stimcourse:
remember when queer theory was about understanding how sexuality affects socioeconomic standing and how to liberate LGBT people from their oppression and not this neo-liberalist “who can be more inclusive” ego-stroking mess
Queer theory was about making intelligible how LGBT people come to exist in a world where heterosexuality is the norm. That institutional moment in academia (1990’s) was concerned with unraveling revolutions in how we understand the world through the vantage point of people who are ravaged by heterosexual oppression. It looked at contradictions, stigma, and what types of events undermined the tyranny that heterosexuality has on regulating the embodiment of people. It rarely was concerned with how to achieve “liberation,” but that isn’t bad tho lol it’s just a mischaracterization of it.
What makes the “Queer theory” we see today noticeably dissimilar from the 1990’s is the rise of cynicism and nihilism among people pushing queer theory in the academy for the past… 13 or so years. An edgelord phase, so to speak. The greatest work of queer theory to me is “Epistemology of the Closet” by Eve Sedgwick. One the worst is “No Future” by Lee Edelman, which highlights the nihilism streak.
The fixation on “inclusitivity” and queerness sort of being a grab bag of identities that straight people can cloak themselves in to feel oppressed and have moral authority on demand is largely a ~2010’s invention. Straight people were interested in queer theory before of course but this is where we really begin to see “Being weird makes you queer” types of things. Headlines about “if a woman pegs her man that makes you queer” hilarity. Queerness quite explicitly being reduced to “you are oppressed if you don’t identify as straight” and valorizing minoritarian identities.
I rambled but anyway yes contemporary queer theory sucks ass and balls but calling the primarily collection of queer theory works that were concerned with mapping out “liberation” is kind of an oversimplification and a mischaracterization.

via gabrielasafiya , by stimcourse-archive2

#Dis