The Queering of America

The Queering of America


For most Americans, labels such as “gay,” “non-binary,” and even “members of the LGBTQ+ community” are generally used interchangeably to describe those preferring same sex partners. This imprecision suffices for ordinary conversation, but it fails to capture a key political distinction among today’s homosexuals, namely those embracing the label “queer.”

The label “queer” may appear new, but it is decades old. In his 1995 book Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography, David Halperin explains:

As the very word implies, ‘queer’ does not name some natural kind or refer to some determinate object; it acquires its meaning from its oppositional relation to the norm. Queer is … at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant.

…

‘Queer,’ then, demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-a-vis the normative— a positionality that is not restricted to lesbians and gay men but is in fact available to anyone who is or who feels marginalized because of her or his sexual practices…

[I]t describes a horizon of possibility whose precise extent and heterogeneous scope cannot in principle be delimited in advance.

Queers thus differ from homosexuals who embrace the traditional gay political agenda of same sex marriage and anti-discrimination laws. Queerness aims to undermine the very ideas of normal sexual identity, create a world of “anything goes” where one form of sex is no better or worse than any other. This might include currently illegal sexual practices such as incest, bestiality, and pedophilia. Queerness is thus revolutionary and subversive.

As James Lindsay noted in an August exposé:

And what is it Queer Theory does? It disrupts. By definition. The definition of ‘Queer’ in Queer Theory, as we see, is that which resists and challenges all norms and expectations of normalcy. So bringing into education materials based in Queer Theory, including so-called gender-critical perspectives that separate sex and gender as though they are completely different phenomena, is meant to make children activists in this disruptive, destabilizing mode of misunderstanding the world.

This subversive intent is apparent in how Queers fixate on the education of children, especially very young children, and the campaign to “capture” young children is hardly hidden.

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