#queerecologies #kuirekoloji

Doğayı kuir teoriyle düşünmek anlamak; thinking and sense-making in nature through the lens of queer theory

Everyone is welcome here says the 9-legged octopus
The axolotl, seahorse, sea turtle, catfish, snail and others join in the queer chorus and cheer happily thereafter.

#futures #queertheory #planetearth #ecosystems #ecology

Living with rhythms of the day, and within planetary boundaries in solidarity with all life and things animate and inanimate.

TRANS AND QUEER DIVERSITY: A QUESTION OF IDEOLOGY?

(This is a discussion not dogma. Please read it with that proviso.)

An inherent problem of trans in Western Culture is that it has been conceived as a medicalised existence conforming to an imaginary binary. Trans academics have spoken and written about this (often critically) for several decades now and I have reproduced them in my own work. See, for example, my "five queers of the apocalypse" in part two of my recent book "Black Seeds" (see pinned toot) or Susan Stryker's Transgender Studies Readers. It is, thus, according to some, including myself, a problem that trans is understood as a medicalised existence because that means it is very easy to frustrate. Just ban doctors from helping trans people - as the bigots are catching on to doing now. Then ban people from being able to live publicly as trans. While trans people "just want to fit in" (like the gays who hate to be called queer) it becomes easy to frustrate if you are a bigot with power.

The argument can be made, however, that both queer and trans should NOT aim to fit in nor aim to ideologically buttress this patriarchal, heteronormative society we live in. (Queer as queer theory, in fact, explicitly sets out to oppose it.) This view posits that queer, trans and nonbinary are original and diverse forms of humanity. A black person, who is many and various anyway for all black people are not alike, is not a white person. So a trans person or a queer person is not, and cannot be, a straight or cis person. The challenge here is to acknowledge this and accept that the human species is more broadly defined, and defined with more diversity, than some will allow.

You can never engage that battle whilst shying away from it or "simply wanting to fit in". So perhaps we should NOT believe that trans (which, as "trans" specifically, is an entirely modern Western construction to be differentiated from other historical and cultural cross-gendered formulations as many of those cultures rightly insist) is a medicalised state of existence (for anthropologically-funded reasons) but it seems the case that many trans people have ideologically convinced themselves it is because they only see a binary and the need to pick a side in a very specific ideologically constructed whole - and then conform to it.

Yet a consequence of that ideological capture is that such trans people make themselves hostage to an authoritarian politics and so very easy to control or frustrate. It is not just bigots who need the education here: everybody does. There have been (and still are) cross gender people in evidence for centuries, as some trans historians have detailed, but they weren't all medicalised because the medicalisation was beyond their knowledge and abilities. In other words, thinking of trans in a medicalised way is A CULTURAL ACT. We need to "change the currency" on this and, as a consequence, change trans whilst activating what some would argue is the real, liberatory meaning of "queer".

Thinking of trans medically is to put yourself in a box you don't control. It makes you dependent. Thinking of gender as picking one of two sides does the same thing. The liberation comes in devising a culture that values us, all of us, as we come to be. Let me put that another way as a question: if the West didn't think about human relations as it does (patriarchally, heteronormatively, binarily) could trans be constructed ideologically as it has been in the West? I suggest not and so argue that in changing the culture we would also change trans in a necessary way.

Here we need once again to be reminded that freedom is a work of imagination first and foremost.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF "QUEER"

I have been catching up on the reading of my former (queer) professor and I am happy to find he has continued in being the queer pioneer he always was.

We are used, if we know anything about "queer", to the slogan "queer means attack". But what is it queer attacks? The essay I read suggests it is "identity". Yes, that's right, in a world chock full of people who want to make the (sometimes essentialising) claim that they simply "are" things, all kinds of queer people and theorists claim that "queer" is that which attacks the very notion of "identity" and destabilises the intellectual ground on which "identity" can seem convincing.

I am going to write a book next called "Sexual Autonomy". In brief, it is a book about how sexual autonomy is at the heart of political freedom and is, in fact, a necessary component of it. I think the queer insight I just mentioned here is part of that. For we cannot be free if we lock ourselves up in incarcerating notions about sex.

For example, some people think there are things called "gay sex" and "heterosexual sex". These exist based on the idea that there are definitive "men" and definitive "women". The intellectual position "queer" says no to this. It says these identifications are rhetoric not fact, fiction (which is and can be for purposes) and not inherent reality. Queer says knowledge, all knowledge, is a tool of power and made up to get somewhere rather than reflecting an idealistically conjured "reality". Nature does not distinguish between "gay sex" and "heterosexual sex". There is just sex. Nature does not distinguish between "man" and "woman". There are just humans. Nature does not distinguish between reproductive or recreational sex. There is just sex.

So what queer says here is "Ask yourself what people are doing with their words and why they imagine the world in one way and not another." There are not only two types of anything (and these two types are not opposites either). Queer, if it is anything, is (expanding) diversity. It (I hope) makes you think.

Exploring intersections of queerness & history • Building Portugal's first digital queer archive

He/Him or They/them • Polyam • Making history less straight, one document at a time

#Queer #research showcase about to start at work. Join us! https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lgbtqia-history-month-research-showcase-tickets-1216718942109?aff=oddtdtcreator

Panellists:

Natasha Egginton, Doctoral Researcher in Fine Art
“Reviving the Act of Social Assembly”

Ireneusz Koper, Doctoral Researcher in Documentary Film
“Documentary Filmmaker as an ACA and LGBT Advocate”

Lindsay Steenberg, Reader in Film Studies
“The Gladiator Film and Queer Classicism"

Rena Onat: Queere Künstler_innen of Color. Rezensiert von Prof. Dr. Heinz-Jürgen Voß, 27.01.2025 https://www.socialnet.de/rezensionen/33076.php #lgbtiq #queertheory

Die Oligarchen sind auch Aufständische der alten Männlichkeit gegen Feminismus und Queertheorie.
Sie bekommen Zustrom an seelischen und geistigen Tributen von den Verunsicherten und Zurückgebliebenen für diese Wiedererrichtung von Cis-Pflicht, Hetero-Pflicht, Macho-Pflicht und Tradwife-Pflicht gegen alle Infragestellungen der letzten Jahrzehnte.
#oligarchie
#männlich
#cis
#queertheory
#tradwife

Women’s implicit preferences reveal surprisingly high levels of gynephilia https://www.psypost.org/womens-implicit-preferences-reveal-surprisingly-high-levels-of-gynephilia/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #Gynephilia #WomenInResearch #SexualFluidity #queertheory #LGBTQIA

[thread] Judith Butler [they/them]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler
https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/judith-butler

* Am. feminist philosopher; gender studies scholar
* infl. political philosophy/ethics/3rd-wave feminism/queer theory/literary theory
* supporter, 2SLGBTQIA+ rights
* Who's Afraid of Gender? explores roots of current anti-trans rhetoric, a "phantasm" that aligns with emerging authoritarian movements

"Writing during the Disasters" is a new book by Marius Henderson on suffering in contemporary #AmericanPoetry applying #AffectTheory, #QueerTheory, Black Feminism & more to the works of 7 poets and 1 artist collective

#Poetry #LiteraryStudies #AmericanLiterature
#AmericanStudies

The countersexual manifesto continually proves it's truth/efficacy through my living body.

"'When Rape was Legal: The Untold History of Sexual Violence during Slavery' is the first book to solely focus on the widespread rape perpetrated against enslaved black women by white men in the United States. The routine practice of sexual violence against enslaved black women by white men, the motivations for this rape, and the legal context that enabled this violence are all explored and scrutinized. Enlightening analysis found that rape was not merely a result of sexual desire and opportunity, or simply a form of punishment and racial domination, but instead encompassed all of these dimensions as part of the identity of white masculinity. This provocative text highlights the significant role that white women played in enabling sexual violence against enslaved black women through a variety of responses and, at times, through their lack of response to the actions of the white men in their lives. Significantly, this book finds that sexual violence against enslaved black women was a widespread form of oppression used to perform white masculinity and reinforce an intersectional hierarchy. Additionally, white women played a vital role by enabling this sexual violence and perpetuating the subordination of themselves and those subordinate to them."

If i, in this moment in time, were in the business of describing m(y) sexuality over the past couple months (and very probably the future ones as well), the “queer” of queer theory would be an effective concept to do so.

*see pinned posts for elaboration on 'i' and 'm(y)': https://mastodon.social/@m_enby/113143466411433179

"The slave ship is a womb/abyss. The plantation is the belly of the world. Partus sequitur ventrem—the child follows the belly. The master dreams of future increase. The modern world follows the belly. Gestational language has been key to describing the world-making and world-breaking capacities of racial slavery. What it created and what it destroyed has been explicated by way of gendered figures of conception, birth, parturition, and severed or negated maternity. To be a slave is to be “excluded from the prerogatives of birth.” The mother’s only claim—to transfer her dispossession to the child. The material relations of sexuality and reproduction defined black women’s historical experiences as laborers and shaped the character of their refusal of and resistance to slavery. The theft, regulation and destruction of black women’s sexual and reproductive capacities would also define the afterlife of slavery."

– Saidiya Hartman, "The Belly of the World: A Note on Black Women’s Labors." p. 166

Why does #science appear to ignore the #queer experience? It isn't because scientists fail to recognize #QueerTheory in their studies, but because political preferences calcified into #dogma are dressed up as "science" in Western society.

https://genderidentitytoday.com/science-doesnt-need-queer-theory/

#GenderIdentityToday

Cis people are divided into "gay" vs. "straight."

Trans people are divided into "identifies with AGAB gay people" vs. "does not identify with AGAB gay people."

These are both, imo, fundamental social divisions, of comparable role and significance, within the respective groups. Thoughts, anyone?

Really interesting academic article. Well worth a read to understand not just a critique of applying homonationalism to Taiwan, but also Israel, including assertions of ‘Pinkwashing’.

#Taiwan #Tongzhi #Homonationalism #Pinkwashing #Mazeldon #Jewdiverse #QueerTheory #LGBTQ #Queer

https://brill.com/view/journals/ijts/6/2/article-p261_003.xml?language=en