Queer Theory

Category: Theoretical approaches

The rise of Queer theory is tied to the advent of multicultural theory, poststructuralism, and postmodern theory in sociology. Two of the key contributors to both postmodern theory, as well as to queer theory, are Judith Butler and Michel Foucault.

Michael Foucault

French philosopher, historian, and sociologist Michel Foucault studied the relationship between power and knowledge in the book The History of Sexuality, 4 vols (1978-2021, in French 1976-2018). He believes that the Victorian period was not marked by the repression of any conversation about sex and sexuality. On the contrary, in that period, medicine and psychiatry began to deal intensively with sexuality. Since then, the trend of increasing scientific classification of sexuality has continued, and this contributes to the increase of social control over that sphere. Another type of social control and expression of power in the sphere of sexuality was in the Middle Ages when the Catholic Church used confessions in front of a priest to encourage people to talk about sex and thus gain control over sexual behavior. He believes that every society, as well as those who dominate it, strives to gain control over sexual behavior. However, this control cannot be based only on punishment, but also requires the active cooperation of ordinary subjects. Popular psychology and psychotherapy are the main ways of taking control over the discourse on sexuality in the twentieth century.

Foucault's view of the manifestation of power, control, and domination is a serious critique of the Marxist view of power. While for Marx power serves to achieve the class domination of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, to achieve economic exploitation, Foucault believes that power functions in different ways in different fields and in different types of relations. Foucault studies how power manifests itself on a micro level and in everyday practices and comes to the conclusion that power is localized and fragmented. Foucault believes that society does not have a center, but multi-layered microcosms. Society represents a large impersonal system of monitoring, mobility, and diffusion, which operates through circulation chains. Discourse is never strictly divided between dominant and dominated, and accepted and excluded discourses. Instead, discourse goes through complex and unstable processes and can be an instrument, and also a consequence of power, as well as a point of resistance around which the opposition strategy can be built.

Judith Butler

American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler is one of the most eminent theorists in the field of gender studies, feminism, and queer theory. Her work has intellectual roots, except in feminism, in the works of Sigmund Freud, Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Schütz, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Derrida. In Gender Trouble (1990), Butler argues that feminism, by embracing the concept of coherent gender identity, has influenced the strengthening of the binary gender order, although feminism has been very critical of that same binary gender order. The uncritical adoption of the norms of heterosexuality is the basis of the binary order and the dualism it produces. Sex is always gendered, and the reason for that is that every observation and interpretation of the human body takes place within a socially determined context and through gendered language. After the birth of a baby, the sex is determined, and the gendered language shapes the gender patterns of that person.

Butler believes that gender identity always grows out of the performance. Performative repetition of the gender role is strictly regulated and limited by norms, and it produces a gender identity and creates the illusion of the existence of natural behavior inherent in gender. Butler believes that the construction of gender identity should be subverted and the social and imitative nature of gender itself should be revealed. This will lead to the "denaturalization" of the body and gender. She believes that within the LGBT context, gender is not necessarily derived from sex, desire, or sexuality. Gender identity performance and gendered language serve to reproduce heterosexuality.

Mary McIntosh

British sociologist Mary McIntosh studied the issues of feminism, and the lesbian and gay movement. Throughout her life, McIntosh has tried to connect, both in theory and through social activism, feminism, and its critique of society, with socialist ideas and queer theory and movement. In the article "Homosexual Role" (1968), she analyzes homosexuality as a social, not a medical category. She presents homosexuality and homosexual relations as a social process, which has changed in a practical and cultural sense, following the changes in the wider historical and cultural environment.

This "constructionist" approach has allowed sociologists to ask questions about the organization and function of different homosexual groups. She did not focus on the homosexual state of a person, but on the social roles played by the homosexual person. McIntosh believes that there is no universally fixed homosexuality, instead, there are only changes in the historical and social context, as well as the changes in social roles and personal experiences of homosexuals. Her theory of the role of homosexuality was significantly influenced by the functionalism of Talcott Parsons. In the book The Anti-Social Family (1982), co-authored with Michel Barrett, the authors criticize the ideological norms of the standard nuclear family and argue that this standard family form excludes and marginalizes other forms of family and different lifestyles.

Jeffrey Weeks

British sociologist Jeffrey Weeks is best known for his study of sexuality, sexual categories, and identities, as well as the social aspects of the HIV epidemic. In his works, he applies a socio-historical analysis of the social organization of sexuality, private life, and social sexual categories. Weeks also studies the social regulation of sexuality, both at the ideological and cultural level and in the context of laws and specific public policies. In the book Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain, from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (1977), he states that the term "homosexuality" was coined in the 1960s and that, since then, homosexuals started being seen as a type of people that are characterized by a special type of sexual deviation from the norm. Homosexuality has begun to be seen more as a medical category, a pathological behavior that needs to be treated, and not, as before, only in the context of behavior that is a religious sin.

In the book Same-Sex Intimacies (2001), Weeks emphasizes the greater freedom of choice that exists in same-sex long-term relationships. In addition, he cites three key differences between heterosexual, on the one hand, and gay and lesbian relationships, on the other. Gay and lesbian relationships have a greater potential for equality because partner expectations are not shaped by social and cultural gender patterns. The absence of such expectations allows for much greater freedom in determining how the relationship will work, there is much more agreement and equal sharing of responsibilities. In the end, these relationships are characterized by a much greater commitment to the relationship and much more emotional investment.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

American literary critic and queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick explores, in the book Between Men: English Literature and Men's Homosocial Desire (1985), the hidden homoerotic subplots in the novels of Charles Dickens and Henry James. Also, in this book, she introduces the term "homosocial" to denote a non-sexual social desire to be surrounded by people of the same sex. In the book Epistemology of the Closet (1990), she states that the central link between all thoughts and knowledge in Western culture in the twentieth century was the binary division into homosexual/heterosexual. This binary division serves as a source of information about sexuality, but also about all other social institutions. “Closet” in her theory refers not only to hiding homosexuality but to all human desires that are hidden or invisible. She believes that heterosexual masculinity always builds itself through the simultaneous exploitation and denial of homosexuality. Since heterosexual masculinity is always unstable, it must be proven and defined as the opposite of homosexuality, so homosexuality, although constantly denied, serves as evidence of heterosexual masculinity, and therefore becomes necessary to maintain the binary division. Sedgwick is one of the pioneers of the interdisciplinary field of queer studies.

Kenneth Plummer

British sociologist Kenneth Plummer is best known for his study of homosexuality from the perspective of symbolic interactionism. Plummer further developed the labeling theory of deviant behavior given by Howard Becker. Plummer distinguishes social deviance, as behavior that the majority in society considers deviant, and, on the other hand, situational deviance where the same behavior can be considered deviant or not, in relation to the situation and the person who exhibits such behavior. Plummer believes that the critiques of interactionism, which claim that this approach does not study the causes of deviant behavior and that this approach is deterministic, are unfounded. He points out that the interactionist perspective studies the choices that people make, and the struggle that people, who are labeled as deviants, have, so they can avoid such a status.

Plummer sees sexual preferences as a social construction. Sexual practices are less a matter of biology and are more defined by a complex network of social interactions and definitions. He states that ‘‘Sexuality has no meaning other than that given to it in social situations. Thus the forms and the contents of sexual meanings are another cultural variable, and why certain meanings are learnt and not others is problematic’’ (1981). In this context, he also develops the idea of “sexual citizenship” or "intimate citizenship" to emphasize the social and political aspects of sexuality in the conditions of heteronormativity that permeate all social institutions. In the study Sexual Stigma (1975), he singled out the four most common types of homosexual behavior in Western culture: incidental homosexuality, situational activities (in isolated situations, such as prisons), personalized homosexuality (homosexuality practiced in private life but hidden from public) and homosexuality as a way of life. Plummer proposes that the process of building different kinds of individual sexual identity goes through four stages: sensitization, signification, subculturalization, and stabilization.

In Telling Sexual Stories (1995), Plummer explores, from a postmodern perspective, the biographical narratives of individuals. He concludes that sexual identities are becoming more fluid, and "big stories" about sexuality (biology, religion, psychology) have less and less influence, to which modern technologies also contribute.

Steven Seidman

American sociologist Steven Seidman (1994) argues that queer theory rejects any single unifying identity, but, rather, sees individuals as having multiple unstable and always shifting identities. Seidman thinks that queer theory is on its way to become less focused on only queer topics and to representing a more general postmodern social theory. He explains this shift in this way: “from explaining the modern homosexual to questions of the operation of the hetero/homosexual binary, from an exclusive preoccupation with homosexuality to a focus on heterosexuality as a social and political organizing principle, and from a politics of minority interest to a politics of knowledge and difference” (Saidman, 1996, p. 9).

Authors: Butler, Foucault, McIntosh, Plummer, Sedgwick, Weeks. Anzaldua, Gloria; D’Emilio; de Lauretis, Teresa; Diana Fuss; Ellis Havelock; Kirsch, Max; Laud, Humphreys; Stein, Arlene; Seidman, Steven; Terry, Jennifer; Warner, Michael.

Books and Articles:

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990);

- Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of „Sex’’ (1993);

- Antigone's Claim (2000);

- Undoing Gender (2004);

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge (1990, in French 1976);

- The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1990, in French 1984a);

- The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (1988, in French 1984b);

- The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4: The Confessions of the Flesh (2022, in French 2018).

McIntosh, Mary. „The Homosexual Role”, in Social Problems (1968);

- The Anti-Social Family (1982);

- Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate (1992).