Queer Theory - Tumblr Posts

That whole "stop accusing queer men of upholding patriarchy, we shouldn't divide queer people by gender lines" thing... Like, on one hand, yes, queerness is about breaking down gender roles, not taking them to war, and we absolutely shouldn't take queer men and tell them that we are not about to support them because they're "too privileged", Fuck that. But on the other hand, ignoring how patriarchy DOES EXIST in queer spaces is just wishful thinking. Like, gay men get higher levels of visibility and respect from the mainstream than lesbians do. Bi women are treated by the community with a higher level of hostility and alienation than bi men are treated with. Trans women are (sometimes, this is pretty context-dependant and there's nuance to how it interacts with internal sense of identity next to expression and early signs of dysphoria, but pretty often) socialized as boys when they are younger, and therefore have less imprinted shame on them from the age where everything you believe about the world shapes what you will believe about the world forever than trans men are stuck with. Trans men, on the other hand (and there's nuance to that too, that mostly depends on passing and gender presentation, but again, pretty often) gain societal privilege over trans women in similar positions to theirs if and when they start passing, and also get to not experience the gender that they actually feel identification with as one that is societally linked to inferiority and submission in a way that is nearly impossible to separate from your sense of self the way that honestly, kind of all women experience. My point is- even though this stuff truly is complicated, patriarchy and male privilege absolutely does exist in queer spaces. And again, this doesn't make anybody evil, or responsible for the mistreatment of others, or mean that you "have to work to negate the harm caused by the system you benefit from". You should get to just... Live your life. But also, don't go around denying that some of us have it better than other ones of us.

whenever ppl are discoursing and their only major point is "but then X will do bad thing to Y!!!" understand that 99% of the time, 'X' is already doing that bad thing to 'Y' and theyre just using marginalized people for fear tactics to garner support from ppl who dont have knowledge on said topic at hand.

"if we let trans women use womens bathrooms men will dress as women and assault us in the bathroom!!"

men already assault women and get away with it on a horrifically conatant basis, they dont need to pretend to be trans to do that.

"if we accept neopronouns/neogenders, therians, and other gender weirdo's people will mock us and not take us seriously!!"

they already dont take us seriously and never have, this proves furthermore that the 'gender weirdos' are a vulnerable portion of our community we have failed in aiding. solidarity not segregation.

"if we defund and abolish the police then noone will stop crime!!"

people already commit crimes and cops do a pretty bad job at stopping it when it actually needs to be stopped (murder, rape, trafficking, mega-rich tax evasion, predators, right-wing terrorists etc)

"if we accept mspec lesbians then men will think they can have sex with or date lesbians!!"

again, men already do this and have been doing it for centuries. disregarding a huge chunk of our lesbian history and present because you refuse to see past your terf-bespeckled worldview is sad and dangerous to these very real people whom are apart of our community, eternally tethered.

I need to say something and I need y'all to be calm

if it isn't actively bad or harmful, no representation should be called "too simple" or "too surface level"

I have a whole argument for this about the barbie movie but today I wanna talk about a show called "the babysitters club" on Netflix

(obligatory disclaimer that I watched only two episodes of this show so if it's super problematic I'm sorry) (yes. I know it's based on a book, this is about the show)

this is a silly 8+ show that my 9 year old sister is watching and it manages to tackle so many complex topics in such an easy way. basic premise is these 13 year old girls have a babysitting agency.

in one episode, a girl babysits this transfem kid. the approach is super simple, with the kid saying stuff like "oh no, those are my old boy clothes, these are my girl clothes". they have to go to the doctor and everyone is calling the kid by her dead name and using he/him and this 13 year old snaps at like a group of doctors and they all listen to her. it's pure fantasy and any person versed in trans theory would point out a bunch of mistakes.

but after watching this episode, my little sister started switching to my name instead of my dead name and intercalating he/him pronouns when talking about me.

one of the 13 years old is a diabetic and sometimes her whole personality is taken over by that. but she has this episode where she pushes herself to her limit and passes out and talks about being in a coma for a while because of not recognizing the limits of her disability.

and this allowed my 9 year old sister to understand me better when I say "I really want to play with you but right now my body physically can't do that" (I'm disabled). she has even asked me why I'm pushing myself, why I'm not using my crutches when I complain about pain.

my mom is 50 years old and watching this show with my sister. she said the episode about the diabetic girl helped her understand me and my disability better. she grew up disabled as well, but she was taught to shut up and power through.

yes, silly simple representation can annoy you if you've read thousands of pages about queer liberation or disability radical thought, but sometimes things are not for you.

i love thriftbooks. i can buy books for cheap without worrying about spending too much money like at barnes and knobles. i have lots of books on my shelf that i have not read fully or at all, and i hope to conquer some day. for now i will build up my army of unread books so when i retire in my cottage near a national park or very wooded area with my spouse or spouses and maybe some lovely critters (maybe a big mancoon cat and tegu or parrot) i can finally read all those books that i stocked up on in my youth. i will no longer feel guilty looking at my bookshelf but rather feel a sense of pride that i have gained so much knowledge.

“Do not expect a clear-cut definition of bisexuality to jump out from the pages. We bisexuals tend to define bisexuality in ways that are unique to our own individuality. There are as many definitions of bisexuality as there are bisexuals. Many of us choose not to label ourselves anything at all, and find the word ‘bisexual’ to be inadequate and too limiting.” (bisexual manifesto, 1991)

I love that people so expertly picked apart and displayed the fearfulness and conservatism of “if we allow gay people to make evocative or explicit images that challenge the beliefs of volatile and abusive people, we are all collectively responsible for the reactionary violence that falls on vulnerable people within the abusive person’s sphere of control.”

because the imperative is crystal clear in that phrasing: we need to collectively control the images of gay people that enter the wider sphere, and images that could possibly provoke a violent person to inflict violence have to be intercepted to render them inert and “safe” so that this violence never occurs. Since unambiguously sexual images, images of Black queer bodies, and images that blur the lines between genders are the most provoking, these need to be the most tightly controlled, as they present the most danger to vulnerable people who are within reach of the uncontrollably violent people they live with.

Step in, is the imperative in that scenario. Intercept images of queer sensuality and gender-bending before they wreak havoc. The best way to protect our community is to make sure that there is absolutely nothing about our images that could possibly provoke violence— violence that cannot be confronted or defended against, with no collective action that could possibly prevent it.

Can you share any particular works/thinkers you've read that discussed or conceptualise gender in a way that really resonated with you?

I’m not 100% sure what you mean by “conceptualize gender”- if you mean like, the internal experience of gender, or if you mean gender in terms of social structures and society, or something else? So I’m just gonna throw some of my favorite gender-related readings at you.

Leslie Feinburg is absolutely my favorite author/activist/”thinker” when it comes to gender. I really recommend reading Stone Butch Blues (a story that touches on gender experiences everywhere from butch, to trans man, to nonbinary) and Transgender Warriors (the history of trans people & transphobia itself).

Gender Dysphoria Isn’t What You Think is really powerful in helping to identify dysphoria & non-traditional experiences with gender. I have sent it to a lot of questioning folks.

On Hating Men (And Becoming One Anyway) talks about the specifically weird relationship between a lot of anti-patriarchy transmascs and masculinity/manhood.

What Is It Like to Be a Man? is actually by a cis man. It talks about masculinity and manhood in a way I’ve never seen before, though, and was honestly really helpful to me in identifying the weird relationship between all men and manhood.

I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out. is an extremely good, extremely powerful piece discussing all kinds of gender feelings; I really love it for how it talks about manhood and relationships to feminism.

i understand wanting to share how much you always hated everything somerton has ever said, really i do, but you guys. a lot of the work he plagarized is, actually, you know. good. some of it is seminal queer theory. you don't have to agree with everything, but it's worth engaging with those writers/creators' work directly before dismissing it outright because you were introduced to it through the shitty lense of a james somerton video.

There's some science quote out there that goes something like:

'It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, if it doesn't agree with the practical its wrong'.

(let me know what the full quote is if you know it)

And I can't help but compare that to transandrophobic rhetoric which says that trans mascs have privilege over trans fems due to them being men.

And yes, in theory this is somewhat coherent, if oversimplified. Trans men are men, patriarchy values men. Therefore trans men should be more valued.

The problem is this doesn't check out. Trans men face the highest rates of domestic violence, IPV, sexual abuse, sexual assault, social ostracisation, isolation, mental health issues, denial of medical treatment, suicide attempts and more.

So even without having to get into WHY your oversimplified theory is bullshit, you should know. Its bullshit. it doesn't hold up.

Try Again.

Okay so gender is socially constructed and some of us decided that it wasn’t enough so we constructed queerness to defy, nuance and tailor the social construction of gender. We have been very intentionally working and reworking this queerness we constructed since we laid the foundation. I think that intentionality of the process of building the concept of queerness is odd. We regularly, through less than ideal means unfortunately because we have a bad habit of yelling at each other about it, redefine transness amongst ourselves. Ask the first people who identified as transsexual what that identity meant to them and you will get a wildly different answer than you would get from your average modern day trans kid. We are weirdly self aware about this process. I mean. Not totally. Obviously. But in comparison to straight people who are typically mind blown when the 13 year old nonbinary child of someone they graduated with explains to them that gender is a social construct we are hyper conscious of how we’re talking about our genders and attractions. Spend some time scrolling through old asexual forums. Watch the four hour video essay YouTuber X made about respectability politics and transmedicalism. Straight people generally put less thought into being straight over the course of their entire lives than a gay teen spent thinking about gayness in the month following the realization that they’re not straight. This level of intentional consideration going into the development of this social construct is weird, right?

I will be thinking more about why we do this (probably as a way to defend our existence and because queerness in its current form has only really gained traction in this recent age of science and philosophy where we think about everything more but that’s its own thought soup to cook) and what effect this intentionality has on our community and society at large. Are there benefits to this method of social construction? Harms? Are other concepts being socially constructed in a similar way right now? In the past?

Anyone have thoughts on this? Sources? Has someone else already done this thinking for me that you’re familiar with? Strategies for sleeping when your brain won’t shut up about your gay ponderings?