Dec 28, 2022·edited Dec 28, 2022Liked by Ceri Black
This is a very interesting and well written piece. I agree. I just have two brief comments. First, when those arguing a theoretical position begin by talking about “western“ points of view, it’s a red flag to me that they have absolutely no idea about either western or “eastern“ thought. For instance, isn’t Yin/Yang binary? Also, I’ve been listening to these arguments from undergraduates, graduate students, activists and others now for over half a century. The arguments never change and the people who think them up are both narcissistic and arrogant enough to think that they were the first ones to come up with the ideas. At some point, do you think that someone might realize that the arguments are stupid, in and of themselves, or they wouldn’t be perennially unresolvable? Here’s the solution: language never has been and never will be precise. You can play games with it all you want, it doesn’t change the underlying ambiguity. I made that point in “Biology won’t solve your problems with abortion” on my Substack. Playing games with language does not make you smart, it just makes you confusing. Thanks for a great essay, Frederick
Thank you so much for this really clear unpicking of the (intentionally) confusing queer theory. I’ve read a lot on this, to try to understand where it’s all coming from and I think this is one of the clearest explanations I’ve come across. You’re right, fundamentally, it is like arguing with a fish - the arguments are stupid but oh so slippery.
What puzzles me is that queer theory would have it that all these words - man, woman, sex, - are effectively meaningless but on the other hand it's a matter of life and death that you get it right - misgendering is violence and all that?
If all these words don't really mean anything how can it matter to any proponent of queer theory whether they're called a man or a woman?
Maybe I've misunderstood, but this primacy of language over material reality sounds like a consequence of people living online, and inside their own heads. And human exeptionalism.
How do they think animals experience the world? (A cat has no language, but it knows what a bird is). How often have each of us had a thought, and not been able to find the right words to express it? What is language itself other than a way to communicate concepts that already existed in the evolving human mind?
This is so helpful. Thank you. I'm a 65-year-old lesbian. Thank God I was born when tomboys were just tomboys. And also, that I did not go into academics. Damn, I really dodged a bullet on that one.
Of course, most of the Butler Youth we encounter in the world and the majority of policymakers simply take the rhetorical outputs of the intellectual processes you describe, while skipping the actual homework.
And what I notice time and again in debate with them is a regular pattern: I'll say "X is the case", only to be met with "oh, so you think Y" ... and what I'm coming to believe about that is that the 'nonbinary' rhetoric of Queer Theory subtly traps proponents into a way of thinking that, itself, is binary - it's all either this / or that. To some critics that.looks like the trouble with the dialectical method, tracking the fault back to Hegel.
But those of us who have robust materialist roots don't hear 'woman' and think "opposite of man" - we think of sex, evolution, sex classes, etc. Those caught up in queer rhetoric can ONLY think of 'woman' as being half of a false dyad, one that's merely a social convention and a conservative one at that. Their phenomenology brackets-off material reality, leaving them trapped in a universe of such binaries.
Long story short - the error is Husserl, not Hegel.
There is a comment below about 'brains turning to mush.' I feel similarly when I try to make sense of this whole queer theory business. In my experiments on twitter - I've tried this formula when encountering a particularly aggressive pro-queer theory tweeter as a way to hold a boundary: I name the argument/behavior, how I feel about it, and ask a question about their intention.
It tends to end the conversation, when otherwise I would have gotten an unrelenting attack.
However, I'm not sure if this accomplishes anything. So, I'd love to hear you build on this interesting comment in the essay:
"This is because it is primarily a deconstructive tool, not a constructive philosophy. Do not let them get away with it."
How do we not let them get away with it? How do we anchor in common sense and clear thinking and come at this thing? What has worked?
The fundamental problem with all of this is that its objective is inherently prescriptive rather than descriptive. If it didn't it would remain a bunch of armchair language games played by tenured academics among themselves (Foucault, Derrida and the other French saboteurs of Western civilization). That would at least have kept it away from seriously influencing public policy. Academia has been hijacked into an ideology-advancement milieu rather than a place to produce understanding. It is essentially 20C sophistry to allow ideologues to argue they should get whatever political outcomes they want for themselves.
Another obvious problem is that these theories have no criteria of evaluating their validity - so what that Foucault said something - who says its true? Humanities academics swallowed all of this because it pandered to their leftish values and was coolly counter-cultural in 1968. Then the virus escaped the lab and they lost control. Holly Lawford-Smith et al are fighting a good fight, but to be wholly honest they ere happy to let this intellectual virus run as long as it was aligned to their political interests.
Thank you for this Ceri. I can’t believe so much money, time and energy is spent on this absolute fuckwittery.  It feels like the ultimate ‘first world’ indulgence. 
I wonder how this worldview would respond to a constructivist response - i.e. I construct meaning of your messages irrespective of any meaning you may wish to convey. (Notwithstanding the whole 'material reality' point, obvs...). Should make the pronoun conversation interesting anyways.
This is a very interesting and well written piece. I agree. I just have two brief comments. First, when those arguing a theoretical position begin by talking about “western“ points of view, it’s a red flag to me that they have absolutely no idea about either western or “eastern“ thought. For instance, isn’t Yin/Yang binary? Also, I’ve been listening to these arguments from undergraduates, graduate students, activists and others now for over half a century. The arguments never change and the people who think them up are both narcissistic and arrogant enough to think that they were the first ones to come up with the ideas. At some point, do you think that someone might realize that the arguments are stupid, in and of themselves, or they wouldn’t be perennially unresolvable? Here’s the solution: language never has been and never will be precise. You can play games with it all you want, it doesn’t change the underlying ambiguity. I made that point in “Biology won’t solve your problems with abortion” on my Substack. Playing games with language does not make you smart, it just makes you confusing. Thanks for a great essay, Frederick
Thank you so much for this really clear unpicking of the (intentionally) confusing queer theory. I’ve read a lot on this, to try to understand where it’s all coming from and I think this is one of the clearest explanations I’ve come across. You’re right, fundamentally, it is like arguing with a fish - the arguments are stupid but oh so slippery.
What puzzles me is that queer theory would have it that all these words - man, woman, sex, - are effectively meaningless but on the other hand it's a matter of life and death that you get it right - misgendering is violence and all that?
If all these words don't really mean anything how can it matter to any proponent of queer theory whether they're called a man or a woman?
Maybe I've misunderstood, but this primacy of language over material reality sounds like a consequence of people living online, and inside their own heads. And human exeptionalism.
How do they think animals experience the world? (A cat has no language, but it knows what a bird is). How often have each of us had a thought, and not been able to find the right words to express it? What is language itself other than a way to communicate concepts that already existed in the evolving human mind?
This is so helpful. Thank you. I'm a 65-year-old lesbian. Thank God I was born when tomboys were just tomboys. And also, that I did not go into academics. Damn, I really dodged a bullet on that one.
Of course, most of the Butler Youth we encounter in the world and the majority of policymakers simply take the rhetorical outputs of the intellectual processes you describe, while skipping the actual homework.
And what I notice time and again in debate with them is a regular pattern: I'll say "X is the case", only to be met with "oh, so you think Y" ... and what I'm coming to believe about that is that the 'nonbinary' rhetoric of Queer Theory subtly traps proponents into a way of thinking that, itself, is binary - it's all either this / or that. To some critics that.looks like the trouble with the dialectical method, tracking the fault back to Hegel.
But those of us who have robust materialist roots don't hear 'woman' and think "opposite of man" - we think of sex, evolution, sex classes, etc. Those caught up in queer rhetoric can ONLY think of 'woman' as being half of a false dyad, one that's merely a social convention and a conservative one at that. Their phenomenology brackets-off material reality, leaving them trapped in a universe of such binaries.
Long story short - the error is Husserl, not Hegel.
There is a comment below about 'brains turning to mush.' I feel similarly when I try to make sense of this whole queer theory business. In my experiments on twitter - I've tried this formula when encountering a particularly aggressive pro-queer theory tweeter as a way to hold a boundary: I name the argument/behavior, how I feel about it, and ask a question about their intention.
It tends to end the conversation, when otherwise I would have gotten an unrelenting attack.
However, I'm not sure if this accomplishes anything. So, I'd love to hear you build on this interesting comment in the essay:
"This is because it is primarily a deconstructive tool, not a constructive philosophy. Do not let them get away with it."
How do we not let them get away with it? How do we anchor in common sense and clear thinking and come at this thing? What has worked?
The fundamental problem with all of this is that its objective is inherently prescriptive rather than descriptive. If it didn't it would remain a bunch of armchair language games played by tenured academics among themselves (Foucault, Derrida and the other French saboteurs of Western civilization). That would at least have kept it away from seriously influencing public policy. Academia has been hijacked into an ideology-advancement milieu rather than a place to produce understanding. It is essentially 20C sophistry to allow ideologues to argue they should get whatever political outcomes they want for themselves.
Another obvious problem is that these theories have no criteria of evaluating their validity - so what that Foucault said something - who says its true? Humanities academics swallowed all of this because it pandered to their leftish values and was coolly counter-cultural in 1968. Then the virus escaped the lab and they lost control. Holly Lawford-Smith et al are fighting a good fight, but to be wholly honest they ere happy to let this intellectual virus run as long as it was aligned to their political interests.
Thank you for this Ceri. I can’t believe so much money, time and energy is spent on this absolute fuckwittery.  It feels like the ultimate ‘first world’ indulgence. 
Get rid of the "in and of"s.
I wonder how this worldview would respond to a constructivist response - i.e. I construct meaning of your messages irrespective of any meaning you may wish to convey. (Notwithstanding the whole 'material reality' point, obvs...). Should make the pronoun conversation interesting anyways.