Queer Praxis

Or "why it's so annoying to argue with people who have queer theory brain worms."

Binary Thought

The central concept of queer theory is that Western thought is based on binaries, such as dark/light, black/white, men/women, adult/child, straight/gay, civilised/barbarian, sun/moon and so on. The example I looked at for my PhD was that of virgin/non-virgin. On the one hand, there are people who have not had sex, and on the other there are people who have had sex, and these are imagined to be discreet and opposite categories.

For those who are grounded in Western thought, particularly those from traditions such as the sciences, mathematics or philosophy, it is easy to misunderstand this. Queer theorists are not saying anything about the material reality underlying these categories. In fact, the words “material reality” would be regarded as, in and of themselves, setting up a binary.

Material reality is not the basis of this style of thinking; rather the workings of language are regarded as, in and of themselves, the building blocks of thought, the bricks with which all theory and praxis must be done. There is no way to get “beyond language.” Or as Derrida said, “there’s nothing outside the text.” Any attempt to get “beyond the text” must be, in and of itself, a linguistic attempt. Words is all we have.

Queering/Boundary blurring

The “queering” that queer theory does to these binaries can be done in a variety of ways. To queer night and day, one might look closely at dawn and dusk in a variety of ways, in which case you would be “occupying a liminal space.” To queer virginity, you might look at the ways in which virginity is “produced” through “discourse. For example, you might look at teenage magazines which distinguish between “just messing about” and “losing your virginity.” You might also look at how that “privileges” penis in vagina sex over all other kinds of sexuality, and so you would be “situating” one binary within a wider social context.

You might also “queer” virginity by highlighting the experiences of people who had lost their virginity in a variety of ways which do not fall within in the binary descriptions, or by referring to societies which do not have an identity change associated with first intercourse. You might “queer” virginity as it is queered in the Color Purple, so that a young lesbian can reclaim her virginity from her abuser, and redefine it with relation to pleasure, not penetration. And you might “queer” it by inverting the binary, for example by celebrating, portraying, and discussing the un-privileged side of the binary, and lifting up the voices of the under privileged.

You might “queer” a binary by allowing meaning, as Derrida would put it, to proliferate. If there are 100 ways to lose your virginity, the binary of virgin/non-virgin becomes meaningless. Some of you may already have worked out where I’m going with this, but I’ll spell it out.

Queering Sex

To “queer” the men/women binary, you might look closely at people who appear to be in the “liminal space” between men and women. For example, you might look at people with variations of sexual development, androgynous people, passing trans people. It is really important to remember that saying “material reality” to somebody engaged in the process of doing this will just sound like noise to them. They are using words, not cells, as their building blocks for thought. Material reality is just more words, and if you say them, they can be used as grist for the same ideological mill. If you say “material reality” then you are simply demonstrating, at the very moment that you say it, that you are stuck in binary thought which differentiates between “reality” and “language.”

Still queering sex/gender, then, you might experiment with creating moments of masculinity in your femaleness. You might look at women who do typically masculine jobs, or men who prefer activities or clothes associated with the female sex. You might look at how much of sex is actually observed or observable, and how much of it is social signalling. How many times have you checked the chromosomes or genitals of your friends? To what extent do we interact with those we meet on the basis of their sex, versus their social presentation? Why are we so wedded to this regressive view that men and women are so fundamentally different?

(On a side note, you will notice, very often, when arguing with people who think like this, that they revert to questions. This is because it is primarily a deconstructive tool, not a constructive philosophy. Do not let them get away with it. Questions are not arguments, and these questions have real, material answers. Back to queering sex/gender).

If looking at the ways that sex/gender is “produced” through “discourse,” you might look at *gestures at everything.* From the moment a child is born, relatives want to know whether to buy a pink or a blue baby gro. Toy aisles and clothes aisles and even schools are divided by gender. Jobs. Social groups. Changing rooms. Sports. Toilets. The argument is that this is not based on the material reality of sex, but rather, that in and of itself, these discourses constructs the social categories of gender. Again, citing material reality does no good; even if you cite something like the rates of sexual offending by sex, you are, in the very moment you say it, reinforcing the binary that has structured your thought. You are in an anti-queer praxis, and whatever you say can be disregarded.

You might “queer” sex and gender by highlighting the experiences of people who do not experience their gender in ways that fall within the binary categories of male/female. You might “queer” it by talking about cultures where non-standard definitions of gender are culturally accepted - two spirit, Faʻafafine, non-binary people. You might “queer” it by “reframing,” for example, as a man, reclaiming the lost girlhood that society robbed you of with its binary and irritating insistence on biological sex.

And you might “queer” sex by allowing gender to proliferate. We are seeing this already - if there are 74 genders, or however many there are this week, then talking about binary gender is obviously insane. And as we are doing queer theory, then talking about the material reality of biological sex is, as we have said, attempting to set up a new binary. And anyway, back we could go to the idea that even the material reality of biological sex “isn’t as binary as you might like to think,” and start off at the start.

Arguing with a queer theorist, you’ll have worked out by now, is like arguing with a fish. None of the arguments are very strong, but put them all together and that’s one slippery little bastard.

Trans-gressions and Queer Praxis

Praxis is action as opposed to theory. In queer theory, you can take actions in the world which in and of themselves are capable of boundary blurring, “queering” binary thought, and “doing” queerness.

Foucault wrote about “limit experiences,” when all boundaries break down, to the extent that even the distinction between self and other becomes blurred. Grief can do this, as can abject terror, as can certain sexual experiences, including sadomasochistic ones, and ones involving sexual transgression. Many, many of the “big names” in queer theory have been explicit in their defence of the sexual abuse of children as a desirable transgressive practice. In the very moment that the child is being abused, in that moment, queer praxis is being carried out. I’ll give a few examples here of the “big names.”

Foucault: Argued for the eradication of age of consent laws. Abused children in Algeria and later died of AIDs. History does not record what fate befell the boys.

John Money: showed pornography to boys, twins, and then had them simulate sex acts with each other.

Gayle Rubin: wrote this essay, widely regarded as one of the most important in queer theory, a good chunk of which is a spirited defence of men who sexually abuse boys.

Judith Butler: defender of incest, and “intergenerational sex,” blithely ignoring that in most cases, what she calls incest is actually the sexual abuse of a minor by a male adult.

Pat Califia: wrote “Macho Sluts,” a series of erotic short stories, one of which is about the sadomasochistic sexual abuse of a girl. To be absolutely clear, these stories are designed for adults to masturbate to.

Alfred Kinsey: stated that “all orgasms are ‘outlets’ and equal between husband and wife, boy and dog, man and boy, girl or baby. For there is no abnormality and no normality.” He also asserted that there was no proven medical reason to forbid incest or adult child sex.

Now, what possible reason could such people have to dream up a theory designed to blur boundaries?

Trans-gressions

Another way to cross boundaries is to “transgress” them. To move from one side of them to the other, thus questioning the discreetness of the two categories. This is a risky strategy. At the very moment that you are “transitioning” between the two categories, you are reinforcing the things that set those categories apart. Twenty years ago, if you went into trans spaces, everybody dressed like the cast of Grease. Nowadays, there is more “queering” being done. Males are transitioning to be “butch lesbians.” Females are becoming “femboys.” Meaning proliferates.

The effect, however, is not to undermine the binary of male/female, but to undermine the category of “trans/cis.” If you can be a male, who takes no hormones and has no surgery, who calls himself a butch lesbian, and on those grounds say you are trans, then anybody can say it. The category loses coherence and meaning.

In the final analysis, there is no escape from language in queer theory. There’s no escape from binaries, or from power. Creating new discourses of power, new binaries, is not regarded as a bug of queer theory - it is a feature of all language. If you cross “from male to female,” you recreate both the categories of male and female in the very moment that you cross, or alternatively, you undermine the categories of trans/cis. If you take hormones and have surgeries, you are, in that very moment, submitting yourself to the workings of power, and disciplining your errant body.

Meanwhile, material reality continues to exist.