We have never been queer

July 6, 2014 7:29 AM

Fifteen to twenty years ago, books like Wendy Brown’s States of Injury (1995) and Anna Cheng’s The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation and Hidden Grief (2001) asked readers to think about how grievances become grief, how politics comes to demand injury and how a neoliberal rhetoric of individual pain obscures the violent sources of social inequity. But, newer generations of queers seem only to have heard part of this story and instead of recognizing that neoliberalism precisely goes to work by psychologizing political difference, individualizing structural exclusions and mystifying political change, some recent activists seem to have equated social activism with descriptive statements about individual harm and psychic pain. Let me be clear – saying that you feel harmed by another queer person’s use of a reclaimed word like tranny and organizing against the use of that word is NOT social activism. It is censorship.

The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma
posted by crayz (12 comments total)

Naah, this is just the queer equivalent of the crusty old socialist farts whinging on about how all that feminism and LGBT activism only distracts from the class struggle.
posted by MartinWisse at 7:39 AM on July 6, 2014 [5 favorites]

"a reclaimed word like tranny"

lol try harder
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:40 AM on July 6, 2014 [7 favorites]

That was a surprisingly large amount of Monty Python references for an article about queer politics.
posted by mittens at 7:40 AM on July 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure about the opening claim, although they do qualify it in the rest of the paragraph. People were very upset at the time (both in the US and the UK) with the MP movie, and in fact there were massive protests against it. Michael Palin had a televised debate with, a priest?, I believe, about the film (he comes off very well in the encounter) (Oh here it is - John Cleese, too).
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:42 AM on July 6, 2014

A google search of the phrase "you are triggering me" links to this article + a shitload of tumblr conversations, most of them mocking the phrase or complaining about the apparently-universal fact that trigger warnings are used as a censorship tool.

Hopefully a Professor at USC, of any person, can recognize that social activism is not limited to or defined by Tumblr. The rest of the article seems like a similar exercise in arguing with strawmen. Granted it is an easier exercise than actually engaging with the view points of people that disagree.
posted by muddgirl at 7:52 AM on July 6, 2014 [3 favorites]

The point the article makes about "safety" is really interesting. I hadn't considered how the recent vogue for "safe spaces" (of which the language policing is but a part) ties into the growth of the security state, but it's a really interesting correlation. It ties in, too, with gentrification: college-educated people moving into areas where they would have once been most unwelcome, then demanding the authorities come in to protect them.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 7:57 AM on July 6, 2014 [7 favorites]

If you're sure you're right, you probably aren't.
posted by chaz at 8:12 AM on July 6, 2014

Strawmen or not, the writer makes an incredibly important point here:

Is this the way the world ends? When groups that share common cause, utopian dreams and a joined mission find fault with each other instead of tearing down the banks and the bankers, the politicians and the parliaments, the university presidents and the CEOs?

The Left really does have an ever-increasing history of eating itself. Part of that is a natural consequence of our focus on the notions of individuality, right to self-determination, identity, etc. But in many cases (and I am not exempting myself from having done this exact thing), that becomes the absurdity that we find in places like the more extreme Tumblr SJW where tiny little groups of people are basically Outraged! By Everything! and turns into, frankly, "fuck you, I'm a dragon."*

And woe betide anyone who doesn't immediately and uncritically give 100% support to whatever the latest nonsense is.

Let’s not fiddle while Rome (or Paris) burns

A surprisingly clever reference there; the writer knows their queer history. At the end of the day, one of the Left's strongest viewpoints (identity politics) has become one of our greatest weaknesses by causing fragmentation instead of unity and collectivism. Internet fighting over oppression Olympics has, for an entire generation it seems, replaced actually going out and doing something.

I dunno. I mean, I tend to use 'queer' more often these days than 'gay' to describe myself, or others who fit somewhere not in the heteronormative spectrum. It's inclusive, where so much of politics on the left has turned into exclusionary zones where if you say the wrong word, or say the right thing in the wrong way, you have failed to say the magic password and you are banned from the club.

Don't get me wrong; I think identity politics do matter. I think the focus on self-determination (of identity, of place, etc) is an incredibly important and valuable thing. Perhaps the writer is making their points clumsily or inartfully, but I think there is also incredible value in questioning whether we are taking certain kinds of politics to an absurd extreme; are we becoming the PC caricatures that the right wing conjured up out of thin air a couple decades ago? It seems like that's a question well worth asking, to me. And has made me start thinking more deeply about how I personally approach identity politics in general.

YMMV, of course.

* Deliberately using that example so as not to single out any one group that actually does face discrimination. The Otherkin kind of folks don't need anything else except therapy and perhaps medication to help them understand that no, dragons and elves have never existed therefore you aren't one.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:17 AM on July 6, 2014 [9 favorites]

I don't think the author is arguing with strawpeople. I for one have not read any of these tumblr conversations, but have witnessed these kinds of issues (hurt feelings, censoring, etc) all over campus, among student organizations and academic faculties.
posted by ageispolis at 8:17 AM on July 6, 2014 [3 favorites]

I hit post too soon...

For an article with so many Python references, I'm kind of flabbergasted that they didn't include the scene from LoB where they discuss demands to be made of the Romans.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:18 AM on July 6, 2014

lol try harder

self-referentially hysterical
posted by crayz at 8:25 AM on July 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

My reference point for anarchic, take-no-prisoners comedy is a 45-year-old sketch show run by Oxbridge grads. Here's why calling a slur a slur distracts from the class war:
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:31 AM on July 6, 2014 [4 favorites]