I know this subreddit is a big fan of Foucault (lmao) and other white Western thinkers, but I can't defer to the same postcolonial lens to interpret things that are inherent to the human condition. Sometimes I need to take a look at how concepts like self-determination are ultimately ideas that give our inherent motivations some continued tie to capitalism, which in turn controls our ability to achieve (anything) and to simply "become." Or even the idea of becoming "something," with that "something" being something bigger than our current state or predicament, which usually ties into class mobility, etc, etc..

In much of the world, self-determination is a fallacy because no matter what means a person may pursue in hopes of improving their material conditions, they may still end up in the same place as the generations before them, unless some stroke of pure luck, or an opportunity provided by some humanitarian organization suddenly brings them into a world apart from their previous conditions.

But if you're a young woman in the countryside of Nigeria, in search of a place of opportunity in wider society, even something like schooling may not actually change your material conditions if one day you're held captive by some political terrorist group (or whichever current iteration of Boko Haram), taken hostage elsewhere, only to be found pregnant nine months later and nowhere near your previous state as a young woman in pursuit of an education.

I say all of this to ask, is the idea of liberation ultimately an endless pursuit if, in most of the world, the fight for it will always end up in conflict with some other political goal (at times, a predecessor political goal), where pre-existing conflicts and definitions may inherently encroach upon another person's broader claim to self-definition and right to self-determination?

If the ultimate goal of liberation is dignity and the ability to name yourself fully, and by extension, to be able to identify yourself in experiences that you can freely name and define as part of something collective, what then becomes of liberation if you are always fighting to negotiate it and allow yourself to belong within definitions that you use to name your own experience, but that others do not?

How does liberation even become an achievable goal if conflicts like this will always exist alongside the fight to survive?

I guess what I'm asking is, can the pursuit of liberation ever be achievable when the conditions of our existence are never truly ours to determine if there's always some external influence we have to negotiate our humanity with, in some shape or form? Whether structurally or epistemologically, or both simultaneously?

Hello! I'd like to ask for recommendations on academic books and journals regarding queer identity and its intersection with age, especially pertaining to the phenomena of figuring/realizing one's queer identity later in life such as mid 20s or 30s or older.

Even a nudge to the right direction would help as well, such as keywords or terms that I can further research in. I hope to see your recommendations!

Eu venho pensando sobre uma antiga crítica anti-identitária da sexualidade: que categorias que começam descrevendo nossos desejos podem eventualmente se tornar identidades que prescrevem seus limites.

Isso obviamente não é uma ideia nova. O trabalho de Foucault sobre sexualidade é um importante pano de fundo para isso, e críticas posteriores da identidade a desenvolveram em várias direções diferentes. Mas me pergunto se vale a pena revisitar isso hoje, quando temos um vocabulário cada vez mais detalhado para classificar identidades sexuais e de gênero.

Uma coisa que acho notável ao ler autores de antes do conceito moderno de orientação sexual é como o desejo pode ser descrito de forma tão diferente.

Sade, por exemplo, pode descrever personagens em termos de suas preferências: essa pessoa prefere homens, aquela prefere mulheres, outra gosta de corpos ou práticas específicas. O desejo não precisa sempre responder a uma pergunta mais profunda sobre que tipo de pessoa alguém é fundamentalmente.

Isso é parte do que me interessa na genealogia da sexualidade de Foucault. A sexualidade não deve ser tratada simplesmente como um objeto natural atemporal que sempre esteve lá, esperando que descobríssemos suas categorias corretas. Ela foi historicamente constituída através de discursos, instituições, práticas, classificações e relações de poder. Não precisa existir como uma essência universal anterior para se inscrever na realidade e produzir identidades, experiências, normas e consequências sociais muito reais.

Minha pergunta é o que acontece quando essas classificações começam a funcionar de maneira reversa.

Suponha que um homem tenha sido atraído exclusivamente por mulheres ao longo de sua vida. Chamar a si mesmo de heterossexual parece perfeitamente razoável. Isso resume um padrão muito claro em seu desejo.

Então, um dia, inesperadamente, ele se sente atraído por um homem em particular.

Por que isso deve se tornar uma crise de classificação?

Ele poderia simplesmente pensar: "Aparentemente, eu quero esse homem."

Mas uma vez que o desejo foi organizado como identidade, outra linha de raciocínio se torna possível:

"Eu sou heterossexual. Se eu o quero, sou realmente bissexual? Nunca fui realmente hetero? Posso agir sobre esse desejo sem contradizer o que eu sou?"

Nesse ponto, algo foi invertido.

Originalmente:

"Eu costumo desejar mulheres, portanto, eu me chamo de heterossexual."

Agora:

"Eu sou heterossexual, portanto, devo permanecer dentro dos limites do desejo heterossexual."

Uma descrição começou a funcionar como uma prescrição.

A heterossexualidade é talvez o exemplo mais óbvio porque historicamente foi cercada por tabus particularmente fortes contra cruzar suas fronteiras. Um homem pode se abster de fazer algo que realmente deseja não porque falta desejo, mas porque agir sobre isso ameaçaria a identidade "heterossexual."

Mas por que a classificação deve vencer?

Se você quer mulheres, persiga mulheres. Se você quer homens, persiga homens. Se você quis mulheres por quarenta anos e de repente deseja um homem em particular, por que você deve primeiro resolver o problema ontológico do que isso faz de você antes de decidir se deseja transar com ele?

Talvez ele seja o único homem que você queira. Talvez não. Talvez "bissexual" eventualmente se torne uma descrição útil. Talvez não.

O desejo veio primeiro. A taxonomia pode esperar.

É por isso que às vezes brinco ao dizer que todo mundo é "potencialmente pansexual." Não quero dizer que todos secretamente desejam todo sexo ou gênero, que a orientação de todos é fluida, ou que uma pessoa gay ou lésbica simplesmente não conheceu a "pessoa certa" ainda.

Quero dizer algo muito mais limitado: nenhum de nós pode saber de antemão todas as pessoas que poderíamos desejá-las em toda uma vida.

Nossos desejos anteriores revelam padrões. Eles não legislatura necessariamente todos os desejos futuros.

E é aqui que entra minha preocupação anti-identitária. Não estou argumentando que identidades sexuais são inúteis. "Gay", "lésbica", "bissexual", "heterossexual", "pansexual" e outros rótulos podem ser enormemente valiosos. Eles podem fornecer autocompreensão, comunicação, comunidade, organização política e solidariedade.

Nem estou argumentando que pessoas que experienciam sua orientação como estável estão erradas. Para muitas pessoas pode permanecer notavelmente estável ao longo de suas vidas.

O que eu questiono é a necessidade de fazer o desejo prestar contas à identidade.

Talvez um rótulo sexual deva ser permitido como uma descrição útil:

"Essa é geralmente a forma como meu desejo funciona."

sem se tornar:

"Isso é o que eu sou, portanto este é o território dentro do qual meu desejo é permitido se mover."

Não há necessidade óbvia de padronizar todo desejo em uma identidade permanente. Às vezes, uma pessoa pode simplesmente querer outra pessoa sem ter que determinar de imediato em que categoria esse desejo a coloca.

Você acha que identidades sexuais podem se tornar desnecessariamente restritivas dessa forma? E ainda há espaço para uma abordagem anti-identitária da sexualidade sem negar a utilidade social e política que essas identidades podem ter?

Hi, i'm a recently graduated student in literature, so i no longer have access to my university's library resources. i'm trying to work out a particular idea i have about the picture of dorian gray but am having some difficulty with research. does anyone have any article or book recommendations that include specifically trans readings of dorian gray? i'm open to queer readings as well but particularly interested in trans interpretations.

Looking for recommendations of queer theory about poetry ~ thanks in advance! 😘

Hi y'all, I'll excited to add my voice to the community here. I just posted a vulnerable and well-researched takedown piece on JK Rowling and autogynephilia to my substack with 0 followers. I would love any feedback and support, thanks for your time 💜💜💜

As a trans woman who has always gravitated towards some kind of female masculinity even before realizing why that was the case I've felt incredibly seen by works that talk about the butch lesbian experience such as those by Jack Halberstam and Gayle Rubin. However most of their work, as well as most of the literature around butch lesbians, seems to take the "female" in "female masculinity" at face value and fails to take into account trans women, only including transmasc butches.

While I see myself in many of the experiences of my fellow butches I would love to find works that speak to the specificity of transfem butchness, which as proven a difficult task. So I was wondering if anyone here knows about authors, books or articles that talk about or theorize about the intersection of trans women with butch identity.

So far I've only found an article called "She's always a woman: Butch lesbian trans women in the lesbian community" by Hannah Rossiter which mainly draws form the butch trans women panel on the Butch Voices convention in Oakland 2011 (which is on youtube and an amazing watch by the way). Also recently Andrea Long Chu talked about her experience as a butch trans woman on the gender spiral podcast though she hasn't written about that to my knowledge.

Hey folks! I'm a gender studies minor, and have a rant/question/complaint about a book that is often used in my courses. Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheeles has been used twice in my gender studies classes now, and I am just wondering if anyone might know why? It's a graphic-novel style "textbook" that covers broad topics and discussions that happen in gender and queer theory.

The first time I read it was for an introductory queer studies class, and it made sense for it to be used then. I (personally) think it did a great job of introducing the often-complicated ideas that are used in queer studies classes. I was frustrated with it just because I felt it was kind of juvenile for a college-level class, but I do totally understand why it was chosen for that class and know that the frustration was just my own bias toward reading material.

But now, I am in a 300-level course on queer media with a different professor, and we are using this book again. I feel like in a class meant for upperclassmen, it is not unreasonable to assign the "real" texts. As someone who has read a lot of these theories before, I know it can be difficult, but there are plenty of shorter portions that can be easier to understand, or have the professor break it down in class.

We are expected to incorporate the book into our discussions and papers, but I'm kind of confused on how to even do this? The book talks about different theorists' ideas, like Crenshaw, Sedgwick, and Butler, but does not really quote any of their specific material. I have thought about asking the professor why this book was assigned and how they would like us to incorporate the text into our discussions, but don't want to make it sound like I am openly criticizing their teaching decisions and reading materials to their face.

TLDR: prof assigned a "dumbed down" version of theories, and it makes it hard to actually use the source in a scholarly way as we are asked to in the class

I’ve been thinking about whether queer theory can reproduce the colonial gaze even when its politics are explicitly anti-colonial.

Colonialism did more than impose laws and social hierarchies; it also shaped how sexuality, gender, family, and the body were classified and understood.

So when queer theory studies non-Western sexualities, how much of that analysis still depends on categories, methods, and assumptions inherited from Western institutions? Can naming and making sexual identities legible sometimes reproduce a colonial way of knowing, even when the goal is liberation?

And if so, does decolonizing queer theory require more than simply including non-Western experiences within existing frameworks?

I’d really appreciate recommendations for books, essays, or theorists who deal with the colonial gaze, epistemic colonization, and queer theory.

https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-01-2026-0002

Hi queens! I am a competitive policy debater who is part of the national speech and debate association. This year we were given the topic to debate about whether or not we should instate a national health insurance program. I found an issue with this topic through a queer critical lens and I am now affirming this a Kritikal (critical) Affirmative. While doing research into the disparities queer folk have within our healthcare already, I stumbled upon the article "Queer(ing) medical spaces" by Hrynk et al. Ever since I have found this, I have made it the thing I actually want to affirm for my debate rounds!

However, my question is what would this actually look like, and would it realistically be possible? Hrynk says quote "Queering medical spaces is not simply an exercise in inclusive language, but rather the conscious effort of clinicians...The queering of medicine and medical spaces required a continual engagement with queer theory," but past this, they don't really expand on it, or at least I don't catch the connotations. Additionally, I was wondering if there are any historical examples of queering in practice and working, dismantling heteronormativity in said space!

hi! I’m looking for books recommendations for aromanticism or really anything that engages with amatonormativity. I’ve read Minimizing Marriage by Brake, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality by Brown, Ending the Pursuit, the other significant other, etc etc so anything in that vein would be amazing!

I also read eros the bittersweet and how Carson talked about love was interesting to me so anything similar to that.

I’m really hoping someone here can help me because I’m certainly struggling with finding more books.

I’ve been thinking about a tension between queer theory’s critique of fixed or naturalized identity categories and the fact that those categories can still have real political and social functions.

Take “lesbian,” for example, queer theory gives us plenty of tools for questioning whether categories like lesbian, gay, woman, etc.. are internally coherent or historically stable. But lesbian also names a particular sexual orientation, history, community, and set of experiences.

So how does queer theory distinguish between destabilizing a category and making that category so porous that it stops describing anything in particular?

Is there a serious theoretical account of when boundaries are politically useful or necessary, even if we accept that the categories themselves are historically contingent?

I’m especially interested in writers who engage directly with this tension, or any work that explores it in depth.

TL;DR: If gender roles and all the social meanings attached to being a man or woman disappeared, what would it mean to identify as a man or woman? Is gender identity ultimately about something intrinsic, about our relationship with our bodies, or something else?

Hiii! I'm trying to understand different perspectives on gender. I edited the post to include a little summary for anyone who doesn't want to read the whole thing. Also, I've only recently started looking into questions around gender, gender identity, and gender abolition, and I haven't read very much about them yet, so this might be a very basic question, but I'm having some difficulty grasping the concept.

I'm having trouble seeing how the idea that men and women are socially constructed categories fits together with the idea of gender identity as something that exists beyond the body. For example, what would it mean to identify as a woman in a hypothetical world where being a woman carried absolutely no social expectations or implications about how you should behave, dress, think, or relate to other people?

I understand that gender identity isn't necessarily about wanting to conform to gender stereotypes. From what I understand, it can be described as an internal sense of identity that exists independently of gender roles. But then I get stuck on what that actually means. If we remove all the social aspects of gender, what is left for that internal sense of identity to refer to? It seems like the remaining distinction would have to have something to do with the body.

So I can see two possible ways of understanding this, but I'm not sure either one is right.

One possibility is that there is some aspect of being a woman that is neither socially constructed nor reducible to physical sex, something intrinsic about gender identity that exists independently of both social roles and the body. But if that's the case, wouldn't that mean that men and women aren't entirely social constructs? Maybe most of what we associate with gender is socially constructed, but there would still have to be some underlying non-social, non-physical component.

The other possibility is that, in a world where you remove all the social meanings associated with gender, being a woman or a man would only mean something in relation to your body. But then, in such a world, I'm not sure how someone could understand the trans experience without reducing it to something like "wanting your body to look a certain way." I think it would be like reducing it to hormones and surgeries, because what else could you do in such a world to transition? Is being trans about feeling that your body doesn't correspond to your gender identity or does framing it this way reduce the trans experience to something that is fundamentally about the body, when there is more to it than that?

Maybe I'm approaching this from the wrong framework entirely, and there's another way of thinking about the relationship between social construction, gender identity, and sex that I'm missing.

I'm sorry if this is kind of long to read. Also I'm not trying to argue that trans people aren't the gender they identify as. I'm genuinely trying to understand this better. I'm looking for a framework in which I can make sense of gender being socially constructed without feeling like that somehow diminishes or invalidates trans people's experiences.

I wrote a little essay based on an idea which has been marinating in my mind for a long time. I wrote this originally in a journal dedicated to my autobiographical reflections, but decided to transcribe it to a digital format. Oh well; here goes nothing.

---------

I hate straightness. I decry it. And in doing so, it is crucial that one understands I do NOT hate heterosexuality itself. I do not hate straight people, either; it would be silly to despise either. In fact, some of the most intensely beautiful expressions of human eroticism and sexual desire I have ever seen were of a heterosexual nature. And I do not see heterosexuality as fundamentally different from homosexuality. I have been thinking on this topic for a long time, and still I find this difficult to describe tangibly; but I will do my best.

Straightness is a social category, nothing more. Heterosexuality is the biological configuration of one’s nervous system to be attracted to the opposite sex predominantly. And while it is a waste of time to question or challenge one’s publicly stated sexuality, I would be remiss not to think of how many individuals across time have assumed the label of “straight” in spite of the word’s betrayal to the true, baseline wiring of their bodies and minds. And before the word was invented, how many individuals tucked themselves neatly into the social roles of “normal” romantic and sexual roles relative to their cultures.

Therein lies my problem with straightness. It is too easy, and far too often deeply encouraged, to wear the identity. In calling oneself “straight,” an individual is not merely describing sexual preferences that may or may not be true but also taking on a loaded social package; it entails societal privilege, and a fundamental sense of “normalcy” that belies even the most progressive societies. I find it impossible to pretend that, in spite of the marvelous progress made in queer rights in some societies, the “gay” man is seen as a social equal to the “straight” man. Theoretically, both such individuals should be equal in every sense of the word; after all, do we not believe in the inalienable rights and dignities of the individual? And yet the modern gay man is consistently side-eyed, subject to the loss of friends and family upon “coming out,” and pressured to announce or perform their sexuality when it would be bizarre for a “straight” man to do the same. Straightness is treated like the standard blueprint for humans, and any other orientation carries the subconscious weight of being “other than,” even in the minds of the most outwardly supportive and progressive individuals. This is the case because humans are designed to inherit our broad cultural systems and internalize them from the second we are born.

Furthermore, while we treat straightness as an innate quality of the person, it is anything but. We know this already; one needs only to think of all the closeted men who willingly chain themselves to the label of “straight” when their true orientations betray this sense, and inevitably are revealed very late in life and often accompanied with deep regrets, to realize the fragile nature of this social position. Countless gay men in all eras of history have gone as far as marriage to women, producing offspring and living their entire lives without ever touching another man. Many such marriages were deeply unhappy for both sides, I am sure. The modern gay men who have done (and are currently doing) this are, in every sense of the word, “straight” (in the sense that they occupy the social position of straightness while possessing a homosexual orientation). Yet their orientations remain the same.

The shocking iniquity of straightness is the fact that, in such cases, it is impossible to know otherwise. The nature of sexuality is experience-driven, and experience is deeply internal and subjective. There is no way to go inside another’s nervous system and experience all the subjective points of their reality. Therefore, straightness becomes an almost too-convenient mask and ticket into cheap, easy acceptance into the human world. Also this: humans are a hyper-social primate species, and like any other primate, some of our most basal instincts concern the social worlds we occupy and the hierarchies in which these exist. Many of our greatest aspirations concern wanting to climb the social ladder in some way, whether this occurs through becoming rich, famous, respected, loved, feared, compliant, and so forth. Straightness is a label which exploits this ancient instinct; it is why huge swathes of men often are extremely weird about admitting their non-straightness, and often in the face of undeniable evidence.

It is along these lines of thinking that I happen to despise gayness, as well; and similarly, I do NOT despise homosexuality or gay people whatsoever. However, I have found that straightness as a social category is far more erasing of human nature than gayness, and as such, I am slightly more lenient to the idea of a gay identity. Nevertheless, I assert that both of these social categories are deeply alienating in their unique ways.

I am of the belief that there would be far higher rates of both homosexual behavior AND homosexual acceptance if these labels simply did not exist. Thus, the world would be a slightly happier place in the sense that we would be more intrapersonally whole and better put-together, and more honest with one another. More opportunities would spring forth. We would have a higher capacity for positive interactions if we were to stop suppressing ourselves and each other with arbitrary labels and customs derived thereof.

My theoretical solution for the world would be to think in terms of “androphilic” and “gynophilic”; with these terms, or words with similar meanings, anyone could be described as either because they are divorced from every other aspect of one’s personality. Both men and women can be gynophilic (attracted to women/femininity), and both men and women can be androphilic (attracted to men/masculinity). I would avoid using the noun forms of these words (androphile and gynophile), because they risk slipping into the same problems I have been describing up to this point. Unfortunately, the great tragedy of the English language is that the -philic suffix rings far too closely to “pedophilic,” and most people immediately refuse the use of such words for this reason. I do not blame them, but this is a deep shame because these two words are such a perfect solution to the universal problem of straightness.

In short, this essay is a fierce objection to ontological reduction. In peeling back all the layers of this text, one might find a simple question: “why should one property of my desire reorganize your conception of my personhood?”

In truth, I am sick of being seen as an “other.” I tremble inside with fury and indignation when I see that inevitable shift in behavior within my friends when it is revealed that I am of a homosexual orientation. In their minds, they see only the word “gay”; and this is inextricably tied to specific cultural and social implications, a kind of heavy baggage which is unquestionably tethered to the word and the source of homophobic bias. I would much rather live in a world where anyone could be androphilic, and in which “gay” is not an identifying marker but simply a description of what I happen to like. As such, I feel utterly helpless against this force because it seems the world has deeply internalized this division of “straightness” and “other” far beyond my control. I wrote this essay partly as an outcry to the world, borne of frustration, but primarily to help synthesize this idea within my own mind; for I believe it is a revolutionary one, and the overwhelming majority of people with whom I have spoken on this topic find it difficult to comprehend, seemingly no matter how I explain it.

I will not lie: I am tempted to feel that my thinking has grown beyond the capacity of what most people are willing to accept. But that is not the truth. It is that our ordinary vocabulary and ontological conceptions make these thoughts difficult to comprehend in the minds of most people (PARTICULARLY those who benefit from heteronormativity).

But words are my legacy; what else can I do other than write?

I've been thinking about a gap in sexual vocabulary, and I'm curious whether there is already a word for it — either in English or in another language.

We have terms like penetration and circlusion, which can describe the same interaction from two different perspectives:

A penetrates B

B circludes A

I find the concept of circlusion particularly interesting because it challenges the assumption that the person doing the penetrating is necessarily the “active” partner and the person being penetrated is necessarily “passive”.

But there's still a problem: both terms describe an action performed by one of the partners.

What seems to be missing is a term for the interaction as a whole, without specifying which partner is doing what.

Something like:

A and B are engaged in X.

Then penetration and circlusion could be two ways of describing the interaction, while top/bottom, insertive/receptive, etc. could describe the dynamics between the partners.

This seems useful to me because top/bottom or insertive/receptive aren't necessarily binary categories. People can be somewhere along a spectrum, alternate roles, switch during the same encounter, or simply not want to specify their respective roles.

So ideally, X would mean something like:

“a sexual interaction involving bodily insertion/enclosure, without implying who occupies which role.”

It should also be applicable to different configurations : penis–vagina penis–anus dildo–vagina dildo–anus finger–vagina etc.

In other words, I'm not really looking for another synonym for “penetration”. I'm looking for a word at a higher conceptual level:

X = the interaction itself

↳ penetration / circlusion = ways of describing the interaction

↳ insertive / receptive / alternating / etc. = dynamics within the interaction

I've considered words like coupling, conjunction, engagement, and various possible neologisms, but none feels quite right.

Does a word like this already exist? And if it doesn't, what word could we come up with?

I'm particularly interested in terms that satisfy two criteria:

They don't reveal or imply who is in which role. They can apply to different anatomical configurations and different distributions of roles.

Maybe this is simply a lexical gap — but it seems like a useful one to fill.

as a queer individual, i feel like I cope by viewing men, homophobia, transphobia or the entire hetero space (like the whole world) as subjects of study. I love online discussions about gender, sexuality, and social structures because, in a way, i guess it makes me feel susperior in a world that suppresses me down. It does make me feel I've transcended over everyone, like at least I'm not held down by the chains of heteronormativity and the binary gender structure, right? but still, I know it's all just a hard cope, I'm still very much closeted, living with a very religious family and stuck in a fuckass local college.

I'm actually so fucking hopeless, I hope this doesn't offend anyone

need some help curating a reading list! im especially interested in the intersection between (lacanian) psychoanalysis and queer theory. have read bersani, and a few papers on queer psychoanalysis of films, but i wanted to go deeper in exploring how queer desire is being structured by heteropatriarchal society, and more contemporary texts would be appreciated! im currently really busy so would also prefer texts that are easier to consume (unlike bersani...)

thanks in advance everyone!

I know it’s a stereotype that “Boys that grow up without a father/mother end up being gay” but I don’t know… I have my own personal trauma, like anyone else, and mine has definitely affected my relationship with men in general. I do wonder if that’s why I find women more romantically attractive. I also closed myself to feeling any romantic/sexual attraction from age 8-15 because of trauma and now I struggle cuz I’m not sure what it’s supposed to feel like. I don’t think I find people sexually attractive, but I do have a libido, so I don’t think I’m ace (plus, since I learned healthy romantic relationships are a real thing, I want one) and I would like to have a partner I feel safe enough to have a sexual relationship with someday, but I don’t know much more about myself

If trauma can affect my sexuality, I’d feel able to say what I am, but since I’ve heard you are born with your sexuality, I wonder if I first need to heal my trauma before anything I discover is valid