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 for that. I think the category "Western" is less West vs East, and something more like "post enlightenment rationality." But it would be hard to maintain a straight face whilst arguing that binary thought only exists in the West. Lol.
And yes, I am embarrassed that it took me so long to realise that the arguments are, well, stupid. Or at least, that they are suitable for literary analysis, but not for medicine.
The language games actually extend to using purposefully confusing/abstract language - the form of words is, in and of itself, doing the work of "queering."
I agree. And, I did not mean to imply that you didn’t see through the arguments. My first degree was in philosophy and I spent a lot of time wallowing around in all of that jargon laden stuff, too. Then, I got degrees in psychology and neuroscience. I learned that whereas philosophy gave birth to psychology, psychology married biology and had a daughter. The daughter used to be called biological psychology (the field in which I got my PhD), but it’s now referred to as neuroscience. Along the way I spent time studying at a school in Ahmedabad India founded by Mahatma Gandhi. So, I guess I’ve been around the intellectual block a few times. It doesn’t amaze me that every crop of students starts out naïve — thinking that they’ve invented the world — that’s normal. I did too. What amazes me is that no one seems to be interested in learning the intellectual histories that got us to this point in time. Hence, they keep repeating the same silly stuff, ad infinitum (and, ad nauseam).
I managed, to my shame, to get a whole PhD before I saw through it. I did quite an interdisciplinary degree, but just regarded all the methodologies I learned as "tools for my intellectual toolbox." Postmodernism/queer theory kind of overarched it all.
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?
This is a great question. It actually goes to the heart of what queer theory is about.
When they are saying "I'm trans," they are in that very moment, doing praxis. They are breaking binaries, they are performing queer praxis.
If you, boring old you, do not recognise their transgression for what they think it is, a brave attempt to queer binaries, then you are striking at the heart of their praxis. You are denying that their transgression has the effect that it intends. You are invalidating their existence, because their identity isn't made of anything so mundane as their physical body, or their good deeds, or anything like that. It's made up, in that moment, of their trans-gression, which you are essentially saying "don't be silly" about.
It's not that the words don't really mean anything - it's that they mean EVERYTHING, if that makes sense. There's nothing outside the binaries and the words that structure thought.
"(T)heir identity isn't made of anything so mundane as their physical body..." This is one of the saddest parts of queer theory to me - human exceptionalism taken to a new level: 'Other living things in this exquisite garden may be beautifully integrated with their physical forms, but I'm not! I'm apart from other living things. My body is a thing I can disregard as I get on with the true work of thinking and talking.' Jesus, no wonder we feel so lonely.
Oh yes, this. I love this comment. There is so much joy in embodiment. Everything from dancing to sex to the creative arts, cooking, putting your hands in the earth in spring and feeling it warm as blood beneath the clod. I really live for those wonderful moments that cannot be aimed at or fought for, that emerge out of the fabric of experience, when physical embodiment, thoughts, feelings, words are all aligned. My wedding day was like that. I don't have the vocabulary to describe it, but days like that are, to me, the point of living. I can't have them all the time. Maybe once a year if I'm lucky. All the other days and moments can be good. But those are the very, very best. I keep those with me.
I am sometimes embarrassed that it took me so long to work out that it was guff, but I am also at least a little bit proud that the queer theory brain worms did not dine out long enough with me to turn my whole brain to mush. It is, in fact, designed to turn your brain to mush - to undermine analytical thought. So in the moment when your brain feels most mushy... you're probably close to getting it. Lol.
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?
These are all good questions. The answer would be, I'm afraid, annoying. Let me put my queer theory hat back on.
"What you are trying to do is to get beyond language by means of linguistic pointing at what you claim are extra linguistic experiences. But in reality, all you are doing is saying more words. It is also interesting that you cite a predatory experience of the cat chasing the mouse, situating your colonialist ideas in the context of predator and prey, a binary concept. It's all more binary thinking, more words."
Like arguing with a fish. Whatever you say, "it's just more words." Annoying. Slippery.
It's brain worms. You might also notice that it is brain worms specifically designed to stop you escaping the thought processes.
In my view, this is why mumsnet is such a bastion of rational thought. Very difficult to deny that biological sex exists and it matters, when you have just carried a child to term and are dealing with the realities of caring for small children.
It's all very baffling but thank you for attempting to explain it in plain language rather than obfuscating Butlerese :-) Somehow I don't think these people are very visual thinkers...
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.
I feel like there's a whole generation of lesbians identifying out of being women, and out of being lesbians.
Something important about me would be lost if, instead of a butch lesbian, my wife was a transman. I've fought too hard for ground to stand on, for my lesbian identity, to give it up to pretend to be a straight woman, thanks.
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.
I absolutely agree that almost none of the people who expound queer theory conclusions have any understanding of the intellectual underpinnings. It is my humble opinion that most people doing actual further degrees in queer theory subjects have not done the homework. The trick of deconstruction is actually a pretty simple one - throw in a couple of quotes and some high falutin language, make a few risque remarks, and hey presto, they'll publish what you write. I think the number of people in the academy who have actually read and understood even Gender Trouble or Bodies that Matter is vanishingly small.
I find your point about their binary thinking to be instructive. I am going to have to think on that because you're right - there seems to be a way of thinking that is textbook black and white/binary. I had always just put that down to psychological explanations. Not that I am a clinical psychologist or have performed clinical assessments, but black and white thinking that extreme is often associated with personality disorders. But there is something about "All thought is binary" that has a trap in it that might lead you down that road. Or perhaps interact with an existing personality issue, exacerbating it.
I'm going to have to think on it. "Defining something as its opposite" is a trap that reinforces rather than undermines the binary nature of thought, as they see it, no? It's constructive of a particular way of thinking, rather than destructive. The queer theory retort to "thought is structured by binaries" is "let's subvert/undermine/queer those binaries." This ends up with producing more binaries - you can only ever subvert for a moment, before the binary sets in again.
You're saying that a better retort might be to insist on material reality. Woman is not the opposite of man, woman is ova, evolution... It is a good answer. A much better answer than the queer theory one. But annoyingly, the queer theory response is, "you are, in the very moment you say that, simply making a linguistic gesture. You are trying to "ground" sex in material reality, by using more words. There is no way to get beyond those words to the material reality you so love. It's all language in the end. You cannot escape it."
I'm going to have to think about it. Thanks very much for stopping by and making me think.
One bit of analysis that helped me immensely to get underneath this thing is a piece by a practising Marxist philosopher who was watching this all unfold in real-time in the 1990s - in the collection Marxism, Mysticism and Modern Theory ed. Suke Wolton. It's the chapter by James Heartfield on Social Construction, and it gets right to the heart of the problem with Husserl and his phenomenological tradition that eventually cashes out in QT.
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?
I have found asking about their intention in a calm, rational way to either end the conversation, or at least stop the overt hostile tantrum behaviour. It can also, of course, have no impact.
I find naming tactics ahead of time quite useful - I did this in quite a long conversation with a pre T transman last night on twitter. They kept asking me queer theory "gotcha" questions, and I said quite a lot of "this isn't the gotcha you think it is - if I say this, then you'll say that, if I say the other thing then you'll say the other thing." This can defuse situations, as it wets their powder.
The only thing that worked for me was, truly, being loved better. My wife gave me ground to stand on, and I decided that although queer theory might be good enough for me, my children deserved and needed better. So I had to change. But it wasn't a change of mind, it was a change of heart.
And in the end, I don't think we can love our opponents better - so we just have to defeat them. And have the arguments. And let those watching/reading make a decision as to whether they want to continue sitting on the fence.
You know that feeling when you "get" something difficult - whether it's a concept in physics or a chapter in a George Eliot novel and how pleasurable it is?
Queer Theory seems to do the opposite - there's never any lightbulb moment just a headache.
Hi Helen, The headache is apparently the point, right? :-) The theory itself is mushy, as Ceri points out, and presumably wants to queer our brains as well as all the binaries and boundaries! It's definitely not us, but them!
Ceri, I appreciate the points you make above. I agree that getting meta with folks and naming what we see - e.g. anchoring in material reality - will at least keep us sane, rather than drowning in a futile debate - even if they don't come along with us. It's great to hear that this is your approach given that you know this theory well.
Sadly, I also agree about the point you make about love and how it's not up to us to bring that to those making these arguments. Yes, holding the line and hoping others will join is what is needed. I am a relatively a new arrival in this debate after a few years of thinking that it wasn't my problem. I hope many more of us will wake up - and soon.
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.
Can you say a bit more about which bit of constructivism you mean? I learned about it in context of Piaget, but that doesn't seem to fit what you're aiming at here. And queer theory tends towards *de*contruction - pulling apart the idea that there can be shared or stable meaning in language.
There is almost no interest, from queer theorists or deconstructivists, in authorial intent. Derrida said "there's nothing outside the text," and this can be taken to mean that authorial intent doesn't exist for purposes of literary criticism, let alone doesn't matter. And watch it disappear up its own spout when you think that the meaning of Derrida's phrase, what he meant by it, is irrelevant as meaning proliferates.
It's intellectual masturbation.
I'd be interested if you could say a bit more about how it would make the pronoun debate interesting.
I'm about 20 years out of practice in this sort of discussion, and then my entry route was Science and Technology Studies (and concepts of truth and accuracy), but it struck me that queer theorists have a very strong authorial intent that they want everyone else to sign up to. A constructivist response could (should?) reject that as the reader is interpreting the text in their own context (which may well include a different understanding of 'material reality ' than the queer theorists). But as you say, it is all intellectual masturbation in the end, and a more fruitful route would be to always consider where harm may be caused, by/to whom, and how to minimise it. At that point I don't think queer theory has anything to offer.
As others have said, thanks for writing this post. It's given me a lot to think about and has been dredging up some ideas that I haven't really thought about for a long time.
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 for that. I think the category "Western" is less West vs East, and something more like "post enlightenment rationality." But it would be hard to maintain a straight face whilst arguing that binary thought only exists in the West. Lol.
And yes, I am embarrassed that it took me so long to realise that the arguments are, well, stupid. Or at least, that they are suitable for literary analysis, but not for medicine.
The language games actually extend to using purposefully confusing/abstract language - the form of words is, in and of itself, doing the work of "queering."
I agree. And, I did not mean to imply that you didn’t see through the arguments. My first degree was in philosophy and I spent a lot of time wallowing around in all of that jargon laden stuff, too. Then, I got degrees in psychology and neuroscience. I learned that whereas philosophy gave birth to psychology, psychology married biology and had a daughter. The daughter used to be called biological psychology (the field in which I got my PhD), but it’s now referred to as neuroscience. Along the way I spent time studying at a school in Ahmedabad India founded by Mahatma Gandhi. So, I guess I’ve been around the intellectual block a few times. It doesn’t amaze me that every crop of students starts out naïve — thinking that they’ve invented the world — that’s normal. I did too. What amazes me is that no one seems to be interested in learning the intellectual histories that got us to this point in time. Hence, they keep repeating the same silly stuff, ad infinitum (and, ad nauseam).
I managed, to my shame, to get a whole PhD before I saw through it. I did quite an interdisciplinary degree, but just regarded all the methodologies I learned as "tools for my intellectual toolbox." Postmodernism/queer theory kind of overarched it all.
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.
Thank you! Yes. Intentionally confusing is right. It's designed to be.
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?
This is a great question. It actually goes to the heart of what queer theory is about.
When they are saying "I'm trans," they are in that very moment, doing praxis. They are breaking binaries, they are performing queer praxis.
If you, boring old you, do not recognise their transgression for what they think it is, a brave attempt to queer binaries, then you are striking at the heart of their praxis. You are denying that their transgression has the effect that it intends. You are invalidating their existence, because their identity isn't made of anything so mundane as their physical body, or their good deeds, or anything like that. It's made up, in that moment, of their trans-gression, which you are essentially saying "don't be silly" about.
It's not that the words don't really mean anything - it's that they mean EVERYTHING, if that makes sense. There's nothing outside the binaries and the words that structure thought.
Apparently.
"(T)heir identity isn't made of anything so mundane as their physical body..." This is one of the saddest parts of queer theory to me - human exceptionalism taken to a new level: 'Other living things in this exquisite garden may be beautifully integrated with their physical forms, but I'm not! I'm apart from other living things. My body is a thing I can disregard as I get on with the true work of thinking and talking.' Jesus, no wonder we feel so lonely.
Oh yes, this. I love this comment. There is so much joy in embodiment. Everything from dancing to sex to the creative arts, cooking, putting your hands in the earth in spring and feeling it warm as blood beneath the clod. I really live for those wonderful moments that cannot be aimed at or fought for, that emerge out of the fabric of experience, when physical embodiment, thoughts, feelings, words are all aligned. My wedding day was like that. I don't have the vocabulary to describe it, but days like that are, to me, the point of living. I can't have them all the time. Maybe once a year if I'm lucky. All the other days and moments can be good. But those are the very, very best. I keep those with me.
Thank you, I greatly admire your efforts to understand this stuff, the attempt to do it myself makes me feel like my brains's turning to mush!
I am sometimes embarrassed that it took me so long to work out that it was guff, but I am also at least a little bit proud that the queer theory brain worms did not dine out long enough with me to turn my whole brain to mush. It is, in fact, designed to turn your brain to mush - to undermine analytical thought. So in the moment when your brain feels most mushy... you're probably close to getting it. Lol.
Great explanation. Thanks!
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?
These are all good questions. The answer would be, I'm afraid, annoying. Let me put my queer theory hat back on.
"What you are trying to do is to get beyond language by means of linguistic pointing at what you claim are extra linguistic experiences. But in reality, all you are doing is saying more words. It is also interesting that you cite a predatory experience of the cat chasing the mouse, situating your colonialist ideas in the context of predator and prey, a binary concept. It's all more binary thinking, more words."
Like arguing with a fish. Whatever you say, "it's just more words." Annoying. Slippery.
It's brain worms. You might also notice that it is brain worms specifically designed to stop you escaping the thought processes.
In my view, this is why mumsnet is such a bastion of rational thought. Very difficult to deny that biological sex exists and it matters, when you have just carried a child to term and are dealing with the realities of caring for small children.
It's all very baffling but thank you for attempting to explain it in plain language rather than obfuscating Butlerese :-) Somehow I don't think these people are very visual thinkers...
Here's my response: https://simonscat.com/blog/simonscatgardencollection/
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.
I feel like there's a whole generation of lesbians identifying out of being women, and out of being lesbians.
Something important about me would be lost if, instead of a butch lesbian, my wife was a transman. I've fought too hard for ground to stand on, for my lesbian identity, to give it up to pretend to be a straight woman, thanks.
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.
I like your style.
I absolutely agree that almost none of the people who expound queer theory conclusions have any understanding of the intellectual underpinnings. It is my humble opinion that most people doing actual further degrees in queer theory subjects have not done the homework. The trick of deconstruction is actually a pretty simple one - throw in a couple of quotes and some high falutin language, make a few risque remarks, and hey presto, they'll publish what you write. I think the number of people in the academy who have actually read and understood even Gender Trouble or Bodies that Matter is vanishingly small.
I find your point about their binary thinking to be instructive. I am going to have to think on that because you're right - there seems to be a way of thinking that is textbook black and white/binary. I had always just put that down to psychological explanations. Not that I am a clinical psychologist or have performed clinical assessments, but black and white thinking that extreme is often associated with personality disorders. But there is something about "All thought is binary" that has a trap in it that might lead you down that road. Or perhaps interact with an existing personality issue, exacerbating it.
I'm going to have to think on it. "Defining something as its opposite" is a trap that reinforces rather than undermines the binary nature of thought, as they see it, no? It's constructive of a particular way of thinking, rather than destructive. The queer theory retort to "thought is structured by binaries" is "let's subvert/undermine/queer those binaries." This ends up with producing more binaries - you can only ever subvert for a moment, before the binary sets in again.
You're saying that a better retort might be to insist on material reality. Woman is not the opposite of man, woman is ova, evolution... It is a good answer. A much better answer than the queer theory one. But annoyingly, the queer theory response is, "you are, in the very moment you say that, simply making a linguistic gesture. You are trying to "ground" sex in material reality, by using more words. There is no way to get beyond those words to the material reality you so love. It's all language in the end. You cannot escape it."
I'm going to have to think about it. Thanks very much for stopping by and making me think.
This quote isn't in the context of Queer Theory but it seems apposite:
"Hume rightly said that Berkeley’s arguments ‘admit of no answer and produce no conviction’."
https://askaphilosopher.org/2015/10/13/when-dr-johnson-kicked-the-stone/
One bit of analysis that helped me immensely to get underneath this thing is a piece by a practising Marxist philosopher who was watching this all unfold in real-time in the 1990s - in the collection Marxism, Mysticism and Modern Theory ed. Suke Wolton. It's the chapter by James Heartfield on Social Construction, and it gets right to the heart of the problem with Husserl and his phenomenological tradition that eventually cashes out in QT.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-24669-4_2
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?
I have found asking about their intention in a calm, rational way to either end the conversation, or at least stop the overt hostile tantrum behaviour. It can also, of course, have no impact.
I find naming tactics ahead of time quite useful - I did this in quite a long conversation with a pre T transman last night on twitter. They kept asking me queer theory "gotcha" questions, and I said quite a lot of "this isn't the gotcha you think it is - if I say this, then you'll say that, if I say the other thing then you'll say the other thing." This can defuse situations, as it wets their powder.
The only thing that worked for me was, truly, being loved better. My wife gave me ground to stand on, and I decided that although queer theory might be good enough for me, my children deserved and needed better. So I had to change. But it wasn't a change of mind, it was a change of heart.
And in the end, I don't think we can love our opponents better - so we just have to defeat them. And have the arguments. And let those watching/reading make a decision as to whether they want to continue sitting on the fence.
I am the mushy brained one!
You know that feeling when you "get" something difficult - whether it's a concept in physics or a chapter in a George Eliot novel and how pleasurable it is?
Queer Theory seems to do the opposite - there's never any lightbulb moment just a headache.
Hi Helen, The headache is apparently the point, right? :-) The theory itself is mushy, as Ceri points out, and presumably wants to queer our brains as well as all the binaries and boundaries! It's definitely not us, but them!
Ceri, I appreciate the points you make above. I agree that getting meta with folks and naming what we see - e.g. anchoring in material reality - will at least keep us sane, rather than drowning in a futile debate - even if they don't come along with us. It's great to hear that this is your approach given that you know this theory well.
Sadly, I also agree about the point you make about love and how it's not up to us to bring that to those making these arguments. Yes, holding the line and hoping others will join is what is needed. I am a relatively a new arrival in this debate after a few years of thinking that it wasn't my problem. I hope many more of us will wake up - and soon.
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 don't understand this - could you expand?
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.
Can you say a bit more about which bit of constructivism you mean? I learned about it in context of Piaget, but that doesn't seem to fit what you're aiming at here. And queer theory tends towards *de*contruction - pulling apart the idea that there can be shared or stable meaning in language.
There is almost no interest, from queer theorists or deconstructivists, in authorial intent. Derrida said "there's nothing outside the text," and this can be taken to mean that authorial intent doesn't exist for purposes of literary criticism, let alone doesn't matter. And watch it disappear up its own spout when you think that the meaning of Derrida's phrase, what he meant by it, is irrelevant as meaning proliferates.
It's intellectual masturbation.
I'd be interested if you could say a bit more about how it would make the pronoun debate interesting.
I'm about 20 years out of practice in this sort of discussion, and then my entry route was Science and Technology Studies (and concepts of truth and accuracy), but it struck me that queer theorists have a very strong authorial intent that they want everyone else to sign up to. A constructivist response could (should?) reject that as the reader is interpreting the text in their own context (which may well include a different understanding of 'material reality ' than the queer theorists). But as you say, it is all intellectual masturbation in the end, and a more fruitful route would be to always consider where harm may be caused, by/to whom, and how to minimise it. At that point I don't think queer theory has anything to offer.
As others have said, thanks for writing this post. It's given me a lot to think about and has been dredging up some ideas that I haven't really thought about for a long time.