Hey! Our critical theory reading group will be reading "The Cultural Politics of Emotion" by lesbian feminist scholar Sara Ahmed. We tend to read one chapter (or around 20 pages) at a time, and meet in a Discord voice channel on a weekly basis on Wednesdays at 6:30pm ET. Our next meeting is on July 3rd and we will be covering both the Introduction and Chapter 1. Beginners welcome, our group has been going strong for the last couple of years and we'd love new members!

Join here for the Discord link

Hey all! I’m currently putting together a research project focusing on LGBTQIA+ individuals who were raised religious. The purpose of the research is to explore the relationship between religious upbringing and queer mental health. I’m at the very beginning stages of putting this research project together and one of the first steps is to collect some data to evaluate. I put together a google form with a few quick questions to help me obtain enough data to be able to put together a research paper that would explain my findings. I plan on self-publishing my findings, meaning that I am not collaborating with any institution or individual. The questionnaire is completely anonymous and would take less than 5 minutes to complete. If you were raised religious (all religious beliefs are welcome) I would greatly appreciate your participation! Thank you!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeP12ChZLY9DlkHHM2UDnZoTJYFcGUwrvrEkVbB96F0fm58yw/viewform

I know a lot of trans men who are using the term lesbian to identify themselves. I live in a Spanish speaking country, so some lesbian communities are changing the word lesbiana (female) to lesbianidad (lesbianity) to describe themselves to include trans men who consider themselves lesbian (lesbiano). I feel uneasy about it but I can't put my finger on why. I think trans men are men. Which is why they're not lesbians. Lesbians (in my book) are non-men interested in othe non-men. Non binary people can be lesbian. Trans women can be lesbians. But why are trans men lesbians?

(PS: I am a lesbian)

Discuss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJsf5QY12rg

Is anyone aware of any good contemporary theory being authored about puppy play, furries, and other relevant subcultural phenomena?

I’ve been thinking about the emergence of cat-girl, puppy-girl, bunny-girl social dynamics within some trans* femme communities and was curious if anyone had begun theorizing on those topics.

I picked up the Rutledge reader and started on Edelman.. I'm only 9 pages in and having difficulty. I suppose my linguistic machete is dull.

Is there a post somewhere that summarizes hopefully without throwing too much out. Thanks.

I'm not an academic.

Hey everyone,
I'm conducting a survey for my masters thesis on how LGBTQ+ people manage their emotions when experiencing discrimination or other gender or sexuality-based stressors. The study is completely anonymous and every person that identifies as LGBTQ+ in any possible way can participate. You would really help me out with your participation and get instant good Karma back! ❤️

Here's the link: https://univiepsy.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_77KddElcpfVvYLs

Thank you :)

Hi everyone. I have a query about Julia Serano's work that I was hoping someone more qualified will be able to answer.

Have there been any published critiques of Serano's Whipping Girl from a non binary perspective?

TIA

Hi all, many years ago i saw a post on instagram that got quickly deleted. I have been thinking about it for years and unable to find it since. Can you help? It was a series of infographics explaining how dyke is different than lesbian, and it was the poster’s orientation but also their gender identity. Would love to see it again and know the author! TIA

My grandma is a really cool person who tends to be open minded and think critically, but she’s having a hard time adjusting to the new visibility of genderqueerness. The initial strangeness of it to her is making it hard for her empathize, and I’d like to remedy that because my brother is quite queer. I was thinking about how much I would to share the story of Stone Butch Blues with her to introduce the concept with the power of personal anecdote through the lense of someone older that her, but I can’t give my grandma a book with just quite that much explicit sexual violence in it. I would love some book recommendations for her, especially that involve divergence from the binary and/or show that the concept of gender identity isn’t new.

Hello!
I'm currently a doctoral student at the University of California Santa Barbara and conducting research on mental health and social media with LGBTQIA+ individuals. The link is a survey which asks questions about your mental health and social media habits.

If you are over the age of 18 and identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ then you are eligible for the study!
There is also an opportunity to enter in a drawing for compensation at the end of the survey.

Link: https://ucsb.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cZmMolbGYZqyZTw
The study has been approved by the UCSB ethics board and the protocol number is included in the consent form at the beginning of the survey.

Most of the theory behind this has been looking at how LGBTQIA+ folks differ in terms of effects/use of social media. Essentially, while a lot of research on social media suggest negative mental health repercussions for overuse, people who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ may not always experience that in the same way. Both qualitative and quantitative studies have suggested that social media instead is a place to find identity, friends/connections/support which has positive implications for social media use (I'm always happy to share my sources as well). This study is predicated on the idea that it's possible that social support found on social media can have a positive impact on mental health. (Not ignoring of course that it is a double edge sword and still has negative effects, regardless).

From here

So bringing into education materials based in Queer Theory, including so-called gender-critical perspectives that separate sex and gender** as though they are completely different phenomena**, is meant to make children activists in this disruptive, destabilizing mode of misunderstanding the world.

How is ot misunderstanding?

Queer educators damn themselves with their own words, so I’ll quote one more to illustrate one more core, often-repeated goal of Queer Theory in education. As explained by Hannah Dyer, a Canadian researcher, in a paper titled “Queer Futurity and Childhood Innocence,” the innocence of childhood and the established understanding of child developmental psychology all needs to be Queered. She writes, “Here, I help to illustrate how some of the affective, libidinal, epistemological, and political insistences on childhood innocence can injure the child’s development and offer a new mode of analytical inquiry that insists upon embracing the child’s queer curiosity and patterns of growth.” What is that about? This paper is specifically about and contains a section heading on “Queering the child’s innocence,” which is perfectly in line with what the “drag pedagogy” people want. Queer Theory in education is therefore so destructive that it aims to rewrite the innocence of childhood as an evil that prevents children from developing “queer curiosity and patterns of growth.”

Or, or not assume that "heteronormative" = "innocence". I.e. it assumes heterodoxy is pure while everything else is dirty.

& here:

That’s what Drag Queen Story Hour is actually about. It’s not about empathy—that’s a marketing strategy that is, in fact, a bit problematic. It’s about getting kids to discover any aspects of themselves that might be considered “queer” and developing those into a queer political stance that will be conflated with who they believe they are. More than that, they’ll be told they’re not truly allowed to be who that is, even though it’s who they really are. Society will object. Their parents will object. It has to be kept secret from their parents in case it isn’t affirmed by them.

Which is true but here he has to act like it isn't to make it seem cultists.

Now, I’m not supposed to use the word “grooming” to describe this grotesque set of activities. It’s part of a major controversy—one the Pitt students showed up (potentially menacingly, but in fact as clowns) to protest outside. So I’ll ask a question instead. I’m going to show you something, and then I want to know what word am I supposed to use for this. This self-characterization for the program comes up shortly thereafter in the same paper.

Drag Queen Story Hour presents itself as “family friendly” in a way that it characterizes as a “preparatory introduction to alternate modes of kinship.” What does that mean?

It then says that the “family” in “family friendly” refers to a “queer code” for the “other queers [they connect with] on the street.” So they’re not just lying about the empathy but also what they mean by “family”—which is a “queer code” for a “new family” that Drag Queen Story Hour is teaching kids to be “friendly” to.

The paper repeatedly invokes the concept of a “drag family” for the kids too, and then the paper ends with “we’ll leave a trail of glitter that will never come out of the carpet.” What’s the carpet here?

Here’s the full quote of the “family friendly” part, so you don’t think I’m lying.

Queer worldmaking, including political organizing, has long been a project driven by desire. It is, in part, enacted through art forms like fashion, theatre, and drag. We believe that DQSH offers an invitation towards deeper public engagement with queer cultural production, particularly for young children and their families. It may be that DQSH is “family friendly,” in the sense that it is accessible and inviting to families with children, but it is less a sanitizing force than it is a preparatory introduction to alternate modes of kinship. Here, DQSH is “family friendly” in the sense of “family” as an old-school queer code to identify and connect with other queers on the street.

So, I’m asking. What word am I supposed to use for that? I know which one I can’t use, and that puts me at a complete loss.

So here’s how Queer Theory works. You can’t describe it unless you support it—just like a cult, one we now see targets kids. If you criticize it, that’s “hate.” The rumor widely printed about me is that my using that word, “groomer,” to describe that, above, implicates me in some social crime called “anti-LGBTQ hate,” which is very bad, very serious, and utterly toxic. It’s not just “harmful rhetoric” but a “conspiracy theory.” I am a very bad person, apparently, for naming the obvious, not as a result of inference or guesswork but from their own proudly printed writings.

Except you seem to imply "kinship" means "adult/child sex" which is falling into fallicious territory

Here’s the truth: Gays and lesbians fought for decades to break the public perception that they are predators and groomers of children. Here’s the lie: That’s who and what I’m talking about when I criticize their theory and activism, which is the very groomery thing I just described previously, in their own words.

The truth is that “queer” used to be a slur for gay people, one many activists took to describe themselves in defiance of prejudice and bigotry. The lie is that Queer Theory ever represented a civil rights movement for anyone. It’s a destructive form of radical activism that actually historically opposed gay civil rights and equality. Why would it do that? Because gay equality and acceptance would normalize being gay within society and legitimize gay people as fully equal members of society, and Queer Theory is, by definition, radically opposed on principle to anything normal and legitimate. They even have a word for it, homonormativity, which is also very bad.

Except homonormativity is defined as an IDEAL to be strived for! Again this is because normative has multiple definitions, which he would realize if he payed attention.

In that study he cites:

In contrast, Kathryn Bond Stockton (Citation2009) suggests a metaphor of queer “sideways growth” that is possible for all children (regardless of gender or sexuality). This framework, which counters dominant thinking about child development, is not directed towards a predetermined endpoint of growing up, but rather functions as an irregularized broadening of children’s own interests, abilities, and eccentricities on their own terms.

Here, it is important to differentiate between “queer” as an identity that individuals claim for themselves and “queer” as an analytic. Many people, including both authors, use the word queer to describe ourselves. Although queerness refuses crystallized meaning, our use of the term in this article generally refers to our desire to practice an embodied political resistance to confining constructs of gender and sexuality as they are produced by the institutions and social relations that govern our lives. As an analytic frame, however, “queer” is not limited to the individual person. Queer theory can be used to examine how often-impossible standards of normalcy are formed, not only through institutional categorizations of gender and sexuality, but also through social expectations produced through the racialized structures of capitalism that are inextricably intertwined with that hierarchy (Cohen, Citation1997; Ferguson, Citation2004, Citation2018; Muñoz, Citation2009; Robinson, Citation1983; Snorton, Citation2017; Spade, Citation2011).

Now we see both are playing with terms. However this isn't a problem with Linsday alone, as Lil Miss Hot Mess and her co-author admit to be using definitions interchangeably, though honestly as we can see, this can cause confusion, though I feel willful ignorance is playing a part with Linsday here.

Throughout history and into the present, tremendous effort has been devoted to managing how children understand and embody gender (Gill-Peterson, Citation2018; Sedgwick, Citation1991). From their inception, institutions within the modern nation-state – the medical clinic, the courthouse, the asylum, the prison, and the school among them – have established and policed the borders of gender (Foucault, Citation1977). Here, we emphasize that within the realities of our lives, gender never exists in isolation. Instead, the sets of lines drawn across living minds and bodies intersect with the countless lines drawn across the living world by centuries of global imperialism and colonialism enabled by ideologies of white supremacy (Bhattacharyya, Citation2018; Combahee River Collective, 1977/Citation2017; Crenshaw, Citation1991; Davis, Citation1983; Spillers, Citation1987). To state it plainly, within the historical context of the USA and Western Europe, the institutional management of gender has been used as a way of maintaining racist and capitalist modes of (re)production. Trans studies scholar Jules Gill-Peterson (Citation2015) argued that, within this context, childhood is positioned as a form of “futures trading” wherein categories of human-sorting (e.g. race, class, gender, sexuality) play the role of “economic coefficients” that produce material consequences for the trajectory of children’s lives (p. 185).

They are kinda right, but they are being too wordy here...a problem with academia in general I feel, but one that is important: they forget they need to be frank with the normies as well.

Sort of playing devil's advocate here I guess. ok. So the idea of sexual orientation is pretty recent in human history. Homosexuality was present in virtually every known society, but there was no such thing as "a homosexual" before the modern age. It was something someone did, not something someone was. This went for societies that had taboos against it, as well as for societies that accepted or celebrated it. I've always found this hard to fathom (like, isn't it obvious?) But when it comes to the nature of love, sex, and relationships, the premodern world was not ignorant. They may not have understood disease or electricity, but there's really no reason to think of their understanding of love and attraction as invalid or less sophisticated than ours. 

Today, most people in the west think of sexual orientation as an objective reality, something we discovered, not something we invented. Despite this, I'm constantly encountering stories of people who feel that labels like "gay" "straight" "bisexual" are too rigid. A lot of people are uncomfortable identifying, as there's an implication they don't like. For example;

• discreet "straight" men looking for sex on gay dating sites like grindr
• People who seek out gender nonconforming sexual partners
• "straight" men who fuck each other in prison 
• "straight" men and women who do gay porn (financial incentives)

or to give an example from my own life, I have a friend who is happily married with a kid. Years ago, when he was single, I came out to him and he said he wanted to experiment with me. I declined, because I thought it would make our friendship weird. Recently I asked him if he ever experimented with another guy, and he said no. He said I was the only guy he ever felt like he wanted to do something with, and that no other guy ever interested him. We're pretty close, and he's very secure, so I think he was telling the truth. Now is he really "bisexual"? I personally don't think so and neither does he. 

Anyway, where am I going with all this...Clearly, circumstance and subjective experiences can play a huge role in people's desires and behaviors, and people have all kinds of reasons for not wanting to assign themselves an identity based on how they feel or what they do. Add to all that how recently our ideas of sexual orientation emerged, and the seemingly endless evolution of the LGBT acronym or the pride flag, and the whole notion of sexual orientation as an immutable objective reality kinda...starts to unravel?

What do you guys think? Is there any good reading on this? 

I'm writing a paper that has to do with, but isn't specifically about gender. Basically the idea that someone has to assume whatever gender is expected of them and maybe also the consequences if they don't. Obviously this is a really big and basic idea but all I can find right now are studies. It's fine if it's broad, in fact it might be better if it's broad as I'm not getting into details about anything. Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Hello folks! We are working towards solving a problem LGBTQIA+🏳‍🌈 community individuals face while shopping on ecommerce platforms in India - and what all can be done to improve the overall experience. Your input will help us understand and serve better to the user needs. Thanks in advance!

https://forms.gle/2c3Z2Kdsbzci1Gc29

I did a recent dive into critical theory about vaporwave and how intertextuality/references redefine their political commentary.

I really enjoyed it but I want to read about gender nonconforming people’s contribution to fashion or music as it relates to commentary through obscure genres, aesthetics, or arts in general.

I’m not sure if that is specific enough, but I can answer any questions. Does anyone have good reading suggestions?

Title. I’ve read: Baedan 1, Near Life, Queer Death.

Currently reading: Atmospheres of Violence.

On list: Terrorist Assemblages, rest of Baedan(maybe), No Future, Gender Accelerationist Manifesto.

Currently looking in to Halbertstam’s work.

Anything else good to put on my list? Specifically, I am interested in reading into trans ungovernability

I'm looking for an article or something that's peer reviewed that can help me to cite the phenomenon where minorities have to be extra aware of the dominant culture that they don't belong to in order to appear to 'fit in.' Any help would be great, thanks!

Hello! I'm working on a presentation for a college class and I have an idea, but I was wondering if there was a term for it. It's when you have a story that isn't intentionally queer, but becomes interpreted that way due to underdeveloped characters. The example I'm using is The Great Gatsby and Daisy in that the men of the book are very well developed and there is some development of Daisy, but not much especially in a romantic connotation

I would like to pursue a PhD related to queer theory (like critical theory, english, social theory, etc). I know the common advice for pursuing a PhD is to look for scholars you look up to and apply there. The thing is, the people I look up to are either not in the US, dead, or are in departments with no PhD funding.

I'm searching for current queer theory scholars who work in gender studies, specifically, trans studies, especially following Paul B. Preciado's work. My interest is in trans children, queer futurity, and gender subjectivity today.

Thanks.

I'm working on a nonfiction book in which I try to account for the distribution and existence of bisexuals, metrosexuals, bull dykes, transgenders, and gay men and lesbians. Researchers have been preoccupied trying to find a genetic factor, and it is more likely the intrauterine hormone environment is the culprit.

What do you think of the title and the concept? Is it worth pursuing? I will be able to cite scientific sources.

Hey so I'm pretty new to queer theory but it seems pretty interesting and I'm especially interested in the idea of Gender Performativity. I'm trying to write something on this topic but Butler's Gender Trouble seems to be a pretty hard read and I also don't have the time to read the whole thing unfortunately. Does anybody know some shorter essays and stuff that are easier to read?