Brianna Mercadante
ENGL-2850
Queer Theory
Queer theory is a new theory defined by Judith Butler to explain and detail
the lifestyle of some of the queer community. To create her theory, she took ideas
from three different men: a linguist, Jacques Derrida, a philosopher, Michel Foucault,
and a biologist, Alfred Kinsey. This paper elaborates on how Butler took these three
theories, altered them slightly, and came together to create Queer theory.
Jacques Derrida was a French-Algerian linguist who studied and wrote about
language. In his post-modernism theory, he wrote that to understand what
something is, we are to first understand what it is not. His most popular example is a
chair. When we define a chair, we first think of everything a chair is not. He also
writes that language is exclusionary and judgmental. We know what a man is
because we know what a man is not: a woman or a gay man. We believe that in
order to be a man, he cannot be things that most commonly describe either a
woman or a gay man.
Something positive about language, however, is discourse. Discourse is the
breaking down of language to better understand it. While it can be played either
positive or negative, it has lately been playing a positive role in modern society. For
example, the Mormon church supported prop eight which caused people of the LDS
faith to leave from the church. Although the church suffered tithing losses, many
people saw where the church’s beliefs fall in accordance to gay marriage.
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher that questioned sexuality and
argued against philosophers such as Plato. In his lifetime, he wrote a series of books
that documented sexuality over a period of 2,000 years. In the series he documents
how sexuality of any kind was once easily accepted, then turned into a sin, then later
came to be what it is today. Foucault sheds much light on the Victorian age and how
it came to change sex from a biological need to a sin against God.
In his second theory, he wrote more in depth about the Panopticon, the
perfect prison. From the story, he explains that the perfect prison, the Panopticon, is
a circle with glass windows so the prisoners can see each other, but they cannot see
the guards. Because of this building, the prisoners are forced to watch what they are
doing at all times in fear the guards could be around. The story is an allegory for
today’s society and how we, as a community, began to self-police. People have
started to watch what they are doing because they are afraid others will see them
and judge them accordingly. The theory can closely relate to the Big Brother theory
from George Orwell’s 1984.
His last theory argues against Plato’s theory that we can get to know
ourselves. Foucault argues that people can never actually know themselves. There is
no way a person can step out of themselves, sit down, and have a conversation with
themselves to get to know them. A person can get to know a friend or another
person, but they can never know themselves.
Alfred Kinsey was an American biologist who pushed the boundaries of
human sexuality. During his experiments, he came up with what we now consider
the Kinsey Scale. In this scale, a person is to answer many questions that determine
their sexuality. Post-Kinsey the questions are scaled in many different categories:
sex, gender, orientation, identification, practice, attraction, and philias.
Each of the categories has a different meaning, which a person is scaled on.
The first is sex, which is biological, a person’s genes (XX, XY). The second is gender,
which is a social construct, female and male. Another is orientation, also a social
construct, and is defined by gay, straight and bisexual, however one person defines
another. The difference from that is identification, which is a personal choice with
how people identify themselves. Another choice is practice, such as vaginal, oral or
anal sex. Psychology wise, there are things such as philias and fantasies. Some
philias include furies, feet or pedophilia, all which are not choices; they are
something we cannot control. Something that is unknown, though, is where
attraction comes from. There are theories such as women date their fathers, but
nothing has ever been surely confirmed.
The Kinsey Scale is a scale of one through six that a person would be placed
on after answering a few questions. Kinsey said that throughout all of his research,
he never met anyone that identified with either a one or a six. What he also noticed
is that women are more fluid in their sexuality than men. They tend to lean more
towards homosexual thoughts than men do. Kinsey also says that our wants and
desires come from dreams and fantasies.
Judith Butler is one of the most known and provocative theorists. She was
able to take the theories of Derrida, Kinsey, and Foucault and combine them to make
what is now known as Queer Theory. She selected specific ideas from each of them,
altered them slightly and put them together. From Derrida, she took his theories
that language is exclusionary, binary, and judgmental. This allowed her to explain
how damaging and hurtful language could become. She also explained that although
he says we fix language with deconstruction it is not nearly enough. For Butler,
deconstruction was not the answer, going upstream was the answer to fix language.
Society needs to move from the dirty water, to upstream to see where the dirty
water is coming from. The most upstream question is: Who benefits?
One facet of language is that it is preformative. People do not realize what
they are doing; they naturally act a certain way. People naturally fit into certain
gender roles that society has made for us. Women tend to act nurturing and caring
while men act tough and strong due to social constructs. This theory leads to the
glass box theory from Foucault.
From Foucault she took the theories of self-policing and explained that is
why we stop at a red light although it is three in the morning. Butler also explains
that we all live in a little glass box, the Panopticon. She later goes on to say that we
need to just be. We should not feed into those stereotypes we should not label
ourselves. Not be ‘ourselves’ but just simply be, simply exist. She says we should
never self identify.
Lastly, she took Kinsey’s ideas of scaling a person’s orientation. She took the
ideas of the difference between gender and sex, orientation and identification, and
practice and attraction. However, she does not fully agree with the Kinsey scale. She
says that if we try to define ourselves on a scale, we are fitting into a stereotype and
a label, which we should never do. Again, she says we should simply be. By taking
these three theories and combining them, she created Queer Theory.
Judith Butler is noted as being the woman who created Queer theory. She
took Derrida’s ideas of language and explained how they work in the queer
community. She took Foucault’s theory of self-policing and explained how people in
modern society do it every day to fit into gender roles. Finally, she took Kinsey’s
ideas of sexual labeling and said that we should never label ourselves. By putting
these three theories together she created what our community now recognizes and
studies as Queer Theory.sdwoiiiiip06555555ttttt
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