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Hi :) I read The Tragedy of Heterosexuality and loved it — do you have any other books you’d recommend about gender/sexuality? Thanks <3 I love reading your long posts, you have really insightful ideas and I think we view the world very similarly

Glad to hear that! Here's some context for anyone not in the loop: The Tragedy of Heterosexuality is a book about Heteropessimism, or rather, finding a way out of it. The notion is that heterosexual love is doomed because men and women are just different by nature, and it manifests through relationship self-help books, incels and pickup artists, and the memes and ramblings of countless straight women who they wish they could just be lesbians. Jane Ward think heterosexuality as we know it self sabotages through what she calls the misogyny paradox: straight men love women, except they don't love women. But she doesn't think heterosexuality is doomed or prop up political lesbianism as a solution. She calls for mutual respect and actually leaning into the heterosexuality of, well, actually liking each other, rather than try to "queer" it. This is part of a really interesting turn in queer theory where heterosexuality has emerged as a subject of study--another good example is Hanne Blank's Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality.

So I want to start out by disclaiming I'm not actually that well read. This is something I've been trying to work on more recently. That said, here are some gender and sexuality recs:

Two essays by Gayle Rubin: The Traffic in Women and Thinking Sex. I don't completely cosign everything she says, but these are monumental texts. Thinking Sex is topical especially as the "sex wars" keep playing out.

Gender Trouble by Judith Butler. Everyone's heard of this, so my specific recommendation is to skip to part three and the conclusion, where the text is at its most concise. Butler's theory of gender performativity has exploded beyond their initial reach, so they've since had a lot of interviews and given talks that address a wider audience. People who have read both Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter tend to recommend the latter text, but I still need to.

The Trouble with Normal by Michael Warner, or if you want a shorter version, his essay "Normaler and Normaler." Even if you're not against marriage in its entirety, his criticisms are so incisive and helpful, especially now in countries where gay marriage was passed but proved to be a dead end. It also really gets into gayness as identity versus behavior, which seems to have exploded into a huge conflict recently. This is how you get people who are on board with queerness in the abstract but appalled by its real-life specifics. I also still need to read Fear of a Queer Planet.

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, is a collection of speeches and essays by one of the most influential Black feminist writers. "Uses of the Erotic" especially stuck with me, where the erotic is taken not so literally but as a sort of creative synergy with political implications. If you've ever heard "the master's tools will not dismantle the masters house," that's included in this collection.

Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz, also a collection of speeches and essays, is one of my favorite books on AIDS. The rage is palpable and crucial, and the essay "Do Not Doubt the Dangerousness of the 12-inch Politician" is eerily resonant today as politicians still stoke violence on TV (and now social media).

Lately I've been getting more into trans writing, with Transgender History by Susan Stryker and Whipping Girl by Julia Serano. The former alarmed me with how much I didn't know, and the latter blew my mind. It was written at a time when trans people, for better and for worse, weren't really in the public eye except for in niche circles, and academia about trans people was about or at the expense of them but not by and for them. Her mark is so tangible today. My next read will be Reverse Cowgirl by McKenzie Wark after hearing rave reviews. I think I'm going to like it.

I am also accepting recs!

Nah, queer theory is very much actively pushed by academics, who are people with real power over others - maybe not as much as some other category of people, but don't try and pretend that tenured faculty are weak and powerless outsiders. Besides that ... I can't dissuade you from your choice of ideology, but ime it was made very clear that "queer" was Not For Me, and I'm ostensibly one of those multiply-marginalized people who were supposed to find it liberatory.

[ presumably the same anon as this one ]

If your life experience doesn’t lead you to feel swayed by the really cool work that queer theorists are doing, then… whatever. I don’t feel particularly swayed by theoretical physics. But as somebody who is multiply-marginalized (aren’t we all?) who actually loves social theory, I’m still going to use my own blog as a platform to talk about it:

I don’t think you understand how broad the field of sociology is. Tenured sociology professors teach a whole broad range of topics. You know what tenured professors’ sociology classes really are? History, historical theory (pure theory, no applications), psychology, anthropology, economics, a lot more history, political science, and methodology courses. Things I’ve learned from tenured sociology professors: the history of capitalism as it developed from feudalism; Marx/Weber/Durkheim (which were beaten to death in every. single. course) ; the history of labor unions; pseudopsychology; a lot of statistics about population distributions based on things like age and sex; ethnographies about big industries; the history of factories; critical race/class/gender theory in the abstract; some weird shit about the function of sports in society, fuck if I know; the American Dream across time; modern cultural differences around the globe; political processes for passing legislation; fucking pussy hats, everyone couldn’t stop talking about the goddamn pussy hats; classifications of professions; lots of American history.

Social theory, economics, psychology, anthropology, political science, etc all are valid approaches to sociology. But being a tenured professor means being stuck in a niche all your life, never bothering to reach out of your own area of expertise. And you know what kinds of people have had a much more difficult time entering the present day class of tenured professors? People of color, disabled folks, queer people. You know, people who like queer theory. And research about minority issues doesn’t get funded as much as broader, “more applicable” research does., which makes it harder to enter academic fields and research positions if that’s your specialty.

You have to realize that people who are currently tenured professors have followed a career path to get there over the past 10+ years (if they’re even a newly tenured professor), and that’s in light of the changing political climate of that time which–as you go backwards to their early college days–would get more and more socially conservative, making it harder to have had that career path. Then there’s the fact that in a given sociology department at any university, there’s only so many professors that can specialize in identity politics, narrowing the potential for university-level teaching positions even further. Finally, a lot of queer theorists aren’t… even… sociologists? Like I said before, queer theorists are ordinary people who write about their lives and experiences, who sometimes come from other backgrounds like political science/anthropology/human rights and then  sort of get swallowed into academic sociological queer theory. So you don’t have to have any specific credentials to write cornerstone pieces of queer literature, but you do have to have them to teach in a university, and thus I don’t think it’s very fair to assume that queer theorists are entering universities in hoards to push their queer agenda. (Also, colleges don’t really want to hire people who are too ~radical~ because of controversy–even liberal colleges.)

Or, if you’re trying to imply that the few professors who do teach queer theory are intentionally pushing it as much as possible… it’s probably because it’s such a relatively new, unexplored, and underrated area that deserves attention? I don’t see how gender/sexuality professors are any different in that respect than every other professor who gets super enthusiastic about their own research.

The people I know who teach queer theory are grad students, aka they aren’t tenured?? I mean I’ll give you some benefit of the doubt if you mean women’s gender/sexuality studies professors, since my avenue is sociology, but even then. And you totally can’t act like grad students have power, given how poor and exploited they are and how easily they can be dismissed for toeing a line at their institution.

I legitimately do not think professors are people with any significant amount of power over others–especially not broad social power a a class. Like, there is soooooooo much social theory that could go into breaking down this ask. I literally just pulled up my class notes on the social distinction of professions. It’s the nature of the public to try to deprofessionalize certain skills and knowledge bases, and university professors are frequently attacked in this regard.

I also established already that most queer theorists aren’t actually people who have fulfilled an academically-acceptable career in queer theory. Faculty are the people who synthesize documents and structure syllibi around them in order to teach them effectively. The people who are “pushing” queer theory (still unfortunate rhetoric with queerphobic implications) are queer people. Non-professor queer people. Many of whom are multiply-marginalized and find writing about their lives liberatory. You’re getting uncomfortably close to “marginalized people actually have tone of power” conspiracy logic. It’s a lot simpler than all of that. Professor teach queer theory because a good education requires a broad representation of multiple sides, and queer theory is just another lens, just like neocolonialism, neoliberalism, neo-Marxism, and critical race/class/gender theory are. Like, my social theory textbook has one section about queer theory (which is literally only about Judith Butler, actually) which is only one part of one chapter on postmodernism.

But like… aside all of that, most theory–except maybe music theory, because fuck that shit–is descriptive. Theory is developed through observations and life experiences and quantitative/ethnographic research. If you read prominent works within queer theory, they’re either what are essentially memoirs/opinion pieces, argumentative essays that build off the work on philosophy-style theorists, or published, peer-reviewed studies. And considering the fact that those things are present in all branches of sociological theory, I don’t think you can be against that, either.

I definitely gave myself a headache trying to condense all of the things I’m trying to think of, and I’ve been chipping away at this ask for multiple hours. The bigger fact is that one person sending me super short, super vague anons is not a good start to a productive and meaningful conversation, because I’m just grasping at straws trying to make inferences about what’s really being conveyed. This might be an inadequate job but it’s a starting point and is hopefully broad enough that it hits on some meaningful points.

Also, anybody who doesn’t find the word queer liberatory but still calls themselves queer should really ask themselves why they want to be called queer in the first place when it’s a choice.