r/QueerTheory

Eugenics + euthenics = the reason we're living through a capitalist hellscape of misogyny, racism, etc. Why our culture and language is on different roadmaps, even though we're saying the same things. It gets worse through text.

Euphenics = Treating diseases and societal issues with holistic, dignified responses to create a self sustained feedback loop.

I’ve been thinking about a tension between queer theory’s critique of fixed or naturalized identity categories and the fact that those categories can still have real political and social functions.

Take “lesbian,” for example, queer theory gives us plenty of tools for questioning whether categories like lesbian, gay, woman, etc.. are internally coherent or historically stable. But lesbian also names a particular sexual orientation, history, community, and set of experiences.

So how does queer theory distinguish between destabilizing a category and making that category so porous that it stops describing anything in particular?

Is there a serious theoretical account of when boundaries are politically useful or necessary, even if we accept that the categories themselves are historically contingent?

I’m especially interested in writers who engage directly with this tension, or any work that explores it in depth.

Hi, I’m AFAB and I’m trying to write a song about my own internalized misogyny/homophobia.

My partner recently said “they did a number on you baby, you’ve got some straight male tendencies.”

Which, damn, it’s such a good line!

So I’d like to make a list of what you think of as Straight male tendencies? And cis hetero assumptions? I only have two so far.
Weaponized incompetence, and trying to fix things with sex. (Which, SURPRISE! Are the two I’m currently working on.)

Thanks!

TL;DR: If gender roles and all the social meanings attached to being a man or woman disappeared, what would it mean to identify as a man or woman? Is gender identity ultimately about something intrinsic, about our relationship with our bodies, or something else?

Hiii! I'm trying to understand different perspectives on gender. I edited the post to include a little summary for anyone who doesn't want to read the whole thing. Also, I've only recently started looking into questions around gender, gender identity, and gender abolition, and I haven't read very much about them yet, so this might be a very basic question, but I'm having some difficulty grasping the concept.

I'm having trouble seeing how the idea that men and women are socially constructed categories fits together with the idea of gender identity as something that exists beyond the body. For example, what would it mean to identify as a woman in a hypothetical world where being a woman carried absolutely no social expectations or implications about how you should behave, dress, think, or relate to other people?

I understand that gender identity isn't necessarily about wanting to conform to gender stereotypes. From what I understand, it can be described as an internal sense of identity that exists independently of gender roles. But then I get stuck on what that actually means. If we remove all the social aspects of gender, what is left for that internal sense of identity to refer to? It seems like the remaining distinction would have to have something to do with the body.

So I can see two possible ways of understanding this, but I'm not sure either one is right.

One possibility is that there is some aspect of being a woman that is neither socially constructed nor reducible to physical sex, something intrinsic about gender identity that exists independently of both social roles and the body. But if that's the case, wouldn't that mean that men and women aren't entirely social constructs? Maybe most of what we associate with gender is socially constructed, but there would still have to be some underlying non-social, non-physical component.

The other possibility is that, in a world where you remove all the social meanings associated with gender, being a woman or a man would only mean something in relation to your body. But then, in such a world, I'm not sure how someone could understand the trans experience without reducing it to something like "wanting your body to look a certain way." I think it would be like reducing it to hormones and surgeries, because what else could you do in such a world to transition? Is being trans about feeling that your body doesn't correspond to your gender identity or does framing it this way reduce the trans experience to something that is fundamentally about the body, when there is more to it than that?

Maybe I'm approaching this from the wrong framework entirely, and there's another way of thinking about the relationship between social construction, gender identity, and sex that I'm missing.

I'm sorry if this is kind of long to read. Also I'm not trying to argue that trans people aren't the gender they identify as. I'm genuinely trying to understand this better. I'm looking for a framework in which I can make sense of gender being socially constructed without feeling like that somehow diminishes or invalidates trans people's experiences.

For those who don't know, it's basically an ideology which wants to abolish the gender binary, gender roles, and the automatic psychological gendering society does on people. They also want to make "biological sex" irrelevant through advancements in reproductive technologies and whatnot. For example, a postgenderist would likely to be excited for an emerging reproductive technology called in vitro gametogenesis where stem cells are made into gametes, which is currently at a stage of having been successfully done on animals and just needs to move onto human clinical trials. This would allow anyone, regardless of their sex or gender to produce either gamete: so a cis woman could impregnate someone with her own sperm. They'd also advocate for womb transplantation. So in a postgenderist world the group of people we'd currently categorize as trans men could impregnate trans women, for example, and in our current terms they'd be the biological father and mother respectively since IVG would allow the trans man to produce sperm and the trans woman would be able to produce ova, plus a womb transplant allowing her to be pregnant. Every individual would get to choose on their own what sex characteristics they want when they grow up, if any. So anyway, I'm curious on what any queer theorists might think about this as I'd love to read that!

I wrote a little essay based on an idea which has been marinating in my mind for a long time. I wrote this originally in a journal dedicated to my autobiographical reflections, but decided to transcribe it to a digital format. Oh well; here goes nothing.

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I hate straightness. I decry it. And in doing so, it is crucial that one understands I do NOT hate heterosexuality itself. I do not hate straight people, either; it would be silly to despise either. In fact, some of the most intensely beautiful expressions of human eroticism and sexual desire I have ever seen were of a heterosexual nature. And I do not see heterosexuality as fundamentally different from homosexuality. I have been thinking on this topic for a long time, and still I find this difficult to describe tangibly; but I will do my best.

Straightness is a social category, nothing more. Heterosexuality is the biological configuration of one’s nervous system to be attracted to the opposite sex predominantly. And while it is a waste of time to question or challenge one’s publicly stated sexuality, I would be remiss not to think of how many individuals across time have assumed the label of “straight” in spite of the word’s betrayal to the true, baseline wiring of their bodies and minds. And before the word was invented, how many individuals tucked themselves neatly into the social roles of “normal” romantic and sexual roles relative to their cultures.

Therein lies my problem with straightness. It is too easy, and far too often deeply encouraged, to wear the identity. In calling oneself “straight,” an individual is not merely describing sexual preferences that may or may not be true but also taking on a loaded social package; it entails societal privilege, and a fundamental sense of “normalcy” that belies even the most progressive societies. I find it impossible to pretend that, in spite of the marvelous progress made in queer rights in some societies, the “gay” man is seen as a social equal to the “straight” man. Theoretically, both such individuals should be equal in every sense of the word; after all, do we not believe in the inalienable rights and dignities of the individual? And yet the modern gay man is consistently side-eyed, subject to the loss of friends and family upon “coming out,” and pressured to announce or perform their sexuality when it would be bizarre for a “straight” man to do the same. Straightness is treated like the standard blueprint for humans, and any other orientation carries the subconscious weight of being “other than,” even in the minds of the most outwardly supportive and progressive individuals. This is the case because humans are designed to inherit our broad cultural systems and internalize them from the second we are born.

Furthermore, while we treat straightness as an innate quality of the person, it is anything but. We know this already; one needs only to think of all the closeted men who willingly chain themselves to the label of “straight” when their true orientations betray this sense, and inevitably are revealed very late in life and often accompanied with deep regrets, to realize the fragile nature of this social position. Countless gay men in all eras of history have gone as far as marriage to women, producing offspring and living their entire lives without ever touching another man. Many such marriages were deeply unhappy for both sides, I am sure. The modern gay men who have done (and are currently doing) this are, in every sense of the word, “straight” (in the sense that they occupy the social position of straightness while possessing a homosexual orientation). Yet their orientations remain the same.

The shocking iniquity of straightness is the fact that, in such cases, it is impossible to know otherwise. The nature of sexuality is experience-driven, and experience is deeply internal and subjective. There is no way to go inside another’s nervous system and experience all the subjective points of their reality. Therefore, straightness becomes an almost too-convenient mask and ticket into cheap, easy acceptance into the human world. Also this: humans are a hyper-social primate species, and like any other primate, some of our most basal instincts concern the social worlds we occupy and the hierarchies in which these exist. Many of our greatest aspirations concern wanting to climb the social ladder in some way, whether this occurs through becoming rich, famous, respected, loved, feared, compliant, and so forth. Straightness is a label which exploits this ancient instinct; it is why huge swathes of men often are extremely weird about admitting their non-straightness, and often in the face of undeniable evidence.

It is along these lines of thinking that I happen to despise gayness, as well; and similarly, I do NOT despise homosexuality or gay people whatsoever. However, I have found that straightness as a social category is far more erasing of human nature than gayness, and as such, I am slightly more lenient to the idea of a gay identity. Nevertheless, I assert that both of these social categories are deeply alienating in their unique ways.

I am of the belief that there would be far higher rates of both homosexual behavior AND homosexual acceptance if these labels simply did not exist. Thus, the world would be a slightly happier place in the sense that we would be more intrapersonally whole and better put-together, and more honest with one another. More opportunities would spring forth. We would have a higher capacity for positive interactions if we were to stop suppressing ourselves and each other with arbitrary labels and customs derived thereof.

My theoretical solution for the world would be to think in terms of “androphilic” and “gynophilic”; with these terms, or words with similar meanings, anyone could be described as either because they are divorced from every other aspect of one’s personality. Both men and women can be gynophilic (attracted to women/femininity), and both men and women can be androphilic (attracted to men/masculinity). I would avoid using the noun forms of these words (androphile and gynophile), because they risk slipping into the same problems I have been describing up to this point. Unfortunately, the great tragedy of the English language is that the -philic suffix rings far too closely to “pedophilic,” and most people immediately refuse the use of such words for this reason. I do not blame them, but this is a deep shame because these two words are such a perfect solution to the universal problem of straightness.

In short, this essay is a fierce objection to ontological reduction. In peeling back all the layers of this text, one might find a simple question: “why should one property of my desire reorganize your conception of my personhood?”

In truth, I am sick of being seen as an “other.” I tremble inside with fury and indignation when I see that inevitable shift in behavior within my friends when it is revealed that I am of a homosexual orientation. In their minds, they see only the word “gay”; and this is inextricably tied to specific cultural and social implications, a kind of heavy baggage which is unquestionably tethered to the word and the source of homophobic bias. I would much rather live in a world where anyone could be androphilic, and in which “gay” is not an identifying marker but simply a description of what I happen to like. As such, I feel utterly helpless against this force because it seems the world has deeply internalized this division of “straightness” and “other” far beyond my control. I wrote this essay partly as an outcry to the world, borne of frustration, but primarily to help synthesize this idea within my own mind; for I believe it is a revolutionary one, and the overwhelming majority of people with whom I have spoken on this topic find it difficult to comprehend, seemingly no matter how I explain it.

I will not lie: I am tempted to feel that my thinking has grown beyond the capacity of what most people are willing to accept. But that is not the truth. It is that our ordinary vocabulary and ontological conceptions make these thoughts difficult to comprehend in the minds of most people (PARTICULARLY those who benefit from heteronormativity).

But words are my legacy; what else can I do other than write?

Hello! I’m currently writing my Master’s thesis on intersectional theories, their limitations, and possible ways of extending them.

I already have a good structure and have found quite a bit of literature, but I’m still looking for further interesting contributions. In particular, I’m looking for articles, books, or book chapters that critically engage with intersectional theory or discuss its limitations, especially from a postcolonial and/or anti-capitalist perspective.

If you have any literature recommendations, I’d really appreciate them! Older texts or lesser-known contributions are very welcome as well. <3

I've been thinking about a gap in sexual vocabulary, and I'm curious whether there is already a word for it — either in English or in another language.

We have terms like penetration and circlusion, which can describe the same interaction from two different perspectives:

>A penetrates B

>B circludes A

I find the concept of circlusion particularly interesting because it challenges the assumption that the person doing the penetrating is necessarily the “active” partner and the person being penetrated is necessarily “passive”.

But there's still a problem: both terms describe an action performed by one of the partners.

What seems to be missing is a term for the interaction as a whole, without specifying which partner is doing what.

Something like:

>A and B are engaged in X.

Then penetration and circlusion could be two ways of describing the interaction, while top/bottom, insertive/receptive, etc. could describe the dynamics between the partners.

This seems useful to me because top/bottom or insertive/receptive aren't necessarily binary categories. People can be somewhere along a spectrum, alternate roles, switch during the same encounter, or simply not want to specify their respective roles.

So ideally, X would mean something like:

“a sexual interaction involving bodily insertion/enclosure, without implying who occupies which role.”

It should also be applicable to different configurations : penis–vagina penis–anus dildo–vagina dildo–anus finger–vagina etc.

In other words, I'm not really looking for another synonym for “penetration”. I'm looking for a word at a higher conceptual level:

X = the interaction itself

↳ penetration / circlusion = ways of describing the interaction

↳ insertive / receptive / alternating / etc. = dynamics within the interaction

I've considered words like coupling, conjunction, engagement, and various possible neologisms, but none feels quite right.

Does a word like this already exist? And if it doesn't, what word could we come up with?

I'm particularly interested in terms that satisfy two criteria:

They don't reveal or imply who is in which role. They can apply to different anatomical configurations and different distributions of roles.

Maybe this is simply a lexical gap — but it seems like a useful one to fill.