Could someone explain queer theory for me?

I do not get, yet it seems integral to radical queer politics (which I love), I think. So I'd like to know. Could someone explain it in a concise and non-confusing manner?

"Radical queer politics"? Tell me you're joking.

Nope, completely serious. [1] Not the best article but gets the idea across.

edited 12th May '11 1:04:57 PM by LoveHappiness

Heh, okay that one is funny.

I actually have a friend who's an academic and used to go to seminars on that kind of thing. Unfortunately, she has more of a life than me and so is not available to post on the subject. As far as I ever understood it, the idea is to look for the hidden "queer" characters/themes in literature. Some of it sounds a bit bonkers to me, but I think a lot of the theories of all kinds that come out of departments of literature are basically Wild Mass Guessing by intellectuals.

edited 12th May '11 1:59:22 PM by captainbrass2

OK, radical queer politics is the largest non-redneck source of negative LGBT stereotypes.

"the largest non-redneck source of negative LGBT stereotypes"

??? Explain if you would please.

edited 12th May '11 2:13:13 PM by LoveHappiness

Based on stereotypes? How would you possibly "find" something like that?

Stereotypically, it starts with wishful thinking, then descends into the queer equivalent of Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory to justify it.

edited 12th May '11 2:24:58 PM by Pykrete

It essentially goes beyond stereotypes. Feminists have done the same for women, with some good success, for a few decades. But that's a story for another thread... hopefully not again today. Oh dear.

Queer theory was more or less designed to talk about people (in the sociological sense) through sexuality, not directly tied to gender as feminism had been doing for years. Because this territory is, by nature, pretty ambiguous, it's hard to sum up well. It's not a case of making assumptions over who is gay and who is straight (bis always get the short end of the stick in these summary things!), but rather the opposite: it stands for the notion that sexual identities don't necessarily need to be fixed.

I've been out of practice on it for years admittedly, but I don't know, time for a popular example. I know some groups of queer theorists love stuff like My Own Private Idaho and films by Pedro Almodovar et al, for embodying these identity switcharoos. It's simply ambiguous but begging to be considered on some alt-sex level, unlike early-modern pulp gay fiction which was very fixated in its moods and implications (they generally often ended up miserably, like in suicides and the such).

Love it.

@Love Happiness. Radical Queer Politics and Queer Theory is one of those areas of academia where Poe's Law is in full effect. It's completely impossible to tell if something's ironic or not unless the author says so or not (and even then, they may be lying). This pretty much always happens when an academic area becomes politicised, because politics is the mind killer.

I've lost count of the number of times I've seen some blogger write a homophobic post about how LGBT are all a bunch of closet degenerates and then quoted something from a Queer Theory paper to back them up, going "Ha! There it is! Straight from the source!".

I don't like Queer Theory because it makes LGBT look bad. And being a queer myself, if the self-appointed (I never asked for those nutjobs to represent me) leaders of the GLBTIQ-munity make us look bad, then I and my friends suffer for it.

I simply don't believe that being queer is as much of a big deal as queer theorists make it out to be. It makes my life difficult in some ways and gives me an advantage to others. But in the end all it does is contribute in small part to my own uniqueness. I feel that turning one's sexuality or gender identity into a complex is very much the opposite of celebrating it. And I feel that is what far too many queer theorists do.

^ It's simply not applicable as a political weapon in those ways, I don't think. I think good writers will pick up on that quickly, though I'm not really familiar with the sorts of examples you're referring to. I'm sure good thinkers are lost in a pond of political Vocal Minority though, having known a few radical gay folk in my time. Like I say, I'm not really part of the scene for the most part however.

Of course, it's probably not so helpful either to consider that a lot of queer theorists aren't really queer. It's probably even less helpful to consider that academia is too darn competitive to be celebratory at all, even in comparatively awesome texts.

For the record though, I've always enjoyed artistic anaylsis the way of queer theory. It's even helped me learn about my options and my writing on occasion, but yes, very sticky issue when it somewhat inevitably gets personal.

I'm confused here—I've seen this book described as a book on queer theory, and it's nonfiction.

I'm not against all gay activists. Dan Savage comes to mind as a gay activist who is very much full of win.

But I've got no time at all for radical politics in general, which I regard as stupid and immature. Most of the time I'm willing to let it slide as young people being young. But when it becomes grist for the mill of homophobes/transphobes to justify being an asshole to me, well then it gets personal.

edited 12th May '11 3:19:02 PM by TibetanFox

Queer theory is mostly about how sexuality and gender identity work in society. Nothing more than that. It's individual writers and their ideas we're discussing.. Radical queer politics on the other hand start from the consept that all Queer people are under threat from heteronormativity and cissexism, and need to defend themselves.

Neither idea seems that controvercial as such, but they do attract people with extreme opinions.

Personally I've seen enough lack of solidarity to think there's any queer unity, but I agree with the points that the heterosexual, cisgender, vanilla society is afraid of deviations and attack them in various ways, from direct violence and laws to more subtle forms of discrimination, and this needs to be criticized and fought.