Queer Theory: A Primer
Many people dismiss feminists even before they talk. I think there are two reasons for that; people either dislike them or they don’t understand them.
Today the word cisheteronormativity caught my eye and I thought maybe I should write about queer theory.
It’s very easy to get lost in the jargon, and even worse is that it’s very easy to get lost in the theories.
When it comes to gender studies, its hard to know where we draw the line between feminism, queer theory, and even critical race feminism theories.
Feminism has been around for many years and its main focus is women and their problems. In earlier centuries, feminists advocated for women suffrage, rights to own property, the right to initiate divorces, and rejected some sections of the Napoleonic code.
However, as we are all aware, there has been considerable progress in what feminists of earlier years wanted. Women nowadays vote, go to school, have careers, own property, and they can do everything they want.
However, in the last few decades, Critical Race Feminism came up. From the wording itself, you notice its about race and feminism.
CRF theorists have argued before that gains made through feminism largely favored white women and not black women.
For that reason, Critical Race Feminism advocates for the rights of black women separately from those of white women.
However, CRF is much an offshoot of feminism as it is an offshoot of Critical Race Theory.
Critical Race Theory advocates for the legal rights of black people. Critical Race Theory is by itself a very controversial ideology. More about Critical Race Theory will be addressed on a different post.
As you can see though, Critical Race Feminism focuses more on black women and less on black men. The idea here is that, black men get certain privileges by virtue of them being men than black women.
That is despite the fact that black women in countries like the United States have better chances in life than black men.
But of course, it’s not a competition.
I had to make that distinction very early just to ensure nobody is confusing feminism and queer theory. Inasmuch as both of these theories have overlapping methods of analysis, they are different. However, in the last few decades, feminists have adopted queer theory and made it one of the goals social justice is meant to achieve.
So what is queer theory? First, queer people are defined as individuals who don’t fit in the usual and often normalized conception of sex or gender. In short, they are non-binary.
As queer theory suggests, we have normalized the idea that there are only TWO sexes; males and females.
The idea of two sexes is where the word binary comes from. But queer people are said to be non-binary meaning they fall outside the usual conceptions of sex, gender, or sexuality.
You’ve already heard of these non-binary individuals. They are more commonly known under the umbrella term LGBTQ+
The LGBTQ+ are a very broad community. However, to prevent error we have to differentiate some members of the group.
The first two letters represent Lesbians and Gays. These are men and women who’s sexual attraction is towards people of the same sex.
The word sexuality as is used in queer theory means a person’s sexual attraction, feelings, and thoughts. Straight people feel sexually attracted to people of the opposite sex. However, homosexuals are men attracted to men and lesbians are women attracted to women.
Bisexuals and transgender are a different group. However, for trans individuals, their sex does not align with what they believe is their gender. Bisexual individuals have both male and female sex organs (Hermaphrodites).
When talking about queer theory it’s important to note that sex and gender are NOT synonymous.
Sex is your biology; gametes, reproductive organs etc. Gender is what a person identifies with regardless of their sex. This is the reason you hear weird genders like pansexuals, polysexual, gray asexual etc. Collectively, they are all called gender identities.
So what does Queer theory advocate for?
After making the distinctions above then it is easier to lay the groundwork for queer theory and what they want.
First, there are a few stumbling blocks that queer theory had to overcome. The first and the most important is SEX.
We learnt in school that our sex is biological, and that we are male or female because of the reproductive organs we have, our body morphology, the sexual gametes we have etc.
However, queer theory argues that this is junk science certainly created by the patriarchy to push the agenda of men and women.
Alternatively, it argues that sex is a spectrum and everybody from gays, lesbians, transgender people, pansexuals, men, women, etc lie somewhere in the spectrum. The idea that sex is a spectrum implies that we all lie somewhere in the bi-modal distribution of maleness and femaleness, or in between like intersex people.
From the chart above, sex is depicted as non-binary. So where does the idea of sex comprising of only men and women come from?
You must have guessed it. According to queer theory, society created the idea that sex is what defines men and women. In theoretical wording, its called social constructionism. A phenomenon is socially constructed if it has its origins from the socialization processes in our societies.
Social constructionism argues that we are all socialized into believing we are either male or female. Feminists have also adopted the social construction of biological reality to challenge the position of men in society and even marriage.
Socialization begins early in childhood when your dad buys you a car if you are a boy, or a doll if you are a girl.
Similarly, gender roles including cooking, washing, taking care of children etc are all roles that we were socialized into. The social construction of sex also challenges same sex relationships, arguing that we are socialized to prefer romantic relationships with people of the opposite sex.
In very few words, queer theory argues that the difference between men and women is not routed in biological reality rather it was created by people.
If sex is not biologically real, then the next logical step for queer theory is that it’s unfair to exclude people who do not align as either male or female from society. That includes all members of the LGBTQ+, whom it is believed fall somewhere in the sex spectrum.
I guess by now you know what CIS-HETERO-NORMATIVE means. Cis stands for cisgender another word for heterosexuality or straight. Hetero is short for heterosexuality.
Cisheteronormativity is the idea that we have ‘normalized’ straight relationships as the only relationships and in the process excluded non-binary and gender non-conforming individuals. The word itself is repetitive and you are better off saying heteronormativity or cisnormative.
Many feminists do not advocate for queer justice or the more popular trans rights. The reason is because inasmuch as many women agree on the feminist course, they do not agree on the trans movement for individual reasons. For example, some women are opposed to the decriminalization of homosexuality for religious reasons. Do you think queer theory has merit?
In this post, I tried as much as possible to simplify and clarify what queer theory is and at least reveal how different it is from mainstream feminism. I have my own opinions and reservations when it comes to this topic. However, I did not want to make this post a commentary of my opinions. In a separate post, I will expound these ideas and possibly critique the whole theory or some aspects of the theory. I also intend, at a later date, to make a deeper connection between race, gender, and other contemporary ideologies. If you are an advocate of queer theory or feminism and you believe I have gotten something wrong, please point it out in the comments and I will be glad to make changes where necessary.
