This a very thoughtful and thought-provoking essay. In particular, you brought up an important point about which I've also written in the essay "If Aneuploidies = Sexes, Then Two-Headed Turtles Aren’t Turtles." Ambiguous cases don't negate the categories:
Unfortunately, I feel the broader, societal discussion has moved farther off the rails with the recent claim (made by a biology teacher) that "Women Don't Produce Eggs." I pointed out the silliness of it in a recent essay you might find interesting:
This reminds me of when I was in a group of queer identified people who mostly went by they/them pronouns. The type who get huffy if you forget to override what your eyes see and accidentally "misgender" them. Well one of them "misgendered" me by referring to me as "them" although I have *never* asked that nonstandard pronouns be used for me. In trying to "queer the binary," it seems they only really succeed in making new boxes for themselves. Many of them have trained themselves out of seeing "she" and "he" and have made "they" their new default, to the point where they end up misgendering so called "cis" people. They've created new heuristics for their brains and can't see the irony of it all.
Yes this! People VERY often refer to my wife as "they," even though i call her she. They take one look at an old school butch and think, "must be a man."
Mankind has been "queering" the light/dark binary ever since a caveman built a fire to bring light to the night. Edison's light bulb was a highly queer thing by this reckoning!
While I paid my dues to Foucault in graduate school, the one thing I've still not gotten my mind around is why queering any binary (much less any binary in particular) is to be desired. That is, I don't understand what takes queer theory from a descriptive theory, explaining how language shapes reality, to a normative theory, that is, a theory about value and how we ought to act.
I think from what you've mentioned, the closest we get to a theory of why we ought to care is here: "To find performances which subvert the restrictive binaries and allow meanings to proliferate." Ok, but again, this is a value judgement. Why should we do this? Why is this 'good' (ethically or normatively?)
A queer theorist will no doubt retort that descriptive/normativity is simply yet another binary that needs to be queered, but in all that's been explained so far, I've not seen why such an act of queering is desirable, or if there are things we'd really rather not queer. There seems to be some kind of 'this is a good thing/you should do this' value assumption here. Even if queer theorists will argue they are not making this value assumption, I think it should be pointed out that in practice, they are making it, because we are consistently being fed gender ideology or even worse, predatory notions towards children with the notion that "this queers the binary therefore is good."
Except that from what you've laid out, a queer theorist can't do that. The more queer theory is supposed to reach into everything and to cover everything, the more you can't discover a source of value that's not itself produced in language games. I think that's a problem because if value is created by a binary, then a queer theorist will no doubt be preferring to break that binary, because you would be reinforcing it otherwise. If the value isn't created by a binary, then where does that come from? Suddenly, something exists outside of binaries. (I also think that reducing things to sheer power play ignores that normativity and ethics are a fundamental and key aspect of human social life, which is in and of itself ample reason to deny queer theory as a descriptive theory, let alone normative theory, but that's another kettle of fish altogether...)
This a very thoughtful and thought-provoking essay. In particular, you brought up an important point about which I've also written in the essay "If Aneuploidies = Sexes, Then Two-Headed Turtles Aren’t Turtles." Ambiguous cases don't negate the categories:
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/if-aneuploidies-sexes-then-two-headed
Unfortunately, I feel the broader, societal discussion has moved farther off the rails with the recent claim (made by a biology teacher) that "Women Don't Produce Eggs." I pointed out the silliness of it in a recent essay you might find interesting:
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/women-dont-produce-eggs
Keep up the wonderful writing… I enjoy it very much, Frederick
❤️❤️❤️Thank you
This reminds me of when I was in a group of queer identified people who mostly went by they/them pronouns. The type who get huffy if you forget to override what your eyes see and accidentally "misgender" them. Well one of them "misgendered" me by referring to me as "them" although I have *never* asked that nonstandard pronouns be used for me. In trying to "queer the binary," it seems they only really succeed in making new boxes for themselves. Many of them have trained themselves out of seeing "she" and "he" and have made "they" their new default, to the point where they end up misgendering so called "cis" people. They've created new heuristics for their brains and can't see the irony of it all.
Yes this! People VERY often refer to my wife as "they," even though i call her she. They take one look at an old school butch and think, "must be a man."
New homophobia, same as the old.
This is brilliant. Thank you so much.
Mankind has been "queering" the light/dark binary ever since a caveman built a fire to bring light to the night. Edison's light bulb was a highly queer thing by this reckoning!
😅
Thank you for the clear queer theory explainer!
While I paid my dues to Foucault in graduate school, the one thing I've still not gotten my mind around is why queering any binary (much less any binary in particular) is to be desired. That is, I don't understand what takes queer theory from a descriptive theory, explaining how language shapes reality, to a normative theory, that is, a theory about value and how we ought to act.
I think from what you've mentioned, the closest we get to a theory of why we ought to care is here: "To find performances which subvert the restrictive binaries and allow meanings to proliferate." Ok, but again, this is a value judgement. Why should we do this? Why is this 'good' (ethically or normatively?)
A queer theorist will no doubt retort that descriptive/normativity is simply yet another binary that needs to be queered, but in all that's been explained so far, I've not seen why such an act of queering is desirable, or if there are things we'd really rather not queer. There seems to be some kind of 'this is a good thing/you should do this' value assumption here. Even if queer theorists will argue they are not making this value assumption, I think it should be pointed out that in practice, they are making it, because we are consistently being fed gender ideology or even worse, predatory notions towards children with the notion that "this queers the binary therefore is good."
Except that from what you've laid out, a queer theorist can't do that. The more queer theory is supposed to reach into everything and to cover everything, the more you can't discover a source of value that's not itself produced in language games. I think that's a problem because if value is created by a binary, then a queer theorist will no doubt be preferring to break that binary, because you would be reinforcing it otherwise. If the value isn't created by a binary, then where does that come from? Suddenly, something exists outside of binaries. (I also think that reducing things to sheer power play ignores that normativity and ethics are a fundamental and key aspect of human social life, which is in and of itself ample reason to deny queer theory as a descriptive theory, let alone normative theory, but that's another kettle of fish altogether...)
I have an answer to this - it is a very long one. I'll write something about it i think. It's a very good question.