#queer nihilism

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

Left to right. First row.

1. The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell.

In a joyous and perverse intermingling of fable, myth, heterotopian vision, and pocket wisdom, The Faggots & Their Friends tell us stories of the 70s gay countercultures and offer us strategies and wisdom for our own time living Between Revolutions. These pages sketch a different shape to time and offer instructions for living within it. This story, like our own, plays out in liminal time. Not the time of revolution, and not after-the-revolution, the story occurs between revolutions. Being between revolutions: being enmeshed in slow entropy, in abandoned spaces, in lives forged without recourse to “winning” or “after.” The faggots feel this disintegration, and live best when empires are falling.

2. Be Gay, Do Crime by The Mary Nardini Gang.

Among the discordant chorus of anons who penned the defining texts of the queer anarchist network Bash Back!, none was more fervent in its glorification of criminal desire, decadent hedonism, and social undoing than the Milwaulkee-based Mary Nardini Gang. Their fiery “Towards the Queerest Insurrection” still circulates as an integral manifesto of riotous queerness, while the “Criminal Intimacy” and “Whore Theory” have made their more subterranean way into innumerable conversations and correspondences.

Ten years later, the secretive group supplements these collected writings with a subtle retrospective. Carefully unlocking the hidden layers of their theses on insurrection, they face up to what they got wrong, concede that the world ended somewhere between the Greek insurrection of 2008 and now, and insist upon the vital task of ushering new worlds into being as we live amid the decomposition and cataclysmic death throes of the old one. To their theses on insurrection, they prepend a new arcana tooled for opening onto the queerest of outsides.

Dedicated to their friends among the dead, this pocket edition is a necromantic mirror, an encrypted message to old loves, and an invitation to those finding these words for the first time.

3. The Criminal Child by Jean Genet.

“As for me, I have chosen: I will be on the side of crime. And I will help the children, not to win back access to your houses, your factories, your schools, your laws, and sacraments, but to destroy them.”

So reads this new clandestine translation of a previously censored and unavailable text by Jean Genet. “The Criminal Child” is a critical engagement with the French youth prisons, a reflection on Genet’s formative years within them, a document of hostility towards society and its benevolent reformers, and – as argued by the anonymous afterword – an initiatory magical system.

5. Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture by Arthur Evans.

This radical faerie classic, first published in 1978 by Fag Rag Press, uncovers the hidden mythic link between homosexuality and paganism in an elegy for the world of sex and magic vanquished by Christian civilization. From Joan of Arc to the Cathars and the underground worshippers of Diana, the author shows how every upwelling of gender transgression and sexual freedom was targeted by the authorities for total and often violent repression or appropriation. The concluding manifesto calls for pagan reconnection with the living world, the creation of armed anarchist cells, and the destruction of industrial civilization.

Left to right. Row 2.

1. What is Gender Nihilism? A Reader.

A collection gathering readings for discussions on an end to gender: not the proliferation or liberation of gender, but its catastrophic cancellation. The reader brings together writings as old as 1883 and as recent as 2015, juxtaposing nihilist, radical feminist, queer, trans, anticolonial, communizing and insurrectionary approaches with other unclassifiable textual/existential disruptions. Many of the readings are out of print or have only appeared online or in zine form, and include: Adrienne Rich, Monique Wittig, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, A.R. Stone, Paul B. Preciado, the entities known as Radicalesbians, Gender Mutiny, Baedan, Ehn Nothing, Laboria Cuboniks and, as always, Anonymous. Also includes “My Preferred Gender Pronoun is Negation,” “Gender Nihilism” by Aidan Rowe, and the gender nihilism anti-manifesto that inspired the collection.

2. Baedan 1 – journal of queer nihilism.

3. Baedan 2 – a queer journal of heresy.

If the first issue of Baedan was a knife thrust wildly in the dark, the second is an effort to examine our enemies in a new light; enemies who bear scars yet endure. In a sense, this issue follows through our initial attack and pushes beyond our own horrors at the consequences of words. We write at a time when everything which seemed slightly possible two years ago has borne its rotten fruit; when queer recuperation has become more powerful and accepted than ever, while the fetish for technology has reached an unprecedented frenzy; when so many efforts at subversion languish under the tyranny of cybernetic identity and aesthetics (even our own etymologies have become identities!); when friends turn away out of fear of the unknown, turn toward all the comforts and certainties of the past (identity politics, traditionalism, religious morality, activism, et al). The old enemies rear their heads and the terrain is as bleak as ever. And yet we take seriously that adage: “There’s no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons.”

4. Baedan 3 – journal of queer time travel.

Bædan: journal of queer time travel marks a further attempt to pose and to flesh out a queer critique of civilization. Queer not only in the sense of coming from those outside and disruptive of the Family, but also in the sense of a critique weirder than its more orthodox cousins. We imagine the Bædan project as an effort to pose the critique of civilization otherwise, to begin from another place. In this issue (and beyond…) we have conjured a strange bestiary of thinking, trying to unearth and trace the tradition of anti-civilization thought in the literature of queerness and in queerness as immanent critique.

*I couldn't find this one online*

[anarcho-catboyism]

"The path of resistance is one of pure negation"

Blessed is the Flame Audiobook

Desert Audiobook

Life Without Law Audiobook

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

you know what. fuck it. i'll fly off the handle. i get so tired when people try to explain "why" people who refuse to use it/its pronouns for its users. like i honestly don't want to hear you spitball a "reason" why these people do this, it's a fucking waste of time no matter what. i don't care about finding the reason "why" anyone chooses to misgender me or anyone else. you don't have to psychoanalyze strangers and "get to the bottom" of it because what you're doing is writing it off and handing that person sympathy.

i don't care if they do it because many people weaponize it/its against queer people. i don't care if people do it because it makes them "UNCOMFORTABLE". what the fuck? i don't care if people do it because it's "hard" for them. it makes me WAY more than just "uncomfortable". it's disrespectful and it rightfully pisses me off. i don't care if people do it because they find it disrespectful or in bad taste. i don't care about any of this.

why does NOBODY care about the comfort of the it/its user?

i literally don't care "why" someone refuses to use my pronouns- what i care about the fact is that they just CHOSE to misgender me. focus on the bigger picture, here- folks not using our primary or ONLY pronouns is misgendering us. i literally do not fucking care which reason people Choose to misgender me or anyone else. everyone wants to reclaim slurs, but we can't reclaim people weaponizing it/its against us?

i care about correcting the behavior so people don't have to be misgender because of someone else's discomfort. why are you trying to be sympathetic or "understand" people who choose to misgender other people? focus on the fact that queer people are being harmed, intentionally mind you, by other people who refuse to look past their own nose. using it/its makes them "uncomfortable", but refusing to use it makes us feel disrespected.

if you're so concerned about being respectful: use our goddamn fucking pronouns and none if this would happen in the first place!

[nihildes]

you didn't see shit. 🤫🏴🖤

[grhmwtts]

lately,

i’ve been trying to hold space for the harsh realities—the limitations, regulations—i must impose on myself. i spent the past decade unlearning what my church had taught me to be definitively “good” or definitively “bad” and, in such, unleashed a brutal and intoxicating world onto my feeble, pastel body. in said liberation was a newfound understanding that there is no place for objectivity in regards to the good, the bad—but there is, and must be, subjectivity to the good, to the bad. i soon thereafter considered myself a hedonist, indulging in the endless search for pleasure with a fixation on the pursuit of a higher fix each time, because i had believed that since i had the capacity, the ability to do all things then i must do all things. i suppose, herein i shall introduce emotional intelligence, making its entrance in stride, arm-locked, with a sense of identity. somewhere, in the place where their skin meets, warm by their intertwining arms, resides desire—futile, pulsating—escaping. this is where i find myself now: captivated by their entrance, rotten as intrusive thoughts darken the stained glass windows of the church of my mind. what ceremony is this—i dare not ask. but i am keen, and i am ruined, like never before. my veins rupture, an aneurysm of a divinity, where the “good” and the “bad” seek to tear apart each ligament of mine. in these spaces between possibility is the understanding that anything can reside within it, for the specifics do not dictate the general picture—the microaggressions do not typically overtake the one’s impression of character—but certain matter does make a knee capable of bending or in need of replacement. as such, it is within our own genetic, emotional, makeup which suggests what matter might be best for our personal functionality, ease of existence. and only, through the desire brought by contact of emotional intelligence and a sense of identity, their two independent entities and the room that is this church that is this world, that this life of a mind, do we begin to understand how exactly to piece together this body, this world, this life of self. in this process, i find myself. in this process, i find myself questioning my individuality, examining it through a lens and finding in what ways it differs to that of the general understanding, the inundation of mass media. but only in the quietude can i find myself. so i hold space for the harsh realities—the understandings crippling my adolescent-views of self, world. and i allow myself to accept—radically, theatrically, screeching in beauty and terror—that what is “good” for me is good for me, what is “bad” for me is bad for me, and neither of these standards decree a general “good” or a general “bad”. they instead eradicate judgement, eradicate fear, and invite empathy and honor to each outlook. i, still worry-minded and adolescent-angsted, wish to know how good/bad works for other people, hope that i am not the only one to feel so alienated by the way the world apparently works. but in the most minute senses: i must think of these guideposts as allergies. varying in intensity from discomfort to death, i must know the risks and remedies. i must accept that my body, my brain, might not take to 0T7 very well. even if 0T7 is commonly revered, i must instead respect my own limitations, and see them for what they are: understandings which enable me to find my own ease of existence, embrace my personal functionality at its best. it’s a long, hard-fought battle to recognize one’s own capacities and shortcomings. tis an arduous process, what most call life. and i am thankful to recognize that these specifics contribute to what makes me me, similar to the atoms, to my genetics, a glorious collision suggesting life, i get to embrace my own harsh realities. for the world is vast and we can lose ourselves within it. the self is vast and we can find our world within it.

[hells-plaid-angel]

 Carson McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

[anarchopostings]

[cxmembert]

some ghost pride stuff

[beyond-mogai-pride-flags]

Blackpinkpill Pride Flag

Blackpinkpill or pinkblackpill: a metaphorical slang neologism for someone who takes both black and pink pills; a pill that combines both pink and black colors; someone who considers oneself as both blackpilled/blackpiller and pinkpiller/pinkpilled. It can be used in a reclaimed sense, or in any other way for any reason.

Context: pinkpill is often used as the femcel counterpart of bluepill but it's also used by those who "queermaxxed". Blackpill is the nihilistic interpretation of blue and red pills.

[queer-and-nerdy]

mind and heart are filled with thoughts of primo and secondo and terzo and copia... just like... them... like how they all internalized nihil's shit parenting...........

like how primo had to raise his brothers by himself because they deserved to have a loving childhood even if he didn't have one. like how he willingly took on all the responsibilities of raising a very young terzo and infant copia while dealing with a teenage/young adult secondo. like how he had to parent them from afar while he was touring, sometimes even bringing terzo and copia to be left in the care of a stage ghoul. like how he gave up his best years to single-handedly take care of them with little to no recognition. like how he attended every one of secondo and terzo’s performances during their papacy. like how he loved how strong and protective secondo became, yet hated his harshness and unkindness. like how he loved terzo's flamboyant and optimistic personality, yet hated how insecure it made him. like how he loved copia's dedication and tenacity, yet hated his fear of the world.

like how secondo only saw how much nihil looked down on him. like how he became bitter and miserable because he only focused on how little nihil loved him rather than how much primo loved him. like how he grew to hate and resent terzo because he could see how primo loved his younger brother but couldn't see that same love directed at himself since he thought he wasn't earning/deserving of it. like how he hated primo's touring and refused to join him because he'd rather choose to be alone than forced to be. like how he hated the idea of being ignored and passed off. like how secondo loved all of his brothers but didn't know how to show it because he was blinded by nihil's dislike. like how one time he lashed out at terzo, who then compared him to nihil and he "realized" just how much like his father he was, making him become colder to his brothers in order to "protect" them from his "bad genes." like how he was too afraid to commit to any relationships, platonic or romantic, because he thought he'd end up like nihil. like how he refused to have any children because he saw what it did to primo. like how proud he was of terzo's ascension/descension to papa but was too afraid to show it. like how he always defended and protected his brothers but didn't know how to truly show them the love they deserved.

like how terzo rarely batted an eye at nihil's dismissal because he knew he had primo's unconditional love and support. like how he felt the extremes of primo's selfless love and secondo's bitter resentment. like how the only reason he lasted as papa as long as he did was because primo and secondo stepped in to protect him from nihil. like how he grew up (and died) thinking that secondo hated him but never knew why. like how he always tried to be the perfect son for primo but had no idea what a "perfect" son would look like. like how he tried to dim his personality growing up so that primo would have less of "him" to worry about. like how insecure he was of himself because he was judged and ignored more often than not by those outside of his family circle.

like how copia loved all of his brothers since they were the only healthy family he had. like how the large age difference between him and primo (and secondo's lack of interest in raising a child) led him to lean on his mother and terzo more, which drove him apart from the older brothers. like how after primo, secondo, and terzo's deaths he received the full force of nihil's distaste after a lifetime of being shielded from it. like how he tries to channel his older brothers while performing but feels he can never live up to their standards. like how he clings onto his ghouls because they are the only family he has left. like how he tells them bedtime stories about his brothers and how much they cared and loved.

anywho.

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

A little more printing. I'm tabling a show at the queer skatepark tomorrow. My gf's band is playing.

For fans of little c communism, egoism and love.

My favorite queer theorist (rip).

The paper jammed and I had to carefully pull it out.

[velvetpantylines]

Mmmm pervy men who’s kisses are all consuming, devouring, searing. Who hold your jaw firmly but lovingly, hungry eyes and smiles and those long, slow, wet kisses that leave you wanting so much more. Men so sweet and deliciously slimy you can’t help but quietly ask “kiss me again” when they pull away, pawing at their shirt to pull them back in. Men who can’t help but oblige to your sweet sweet tone and give you everything you want and more .

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Julian Adorney

Published: Jun 1, 2024

When I first heard about queer theory, I assumed that it had to do with gay rights. I was familiar with the LGBTQ acronym, and I assumed that a field called “Queer Theory” would have as its central focus helping to advance lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans rights. But while queer theory does focus a lot on advancing negative and positive rights for trans people (for those not familiar with the philosophical distinction, negative rights don’t infringe on others’ rights, and would include in this case the right for adults to get gender-transition surgery; positive rights do infringe on the rights of others, and would include in this case the “right” of trans-identified males to enter women’s bathrooms), its central focus is very different.

The central focus of queer theory is on rejecting the received wisdom of our ancestors. That is: our society has certain things that we consider “normal,” such as monogamy, having a job, or the notion that there are two (and only two) separate and distinct sexes. The central aim of queer theory is to subvert, problematize, and ultimately undo these norms. Here’s how women’s and gender studies professor David Halperin defined queer theory in his book Saint Foucault:

As the very word implies, ‘queer’ does not name some natural kind or refer to some determinate object; it acquires its meaning from its oppositional relation to the norm. Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence.

What does this attack on social norms look like in practice? It can take almost any form; society has a lot of norms, and a field that defines itself in opposition to these norms will have a target-rich environment.

But let’s walk through a few examples.

First, queer theorists reject what they call “homonormativity.” This is the idea that gay people are just like straight people, and want to fit into the mainstream of society rather than simply living at the margins. It’s the idea that gay people, like straight people, mostly want to put on a suit and tie, go to work, get married, and have children. For queer theorists, this is problematic. Here’s how professor Tyler M. Argüello put it in a paper for the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services:

Extending modern capitalism and consumption, homonormativity has emerged in queer theory, entrenching a transparent White, neoliberal subject, one who replicates heteronormativity (Duggan, 2004). In this variation, homonormativity anesthetizes queer communities into passively accepting alternative forms of inequality in return for domestic privacy and the freedom to consume (Manalansan, 2005).

This rejection of homonormativity can even lead queer theorists to oppose (or at least problematize) the gay and lesbian community’s long fight for marriage equality. Argüello, again: “A preeminent example of this is the fight for “marriage equality,” which privileges a specific form of intimacy and relationship-making (i.e., legal marriage) while silencing and eclipsing other aggrandizing notions of intimacy, domesticity, sexuality, and sociality, among other discourses.”

That is: it’s problematic that gay people fought for the right to get married because this prioritizes (or “privileges”) monogamous relationships over other expressions of sexuality and intimacy (such as hook-ups or open relationships).

Queer theorists also take aim at traditional gender norms. In their paper “Drag pedagogy: The playful practice of queer imagination in early childhood,” co-authors Harper Keenan and Lil Miss Hot Mess (no, really) complain that society and schooling can reify traditional gender norms.

Although individuals’ experiences are profoundly complex, schooling often categorizes people in ways that train each of our ways of being into compliance with an inflexible ‘script’ (Keenan, 2017b). That script, which is enforced through formal institutions as well as through social interaction, operates on multiple levels. The script of gender teaches the public not only what gender is in some essential sense – setting up a binary between womanhood and manhood – but that some gendered ways of being are acceptable and others are not. In the USA, for example, many people learn that the most valued boy will be white, engage in rough-and-tumble play with other boys that will toughen him up and straighten him out, allowing him to mature into a man who wears a suit and tie, makes a lot of money, enters into a sexually monogamous marriage with a woman, buys a home, and has enough but not too many children. In other words, a script that may begin with gender shapes how individuals are taught to understand their expected roles in society in ways that extend far beyond gender alone.

For queer theorists, even the existence of this script is problematic—adhering to it even more so. Boys shouldn’t be encouraged towards rough-and-tumble play, and men shouldn’t be encouraged towards monogamy, high-paying jobs, or buying a house. According to queer theory, men who find a wife and a high-paying job aren’t following their passions or a well-worn societal template that mostly works. Instead, they are merely playing roles that were not written for them, adhering to rules not of their making but imposed by societal pressures.

Queer theory sees these scripts, especially around gender, and delights in breaking them. Keenan and Lil Miss Hot Mess’ paper is about drag queen story hours, which involve drag queens teaching children. A key aim of these story hours, they argue, is to allow and even encourage children to break conventional rules. Because the teacher in this setting is a drag queen, he “breaks the limiting stereotype of a teacher: she is loud, extravagant, and playful.” As a result, he “encourages children to think for themselves and even to break the rules.” They note that drag, which is a powerful manifestation of queer theory, “ultimately has no rules – its defining quality is often to break as many rules as possible!” Of course, this goal makes sense because the authors don’t believe that rules (even the rules of a classroom) matter. They talk about the “arbitrariness of rules” and how drag queen story hours can make this arbitrariness apparent.

Because queer theory focuses so much on sex and gender, norms and social rules of decency are frequently in its crosshairs. In their book Queer Theory, Gender Theory, Riki Wilchins describes a surreal interaction with one of their trans-identifying friends.

I am reminded of the first time my friend Tony pulled down his jeans to show off his new $33,000 penis. As I looked on with fascination, he began razzing me with various invitations, all of which had the words “my dick” and “suck” in them. I quickly found myself immersed in the usual complex reaction I have to the idea of giving head, until it dawned on me that—given the donor site for his graft—I would be sucking off his forearm.

As far as I can tell, there’s no point to this story. It doesn’t advance any of the conscious arguments that Wilchins makes in their book. The only point seems to be that it’s subversive. Wilchins gets to talk about performing oral sex on a simulated penis in a quasi-academic book, which certainly breaks some social norms.

It gets worse. Wilchins, to their credit, wrote their sexually subversive passage in a book primarily read by adults. However, some other queer theorists target a more foundational and essential norm: the idea that we shouldn’t sexualize children. Michel Foucault might be called the grandfather of queer theory. While not himself a queer theorist, he (along with Jacques Derrida) founded the school of postmodernism which has heavily influenced queer theory. Celebrated by queer theorists from Wilchins to Judith Butler, Foucault, in The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, dismissed the criminalization of pedophilia as a solution in search of a problem. Here’s the relevant passage:

One day in 1867, a farm hand from the village of Lapcourt, who was somewhat simple-minded…was turned in to the authorities. At the border of a field, he had obtained a few caresses from a little girl, just as he had done before and seen done by the village urchins round about him; for, at the edge of the wood, or in the ditch by the road leading to Saint-Nicolas, they would play the familiar game called ‘curdled milk.’ So he was pointed out by the girl’s parents to the mayor of the village, reported by the mayor to the gendarmes, led by the gendarmes to the judge, who indicted him and turned him over first to a doctor, then to two other experts who not only wrote their report but also had it published. What is the significant thing about this story? The pettiness of it all; the fact that this everyday occurrence in the life of village sexuality, these inconsequential bucolic pleasures, could become, from a certain time, the object not only of a collective intolerance but of a judicial action, a medical intervention, a careful clinical examination, and an entire theoretical elaboration. 

Got that? The man in Foucault’s story paid a small girl to give him sexual favors. Foucault dismisses this act of sexual abuse as one of life’s “inconsequential bucolic pleasures.” He’s struck most by the “pettiness” of putting this man in jail, a man who until then had been “an integral part of village life.” For Foucault, it seems that laws criminalizing sexual abuse of children represent just one more socially constricting norm that we should interrogate, problematize, and ultimately do away with.

Why have queer theorists built an entire field centered around identifying and rejecting societal norms?

First, because they think that all knowledge is socially constructed. This idea goes back to Derrida, another grandfather of queer theory. Derrida rejected the idea that we can ever find or know capital-T truth. Instead, all of our knowledge is arbitrary; and we only think that it’s all true because we’ve been conditioned to think this way. Here’s how Wilchins summarizes Derrida’s argument: “Derrida’s constructedness is like what you get when you use a cookie cutter on a freshly-rolled sheet of dough. There is no truth to the cookies, and no particular shape was any more inherent in the dough than any other.” Our “discourse”—the intellectual paradigm of our society, the ideas in which we swim—is the cookie cutter, and it determines how we see the world.

Given this premise, we could have a discourse that emphasizes and focuses on the separateness of men and women. Or we could have a discourse that emphasizes their sameness. Or a discourse that has six sexes, or none. We could have a discourse that sees penises and vaginas as different. Or, as Wilchins argues, we could have a perfectly valid discourse that sees a vagina as just an inward-facing penis (no, really); as “providing, not primal difference, but strong evidence of [male and female] bodies’ underlying and inherent similarity.”

Of course, this can take us into territory that normal people find pretty offensive. For instance, Wilchins argues that there’s no such thing as a real woman. Drag performers frequently seek to imitate women, but for Wilchins, they aren’t imitating anything real. What they’re imitating is itself an imitation. Biological females, in their view, are simply “doing” their best impression of womanhood in an attempt to fit in, and their performance is no more or less authentic than the performance of men wearing dresses and makeup who are also trying to “do” womanhood (in Wilchins’ sort-of defense, they’re not singling out womanhood as fake; to them, manhood is equally fake). Here’s how Wilchins puts it: “Woman is to drag—not as Real is to Copy—but as Copy is to Copy. Gender turns out to be a copy for which there is no original. All gender is drag. All gender is queer.”

Not only is all knowledge socially constructed in the worldview, but it’s constructed for a particular reason: to keep the dominant people in society in power. Knowledge is a weapon used to build some people up and keep others down. Or as Wilchins quotes Foucault: “Knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting.”

This brings us full circle to why queer theorists reject social norms. For the queer theorist, norms are built from knowledge that is arbitrary and socially constructed, and in turn are constructed only in order to help the ruling class to maintain its power. In this worldview, the dominant intellectual paradigm of any given period doesn’t tell us any more or fewer true things than would a different paradigm. Indeed, the current paradigm is particularly bad because it’s a tool for perpetuating racism, sexism, homophobia, and (worst of all, and somehow intermingled with all of them) capitalism.

The second reason that queer theorists reject so many social norms is that there’s a certain presentism to queer theorists’ worldviews. The idea is that what’s come before hasn’t worked, and so we need a radical break from tradition. In a discussion on HIV, Argüello argues that “Queer theory can be a productive, additive analytic to comprehend risk and radicalize this longstanding war [against HIV].” Why? Because existing tools haven’t worked: “Frustratingly, incidence (of HIV) persists to be stable annually in the United States.” Our progress has stalled, and so we need to try new and different tools.

Of course, our society has made (and continues to make) remarkable progress in many areas. This means that sometimes presentism has to rely on claims that aren’t true. In the case of HIV, for instance, the CDC notes that we have made tremendous progress in reducing incidence of this deadly disease. New HIV infections per year fell from over 130,000 in 1985 to just 34,800 in 2019. 34,800 is of course still far too high, but it’s tough to look at a decline of 73.2 percent in just over 3 decades and conclude that our tools aren’t working.

So queer theory sees all knowledge as socially constructed in order to entrench the dominant group’s power, and sets itself in opposition to what it sees as the rigid and oppressive norms that this socially-constructed knowledge creates. Fine. In queer theorists’ defense, sometimes knowledge production does look like what they describe. For example, the 19th-century science of phrenology, where white intellectuals sought to maintain dominance by promoting a false science claiming genetic inferiority in non-whites, supports this view. The pathologization of homosexuality is another example where knowledge production looks both arbitrary and malicious. Pathologizing people for wanting to have sex with other consenting adults isn’t something we should ever have done.

However, many social norms are generally good. Keenan and Lil Miss Hot Mess bemoan the idea that men should get married and put on a suit and tie and go to work. But, for most men, this lifestyle works. Monogamous relationships endure better than polyamorous ones. Humans’ willingness to go to work is one reason that our society is so wealthy and that we’re able to provide materially better lives for our children than we ourselves were given (economic data show that Generation Z is on track to be the wealthiest generation in human history).

More broadly, capitalism gets a bad rap from queer theorists, but it’s also lifted billions of people out of poverty.

[ Source: World Bank ]

Norms against pedophilia are unequivocally good. So are norms against cheating on our spouses, abandoning our kids, and (I would argue) biological males hanging out in female locker rooms.

In their campaign against social norms, queer theorists might accidentally do a lot of harm. For instance, Argüello bemoans the fact that “barebacking [having sex without condoms] is met with social and public health policing.” He argues that barebacking isn’t “reckless,” and that, “Instead of indictment, a queer epistemology would be interested to regard this phenomenon as one of strategic behavior and dialectical.” But normalizing barebacking might do a lot to increase the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections, for the simple reason that using condoms actually does work to reduce transmission.

It seems to me that knowledge can fit into one of two categories. First, it can be born out of, and reify, our existing biases. Phrenology and the pathologization of homosexuality are examples of this kind of “knowledge.” Alternatively, it can represent the received wisdom of our ancestors: what millions of humans have learned through trial and error before us, and passed down to us so that we don’t have to make their same mistakes.

Sometimes, knowledge can fit into both categories. For example, monogamous marriage grew out of a Judeo-Christian norm, which might be called a bias. But data also suggests that this norm works. Research is hard to come by, but one study suggests that open marriage has a 92 percent failure rate. The rate of failure for monogamous marriage is much lower.

Queer theorists assume that all knowledge fits into the first category. This makes them good at seeing the flaws in society and the areas where our collective biases are running away with us. However, it makes them bad at seeing the areas where our accumulated inter-generational knowledge actually makes life better for almost everyone most of the time. 

If queer theorists consider social norms to be oppressive and want to tear them down, what do they want to put in their place? No one knows—not even the queer theorists. In a book that otherwise spends a lot of time praising both deconstruction and postmodernism, Wilkins acknowledges that:

Deconstruction and postmodernism are not so much a set of truth claims as a set of philosophic tools and ideas for dismantling existing truth claims. That it, is [sic] intended to take knowledge systems apart rather than to suggest what might take their place […] It’s more than a little like Scarlet O’Hara, promising breathlessly that ‘tomorrow…is another day,’ without knowing that tomorrow will be better, or even explaining why it should be. In this sense, postmodernism seems to trade on the assurance that newness itself is filled with enough promise.

In his book Cruising Utopia, queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz put it even more bluntly.

Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer. We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future. The future is queerness’s domain. Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present. The here and now is a prison house.

To put it another way: queer theory is nihilistic. It’s better at throwing bombs than creating blueprints. It wants to tear society down, but has no idea what to build in its place. It promises that once we tear down the oppressive norms, our politics can have a different shape; but theorists openly acknowledge that they don’t know what that shape is.

The received wisdom of our ancestors is part baby and part bathwater. Queer theorists are very good at identifying the bathwater, though they’re far from the only ones. But they assume that it’s all bathwater; they’re completely blind to the existence of the baby. Queer theorists deserve a seat at the table, because no society is perfect and they might be able to see bathwater that other people can’t.

Those of us who see the baby need to have the courage to speak up to ensure that, in the pursuit of progress, we don’t inadvertently transform our world into something far worse than it is now.

--

About the Author

Julian Adorney is the founder of Heal the West, a Substack movement dedicated to preserving our liberal social contract. He’s also a writer for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). Find him on X: @Julian_Liberty.

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Unlike gay identity, which, though deliberately proclaimed in an act of affirmation, is nonetheless rooted in the positive fact of homosexual object-choice, queer identity need not be grounded in any positive truth or in any stable reality. As the very word implies, “queer” does not name some natural kind or refer to some determinate object; it acquires its meaning from its oppositional relation to the norm. Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence. “Queer,” then, demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative—a positionality that is not restricted to lesbians and gay men but is in fact available to anyone who is or who feels marginalized because of her or his sexual practices. ― David Halperin, "Saint Foucault"

That is, you cannot be "queer," you can only do "queerness." Those who claim to be 'queer" - usually heterosexuals - have no idea what they're talking about, that it's performative.

Whatever is the norm, do the opposite, or just something else. It's just being contrary. It's rebellion without a point or cause.

"Lisa, what are you rebelling against?" "Whaddya got?"

Because when whatever is currently "queer" becomes the norm, that then needs to be "queered." Just look at "non-binary" and how much of a stereotype and trope that is now.

It's pathologizing everything that's normal, and normalizing everything that's pathological.

Gay people fought to blend in with society, for their lives and relationships to raise no more eyebrows than any heterosexual relationship. Queer Theory's goal is the exact polar opposite of this.

[nihildes]

can't stop, won't stop.

[heart-of-poetry]

Nihilism and the concept of life being meaningless is a mindset that has entrapped me for a long time. I’ve seen it in a lot of younger people, especially in those like myself who suffer from mental disorders. When I was experiencing suicidal thoughts, I would use “life is meaningless and nothing matters” as fuel for my fire. I’d like to challenge these statements by both agreeing and adding onto them. yes. life is essentially meaningless. we live, we die, we are remembered for possibly a few generations, and we are eventually forgotten. however, as an addition to the “nothing matters” statement, I present “nothing matters forever”. the hug you gave your little sister won’t matter when you’ve both been forgotten. but it matters now because you saved your sisters life and she’d been contemplating suicide that night. she went on to smile at a stranger in the grocery store, and that smile made them believe in humanity again. that strangers regained hope led them to start a non-profit that helped thousands of people. what I’m trying to say is that we cannot be remembered forever, but we can do tiny acts of good that ripple out into other generations. nothing we do matters in the end, but right now, while we’re still alive, everything we do matters. positive nihilism is the way to go.

[anarcho-catboyism]

"Hope is not a Plan" an Anarcho-Nihilist piece by me, feel free to share

If you're curious why this is worded the way it is I would recommend giving "Blessed is the Flame" a read or listen. It is a fantastic introduction to Anarcho-Nihilist politics.