In a previous article, we discussed the growing number of critical theory based majors at our universities and how their influences are permeating our society to a regressive effect. This article will focus on the origins of the one that I consider the worst of the bunch, Queer Theory.
Written in 1984 by Gayle Rubin, currently an associate professor at the University of Michigan, the paper "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality" is credited with being the founding text of Queer Theory. According to Gayle, the politics, laws, and societal views pertaining to sex and feminism during that era demanded a new framework to think about sex. Per Gayle, "A radical theory of sex must identify, describe, explain, and denounce erotic injustice and sexual oppression."
As you read Gayle's account of the historical social stigmas, laws, and sometimes arbitrary enforcement of laws that pertain to sexual morality, one can't help but notice the underlying pivot that is taking place. Gayle's paper follows common argumentative techniques that Grievance Studies papers like to take:
portray isolated events that were handled poorly by the courts, police, society, etc. as being the status quo and then use this perspective of the status quo to tear down and destroy their target,
never recognize that the poor treatment of certain groups in the past does not exist today
refuse to accept the idea that civil society finds certain personal behaviors unacceptable or age inappropriate
Although there are many topics contained in this paper, the one that I want to focus on is the author's morally loose perspective on pedophilia. I think any reasonable person agrees with the idea that consenting adults are free to engage in whatever sexual behaviors they prefer, as long as those behaviors aren't emotionally or physically damaging to their partners. The operative words in that last sentence are "consenting adults". Gayle doesn't share the same moral emergency brake as the vast majority of citizens, and she advocates multiple times for normalizing sexual relations between minors and adults while striking down laws that protect minors from sexual predators or exploitation. Her position on this is unambiguous and is repeated throughout the paper.
Gayle sets the stage for the sexual oppression from which she believes society seeks liberation as follows:
Modern Western societies appraise sex acts according to a hierarchical system of sexual value. Marital, reproductive heterosexuals are alone at the top erotic pyramid. Clamoring below are unmarried monogamous heterosexuals in couples, followed by most other heterosexuals. Solitary sex floats ambiguously. The powerful nineteenth-century stigma on masturbation lingers in less potent, modified forms, such as the idea that masturbation is an inferior substitute for partnered encounters. Stable, long-term lesbian and gay male couples are verging on respectability, but bar dykes and promiscuous gay men are hovering just above the groups at the very bottom of the pyramid. The most despised sexual castes currently include transsexuals, transvestites, fetishists, sadomasochists, sex workers such as prostitutes and porn models, and the lowliest of all, those whose eroticism transgresses generational boundaries.
As you may have noticed at the end of the paragraph, she calls out the most despised group as those crossing generational boundaries. This term shows up a lot during the rest of her paper and make no mistake about it: it is code for pedophilia.
Here is another paragraph showing her lack of moral compass when it comes to protecting children:
The laws produced by the child porn panic are ill-conceived and misdirected. They represent far-reaching alterations in the regulation of sexual behaviour and abrogate important sexual civil liberties. But hardly anyone noticed as they swept through Congress and state legislatures. With the exception of the North American Man/Boy Love Association and American Civil Liberties Union, no one raised a peep of protest.
In the previous paragraph she references NAMBLA as the only example of an entity protesting these laws. NAMBLA is a group that openly advocates "to end the extreme oppression of men and boys in mutually consensual relationships". You've got to be kidding me.
The paper is rather long and examples like the above are plenty. In the years following Gayle's paper, the critical theorists were able to latch on to her call for a new radical theory of sex, culminating in a new area of scholarship called Queer Theory. If you read the paper yourself, you will notice that a good portion of it is attacking what society considers normally accepted behaviors. Per the New Discourses website:
Queer Theory seems to deliberately confuse anything that is descriptively normal, in the sense of being commonplace, e.g., heterosexuality or the sexual binary, with that automatically carrying an implication that any variation from that sense of falling within the general norm must be understood pejoratively and seen as somehow illegitimate. It views society has carrying strong expectations, if not requirements, for people to fall within the “normal” range and not to be “abnormal” in any way, and sees these expectations as a central application of dominance to create oppression. This intentional conflation of “normal” in a descriptive sense and “normal” in a moral (normative) sense is the centerpiece of Queer Theory, and because there are both reasonable and unreasonable, fair and unfair applications of normative as a result of descriptive normalness, it has been and remains relatively easy for Queer Theory to keep muddying this water for its own activist purposes.
In my opinion, Gayle Rubin's 1984 paper has had a destabilizing effect on our educational system and culture. Nationally and locally we are seeing age-inapropriate books in our schools, children identifying as various genders and objects, and strange things like Drag Queen Story Hour instead of a focus on core subjects. Please stay involved in your child's or grandchild's education.