{"id":5143,"date":"2023-08-25T12:46:49","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T17:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/?p=5143"},"modified":"2023-08-25T12:46:50","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T17:46:50","slug":"queer-education-is-child-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/?p=5143","title":{"rendered":"Queer Education is Child Abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20370%20247'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-133.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"zeen-lazy-load-base zeen-lazy-load wp-image-5144\"\/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"464\" src=\"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-133.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5144\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-133.png 800w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-133-300x174.png 300w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-133-770x447.png 770w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-133-293x170.png 293w, https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-133-390x226.png 390w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/noscript><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Queer Theory, which nearly all of the gender and sexuality education in America is ultimately based upon, has nothing to do with \u201cLGBT\u201d education. This is evident to anyone who reads it, not only because its goals are diametrically opposed to LGBT acceptance and normalization in our society, but because they say so themselves very specifically over and over again. For one example, quoting Emily Drabinski, the openly politically Queer and Marxist current president of the American Library Association, from her 2013 paper \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.journals.uchicago.edu\/doi\/10.1086\/669547\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Queering the Catalog<\/a>,\u201d \u201cQueer theory is distinct from lesbian and gay studies.\u201d It could hardly be more blunt. She adds, \u201cwhere lesbian and gay studies takes gender and sexual identities as its object of study, queer theory is interested in how those identities come discursively and socially into being and the kind of work they do in the world.\u201d Her conclusion? \u201cLesbian and gay studies is concerned with what homosexuality is. Queer theory is concerned with what homosexuality does.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What does Drabinski mean about \u201cthe kind of work they do in the world\u201d when referring to \u201cqueer identities\u201d and what they \u201cdo in the world\u201d? She means activism. Nothing more and nothing less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cQueer\u201d is not an identity like gay, lesbian, or bisexual. It is&nbsp;<em>by definition<\/em>&nbsp;an explicitly and intentionally activist identity. That is, it is a political stance, not a fact of who someone is\u2014in fact, not an&nbsp;<em>identity<\/em>&nbsp;at all. Again, this is by definition in Queer Theory. As David Halperin defined it in his 1995 book&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Saint-Foucault-Towards-Gay-Hagiography\/dp\/0195111273?&amp;linkCode=sl1&amp;tag=newdiscourses-20&amp;linkId=8ef4c8f3fff5d5e9c2540c7353528611&amp;language=en_US&amp;ref_=as_li_ss_tl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography<\/em><\/a>, a few pages away from a rousing discussion of the transformative potential of \u201canal fisting\u201d as an ideal sex act,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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, \u201cqueer\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Halperin takes great pains to distinguish homosexual being from political homosexual doing and insists that the latter is all of and exactly what Michel Foucault meant by the term \u201cthe homosexual,\u201d which he often employed. As he explains, \u201c[Queerness] can now be constituted not substantively but oppositionally, not by what it is but by where it is and how it operates. Those who knowingly occupy such a marginal location, who assume a de-essentialized identity that is purely positional in character, are properly speaking not gay but queer.\u201d Drabinski obviously drew upon this view to form her own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And what is it Queer Theory does? It disrupts. By definition. The definition of \u201cQueer\u201d in Queer Theory, as we see, is that which resists and challenges all norms and expectations of normalcy. 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. That has no place in our educational institutions, especially when it\u2019s happening outside of parental knowledge and approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Think I\u2019m exaggerating? Here is what the educational paper \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/full\/10.1080\/03626784.2020.1864621\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Drag Pedagogy<\/a>,\u201d arguing for Drag Queen Story Hours in schools, says about the matter: \u201cUltimately, the authors propose that \u2018drag pedagogy\u2019 provides a performative approach to queer pedagogy that is not simply about LGBT lives, but&nbsp;<em>living queerly<\/em>.\u201d Those italics are in the original. The authors elaborate upon this notion of \u201cliving queerly\u201d by stating,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It may be that DQSH is \u201cfamily friendly,\u201d 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 \u201cfamily friendly\u201d in the sense of \u201cfamily\u201d as an old-school queer code to identify and connect with other queers on the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In my professional work, I have struggled to find a word more adequate than the officially disallowed word \u201cgrooming\u201d to describe \u201ca preparatory introduction to alternate modes of kinship\u201d based around \u201cliving queerly.\u201d These unacceptable projects, hidden behind a street-slang pun, are core objectives of Queer Theory in education, described unambiguously in their own words. \u201cAs an art form,\u201d they tell us, \u201cdrag is all about bending and breaking the rules, and so its aims are totally different from a normative classroom.\u201d Because, they insist, \u201cIn a broader context, fostering collective unruliness also helps children to understand that they can have a hand in changing their environment.\u201d This, they also tell us, allows both drag performers and children to \u201crecognize the arbitrariness of rules,\u201d engage in \u201cqueer play,\u201d and \u201cfeel [their] fantasies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Queer educators damn themselves with their own words, so I\u2019ll 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 \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/10.1177\/2043610616671056\">Queer Futurity and Childhood Innocence<\/a>,\u201d the innocence of childhood and the established understanding of child developmental psychology all needs to be Queered. She writes, \u201cHere, I help to illustrate how some of the affective, libidinal, epistemological, and political insistences on childhood innocence can injure the child\u2019s development and offer a new mode of analytical inquiry that insists upon embracing the child\u2019s queer curiosity and patterns of growth.\u201d What is that about? This paper is specifically about and contains a section heading on \u201cQueering the child\u2019s innocence,\u201d which is perfectly in line with what the \u201cdrag pedagogy\u201d 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 \u201cqueer curiosity and patterns of growth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">None of this is remotely appropriate, and the inherently activist position it takes and seeks to instill into our children (through damaging them) is in many respects the least of its problems. It is, at the least, deranged, though it is more properly cultic and evil. It is far past time to give these damaging materials and the people pushing them into our schools the benefit of the doubt. It is long past time to say \u201cno more, not any of it; it all has to go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Original Article: <a href=\"https:\/\/newdiscourses.com\/2023\/08\/queer-education-is-child-abuse\/\">https:\/\/newdiscourses.com\/2023\/08\/queer-education-is-child-abuse\/<\/a><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https:\/\/newdiscourses.com\/2023\/08\/queer-education-is-child-abuse\/\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Queer Theory, which nearly all of the gender and sexuality education in America is ultimately based upon, has nothing to do with \u201cLGBT\u201d education. This is evident to anyone who reads it, not only because its goals are diametrically opposed to LGBT acceptance and normalization in our society, but because they say so themselves very specifically over and over again. For one example, quoting Emily Drabinski, the openly politically Queer and Marxist current president of the American Library Association, from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-woke-agenda"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5145,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5143\/revisions\/5145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}