example of this phenomenon is the assertion that we should respect all cultures and learn from them, which runs straight into the fact that we know that the typical cultures in history and outside of the modern Western world believe that THEIR culture is the only one that is best and that other cultures deserve no particular respect at all.
Well-written. This does a good job of explaining what Queer Theory really is--and that's important. My experience is that when the Queer Theorists' ideas are implemented, the justification is that it's just efforts to be kinder to marginalized groups. But when you really understand the purpose, you see that's not it at all. It's to destroy social norms, with a bizarre assumption that some sort of sexual utopia (that can't be described at all) will somehow take their place (without anyone having any idea how).
There's just one bit that I have a very, very minor quibble with, however. Here's the sentence: "In their campaign against social norms, queer theorists might accidentally do a lot of harm." I think there are many who are "accidentally" doing harm. But I think that for many of those held up as the gurus and originators of this movement, there's nothing accidental about it. Chaos is the goal. Social chaos. Emotional chaos. Widespread dysfunction and misery is the goal... because when people can't create order or meaning for themselves, they inevitably give power to their gurus to take over for them.
As will all Marxist theories, in the end it's a power grab and the peoples' lives ruined by their bad ideas are a feature, not a bug.
ITA that it’s always a power grab, and add that there really is an underlying mystical belief that they are advancing humankind to a utopia and to an actual new kind of human. It’s concerning that in recent times this includes denying biological reality and powerful people advocating for genetic manipulation and also merging humans with machines.
For some, the resultant harms in pan-destruction may be inadvertent, but largely it is intended. They simply think indescrminate destruction is good. How else to wage war on humanity they seem to loathe, including, if not targeting, children. It's time for this kind of academic engendered theory to be seen for what it is: toxic garbage. Sane and seriously smart people need to dispose of it thoroughly and carefully, as dangerous, self indulgent, destructive poison.
You mention adult trans surgery as an example of a negative right but if it is financed by the state doesn’t it become a positive right, ie a burden on everyone else ?
To your point that queer theory (along with all Critical/Marxian/Hegelian) wants to endlessly tear down all that is, with no idea of what will or should replace it, James Lindsay lays out the case that the underlying philosophy to all of this is an essentially religious belief. That belief, founded in a gnostic tradition, is that Man has a true nature far beyond what we can imagine today, and that the only way for Man to discover and transform into this new type of being is for all of everything to be deconstructed and destroyed. Every current and former social construct is a facade; an oppressive structure that is preventing Man from discovering his true (mystical) identity.
In other words, they not only can’t describe what should replace the destruction, they insist that the destruction must cycle over and over until, in their weird belief system, we will break free of ALL chains and a utopia will manifest.
Thank you for this. A lot of well-intentioned liberals have carelessly allowed themselves to be influenced by the type of folks described in this article: people who really do think that smashing norms is a positive end in itself; who can't tell the difference between baby and bathwater anymore, and aren't interested in trying.
Shortly before I saw this article, I was checking my school district's Facebook page and saw this in their Pride Month post: "We're committed to challenging societal norms and promoting social justice." I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt that they meant "challenging harmful social norms" rather than indiscriminately challenging ALL norms, but when I see stuff like the Little Miss Hot Mess article, and hear others in my district saying that ANY consideration of age-appropriateness in public-school book selection is bigoted...well, it's hard to avoid the impression that some of these folks have become so open-minded that their brains have fallen out. And that's scary. It's important to have articles like this that lay out the nihilistic aspects of "queer theory" so clearly, because a lot of people just don't want to see it.
> Pathologizing people for wanting to have sex with other consenting adults isn’t something we should ever have done.
Criminalizing what consenting adults do is arguably wrong, however, that sodomy is a perversion is simply a biological fact. I use the word objectively. Smoking is also a perversion, as is sword swallowing and any number of other things that huge numbers of people do. In my view the normalization of sodomy is what opened the door to trans -- once one has let go of reality it's hard to decide where to draw the line and on what basis one might draw it. I say that if we are to return to reality we need to return to all of it.
Julian, have you heard of trans widows? The ex-wives of men who suddenly demand "role play" in bed and cross-dress, also demanding to be named as "mother, mum, mama" &etc to the children? Probably not, because we've been silenced, defamed as homophobes, bigots and blah, blah, blah, religious-over-traditionalists. Thanks, Colin, from trans widows, for being willing to stand on the same platform as Christians &etc--because the Bible is secretly biological--just fyi. Because we come in all stripes. But, unfortunately, in my data on 61 trans widows, (#61 just answered my survey) we have been threatened, actually assaulted and unfortunately raped (21 of 61 assaulted, 24 of 61 raped) by lingerie-wearing husband. My story of discovery of husband's cross-dressing and behavior putting me at risk goes back 30 years.
Imagine recentering the world on normalcy and reality? I mean doing so explicitly. We've had maybe 60 years in which everything has revolved around the POC, the wimin, the perverts, the freaks, the loosers of every kind, the lunatics and mentally disturbed kids, the burners of cities, the jihadis. So let's have a decade or two were we turn our attention to normal people -- the sort of folks who make society run, the sort of folks who give more than they take. The sort of people who build rather than tear down.
"New HIV infections per year fell from over 130,000 in 1985 to just 34,800 in 2019. 34,800 is of course still far too high, but it’s tough to look at a decline of 73.2 percent in just over 3 decades and conclude that our tools aren’t working."
Ah, but you see those statistics were constructed using social norms and constructed knowledge that were developed in order to maintain the ruling class in power so you can ignore them as they have no more truth than if someone, via a different set of social norms, claims that new HIV infections have been steadily rising.
Am I doing queer theory correctly here? Maybe I should I add that the methods of statistics and science that enable that statement to be made were developed by such white, colonialist and racist powers as the British Empire and other European (former) powers and the USA as they sought dominance of the world?
If whatever social norms and knowledge that exist in society are arbitrary and simply reflect the modes of behaviour and beliefs that enable the ruling class to maintain their power then there is no basis for criticising the ruling class, or the social norms, other than that you would like the power to lie elsewhere.
It also follows you can make any shit up so long as it serves the purposes of undermining the norms you dislike or believe are in the way of your advancement or the advancement of those who you think deserve more power. If you buy into this, you will thus tend to view any society, no matter how conducive to human happiness or flourishing it may be, as a simple power struggle, a zero sum game. It is utterly nihilistic.
Put any group of 10,000 people together from any culture and come back in 10 years. Each person will have found their spot in society. Some people don't want to work a lot. Some want to always be earning money. Some have high IQ's some don't. About 500 of them will have a personality disorder. About 300 will have bipolar disease and about 760 will suffer from depression. 900 will be alcoholics. 1600 will be battling drug addiction. 250 will be mentally retarded. Some have great physical strength and stamina, some don't. So, the leaders come from a group that doesn't have these issues. It is just the way it is. And among that group is a hardcore group that won't be helped by money. Culture is the key. Quit sending our money to countries that will always be dragging us down or be outright enemies of us.
The problem with liberals is that they think they can just make everyone the same. There is no spiritual or biological reason for this to be true. In fact it's impossible. What liberals can do, is play on your guilt when you are successful and tell you that you need to give up what you have to help everyone. And you should, but you get to call the shots. After working with the homeless for 8 years, I discovered that even in homeless populatons, few can be healed of what makes them homeless. So, we house them.
If we give 10% of our income to help the homeless that is great. What is not great is that the government will press for more and more money for "programs," that they think up apart from our values and throw our hard earned money at them. They claim it will help someone they consider "disadvantaged." Disinterested is a better word. Some don't care. That is a fact. Jesus said, "The poor will be with you always be with you." Not everyone can be a surgeon or a CEO. So, just let nature be nature. Don't shove the zebras in with the Lions.
Our "norms" come from the Bible in our Culture and the British empire's culture. The Brits have thrown a lot of that away and are suffering the consequences. Most cultures are a hodge podge of superstition, backward deities and a lack of shared morals and values. We are Americans due to the foundation of the Bible. You don't have to believe the Bible. Richards Dawkins and other atheist have said in reality they are living as "cultural Christians." And they agree it is a good thing.Is there here on earth a culture I don't know about that is just great that doesn't have Christianity or Judaism as a base?
Thank you for explaining queer theory and postmodernism in a very understandable way. You also confirmed my belief that these are essentially destructive, nihilistic ideologies that only seek to destroy civilization itself, apparently just for the fun of it, with absolutely no idea what to put in the place of what they have destroyed, and no interest in even trying to craft a replacement. The rest of us need to realize that civilized society is very fragile and once it has been broken, hundreds of years of chaos are likely to be the result. We must resist the societal breakdown that these people are trying to cause, or the disorder following the disintegration will be unimaginable.
I also do not understand why the intellectuals who peddle this idiocy apparently fail to realize that the first ones to die will be them when the thugs kill all the elites as they take over what is left. One would think that highly educated people have enough knowledge of history to realize that every revolution intended to destroy the current social order has turned out that way, and that basic self-preservation should not allow them to destroy themselves. Think Bolshevism in Russia 1917, communism and Mao in China 1949, to cite recent examples.
1st para: Well said! I completely agree.
2nd para: I don't think they're trying to create Mad Max. They think they're ushering in Utopia (and the new world will, of course, preserve their status).
> apparently fail to realize that the first ones to die will be them
Some say it's a kind of apoptosis. Deep down these folks know they are better off dead. I don't disagree, the problem is that they want the rest of us dead too.
100% agree.
Like most people who want to burn shit down, they don't have consistent principles, it is selective based on or what they agree with. They are just fine inserting language changes to the(ir) current model and have zero issues with a binary truth when physically assaulted.
It's timely (and welcome) that this appears as the beginning of Pride month, because Pride has been hijacked by people who have very specific ideas about just what we should be proud about. (These are, of course, the same people who go on about smashing convention.) To them, gay rights must include opposition to capitalism, support for Palestine, disdain for police, and a whole suite of other social justice positions. And while I might sympathize with some of those positions, I certainly don't think it's my place to tell attendees *they* have to agree.
To my mind, Pride is for ALL gay and bisexual people: police and activists, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, capitalists and socialists. If we start picking and choosing who measures up, then we're just replacing one set of expecations with another. Not very "queer", is it?
Well said!
I'll happily support pride month for my LGB (and even T) friends. But increasingly it feels like Pride festivals have been hijacked by the Q.
Brad sums up my thoughts well: https://x.com/brad_polumbo/status/1797090646605328624 and https://x.com/brad_polumbo/status/1796980578316591249
No surprise that Pride organizations have imploded in city after city as battles over outqueering existing leadership drives out everyone competent to organize anything beyond a tantrum
Yes, everyone should have realized something had gone seriously wrong when organizers of pride events decided to exclude gay police and military. I'm not sure whether these ideologues' were eaten up with New New Left dumbass or, more likely, just a bunch of attention seeking narcissists. It's hard to credit the notion that they're so bloody ignorant they don't know what a milestone in the struggle for gay equality it was for us to be able to serve openly.
If destroying norms is the goal of queerness, then what happens when destroying norms is the norm? Does that mean the end of queerness? Or does it mean chaos rules?
I'm honestly not sure.
But I do suspect that queer theory eats itself.
And there you have it: the pretzel logic of “there should never be standing norms” and “there are no truths” runs straight into questions such as you have posed. Another example of this phenomenon is the assertion that we should respect all cultures and learn from them, which runs straight into the fact that we know that the typical cultures in history and outside of the modern Western world believe that THEIR culture is the only one that is best and that other cultures deserve no particular respect at all.
Well-written. This does a good job of explaining what Queer Theory really is--and that's important. My experience is that when the Queer Theorists' ideas are implemented, the justification is that it's just efforts to be kinder to marginalized groups. But when you really understand the purpose, you see that's not it at all. It's to destroy social norms, with a bizarre assumption that some sort of sexual utopia (that can't be described at all) will somehow take their place (without anyone having any idea how).
There's just one bit that I have a very, very minor quibble with, however. Here's the sentence: "In their campaign against social norms, queer theorists might accidentally do a lot of harm." I think there are many who are "accidentally" doing harm. But I think that for many of those held up as the gurus and originators of this movement, there's nothing accidental about it. Chaos is the goal. Social chaos. Emotional chaos. Widespread dysfunction and misery is the goal... because when people can't create order or meaning for themselves, they inevitably give power to their gurus to take over for them.
As will all Marxist theories, in the end it's a power grab and the peoples' lives ruined by their bad ideas are a feature, not a bug.
ITA that it’s always a power grab, and add that there really is an underlying mystical belief that they are advancing humankind to a utopia and to an actual new kind of human. It’s concerning that in recent times this includes denying biological reality and powerful people advocating for genetic manipulation and also merging humans with machines.
So, in short, queer theory opposes just about anything that's healthy and normal.
Also, anyone who writes a paper under the name Little Miss Hot Mess should not be taken seriously.
Excellent article, Julian. It was a pleasure to read and helps me understand what queer theorists and their followers are up to.
Thank you <3
For some, the resultant harms in pan-destruction may be inadvertent, but largely it is intended. They simply think indescrminate destruction is good. How else to wage war on humanity they seem to loathe, including, if not targeting, children. It's time for this kind of academic engendered theory to be seen for what it is: toxic garbage. Sane and seriously smart people need to dispose of it thoroughly and carefully, as dangerous, self indulgent, destructive poison.
You mention adult trans surgery as an example of a negative right but if it is financed by the state doesn’t it become a positive right, ie a burden on everyone else ?
To your point that queer theory (along with all Critical/Marxian/Hegelian) wants to endlessly tear down all that is, with no idea of what will or should replace it, James Lindsay lays out the case that the underlying philosophy to all of this is an essentially religious belief. That belief, founded in a gnostic tradition, is that Man has a true nature far beyond what we can imagine today, and that the only way for Man to discover and transform into this new type of being is for all of everything to be deconstructed and destroyed. Every current and former social construct is a facade; an oppressive structure that is preventing Man from discovering his true (mystical) identity.
In other words, they not only can’t describe what should replace the destruction, they insist that the destruction must cycle over and over until, in their weird belief system, we will break free of ALL chains and a utopia will manifest.
Thank you for this. A lot of well-intentioned liberals have carelessly allowed themselves to be influenced by the type of folks described in this article: people who really do think that smashing norms is a positive end in itself; who can't tell the difference between baby and bathwater anymore, and aren't interested in trying.
Shortly before I saw this article, I was checking my school district's Facebook page and saw this in their Pride Month post: "We're committed to challenging societal norms and promoting social justice." I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt that they meant "challenging harmful social norms" rather than indiscriminately challenging ALL norms, but when I see stuff like the Little Miss Hot Mess article, and hear others in my district saying that ANY consideration of age-appropriateness in public-school book selection is bigoted...well, it's hard to avoid the impression that some of these folks have become so open-minded that their brains have fallen out. And that's scary. It's important to have articles like this that lay out the nihilistic aspects of "queer theory" so clearly, because a lot of people just don't want to see it.
> Pathologizing people for wanting to have sex with other consenting adults isn’t something we should ever have done.
Criminalizing what consenting adults do is arguably wrong, however, that sodomy is a perversion is simply a biological fact. I use the word objectively. Smoking is also a perversion, as is sword swallowing and any number of other things that huge numbers of people do. In my view the normalization of sodomy is what opened the door to trans -- once one has let go of reality it's hard to decide where to draw the line and on what basis one might draw it. I say that if we are to return to reality we need to return to all of it.
Julian, have you heard of trans widows? The ex-wives of men who suddenly demand "role play" in bed and cross-dress, also demanding to be named as "mother, mum, mama" &etc to the children? Probably not, because we've been silenced, defamed as homophobes, bigots and blah, blah, blah, religious-over-traditionalists. Thanks, Colin, from trans widows, for being willing to stand on the same platform as Christians &etc--because the Bible is secretly biological--just fyi. Because we come in all stripes. But, unfortunately, in my data on 61 trans widows, (#61 just answered my survey) we have been threatened, actually assaulted and unfortunately raped (21 of 61 assaulted, 24 of 61 raped) by lingerie-wearing husband. My story of discovery of husband's cross-dressing and behavior putting me at risk goes back 30 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owyUun77TKo&t=58s
Imagine recentering the world on normalcy and reality? I mean doing so explicitly. We've had maybe 60 years in which everything has revolved around the POC, the wimin, the perverts, the freaks, the loosers of every kind, the lunatics and mentally disturbed kids, the burners of cities, the jihadis. So let's have a decade or two were we turn our attention to normal people -- the sort of folks who make society run, the sort of folks who give more than they take. The sort of people who build rather than tear down.
Never thought I'd see a writer for Reality's Last Stand use "they" for an individual (Wilchins). Disappointing.
Is anyone linking the declining female fertility rate in all rich, western nations to the rise of wokeism?
"New HIV infections per year fell from over 130,000 in 1985 to just 34,800 in 2019. 34,800 is of course still far too high, but it’s tough to look at a decline of 73.2 percent in just over 3 decades and conclude that our tools aren’t working."
Ah, but you see those statistics were constructed using social norms and constructed knowledge that were developed in order to maintain the ruling class in power so you can ignore them as they have no more truth than if someone, via a different set of social norms, claims that new HIV infections have been steadily rising.
Am I doing queer theory correctly here? Maybe I should I add that the methods of statistics and science that enable that statement to be made were developed by such white, colonialist and racist powers as the British Empire and other European (former) powers and the USA as they sought dominance of the world?
If whatever social norms and knowledge that exist in society are arbitrary and simply reflect the modes of behaviour and beliefs that enable the ruling class to maintain their power then there is no basis for criticising the ruling class, or the social norms, other than that you would like the power to lie elsewhere.
It also follows you can make any shit up so long as it serves the purposes of undermining the norms you dislike or believe are in the way of your advancement or the advancement of those who you think deserve more power. If you buy into this, you will thus tend to view any society, no matter how conducive to human happiness or flourishing it may be, as a simple power struggle, a zero sum game. It is utterly nihilistic.
Put any group of 10,000 people together from any culture and come back in 10 years. Each person will have found their spot in society. Some people don't want to work a lot. Some want to always be earning money. Some have high IQ's some don't. About 500 of them will have a personality disorder. About 300 will have bipolar disease and about 760 will suffer from depression. 900 will be alcoholics. 1600 will be battling drug addiction. 250 will be mentally retarded. Some have great physical strength and stamina, some don't. So, the leaders come from a group that doesn't have these issues. It is just the way it is. And among that group is a hardcore group that won't be helped by money. Culture is the key. Quit sending our money to countries that will always be dragging us down or be outright enemies of us.
The problem with liberals is that they think they can just make everyone the same. There is no spiritual or biological reason for this to be true. In fact it's impossible. What liberals can do, is play on your guilt when you are successful and tell you that you need to give up what you have to help everyone. And you should, but you get to call the shots. After working with the homeless for 8 years, I discovered that even in homeless populatons, few can be healed of what makes them homeless. So, we house them.
If we give 10% of our income to help the homeless that is great. What is not great is that the government will press for more and more money for "programs," that they think up apart from our values and throw our hard earned money at them. They claim it will help someone they consider "disadvantaged." Disinterested is a better word. Some don't care. That is a fact. Jesus said, "The poor will be with you always be with you." Not everyone can be a surgeon or a CEO. So, just let nature be nature. Don't shove the zebras in with the Lions.
Our "norms" come from the Bible in our Culture and the British empire's culture. The Brits have thrown a lot of that away and are suffering the consequences. Most cultures are a hodge podge of superstition, backward deities and a lack of shared morals and values. We are Americans due to the foundation of the Bible. You don't have to believe the Bible. Richards Dawkins and other atheist have said in reality they are living as "cultural Christians." And they agree it is a good thing.Is there here on earth a culture I don't know about that is just great that doesn't have Christianity or Judaism as a base?