The Queering of the American Child by Logan Lancing: a Review
Gay is Queer but Queer isn’t necessarily Gay, Drag Queen Story Hour, and Queer Marxism
Logan Lancing has just dropped a smart bomb on the cult of Queer Theory. What Lancing does is take often unreadable prose and break it down into ways we can all understand what Queer Theory is and how it has made it into our educational and professional associations. And what they say is not so good for children and their parents.
The first thing he helps us understand is that “queer” does not necessarily mean gay. Some of us may have grown up in a time when queer was a word used to malign our gay and lesbian friends. It was a term of derision. It was a slur. But that is no longer the case.
So when people see the title of this book, it is likely that many of them will baulk at even considering reading something like this. They will see it and assume that it is some anti-gay, homophobic screed. And that is in part, by design. Not from the authors of this book, but by the theologians of queer theory.
It’s similar to anti-racism, which is something nobody would be against unless they’re a racist, right? Or Antifa. I remember saying negative things about Antifa and somebody would just pop in a comment that Antifa stands for anti-fascist. And that’s all they would say. It’s as if I must not have known that Antifa is anti-fascist, and if I had known that, I would have then automatically assumed that everything they did was the opposite of fascist. Naming conventions and language is central to their tactics.
But let’s back up and talk about what this new definition of queer is.
Being and Doing Queer
Now, before I move forward, I want to make sure you understand this: Everything I say here that comes from the book is in the words of queer theorists themselves. The book simply looks at the literature that queer theorists write about their theory, and discusses it. The theorists often write in complicated prose, but it’s consistent and they are blatant with their views and intentions. For that reason, I am also going to put several references down below so you, dear reader, can look them up for yourself.
So, what is queer? Queer is both a verb and a noun. It describes an action and an identity.
Queer Identity
Queer the identity is any identity outside of the norm. It can be gay, but does not necessarily have to be. Or as world-renowned Queer Theorist David Halperin would say, queer is “an identity without an essence.” Here is an expansion of that quote for context.
“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 needn’t be grounded in any positive truth or in any stable reality. As the very word implies, ‘queer’ 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.” (1)
All that a person has to do to be queer is to identify as something other than normal. You would adopt any identity that stands outside of the traditional and normal framework of your existing society. A queer identity has nothing to do with any reality. It is simply a posture that stands against whatever society says is “normal”.
Queer the Action
Queer, the action, is “to destabilize the social, cultural, and political normalizing structures that work to solidify identities and in doing so skew power toward the ‘norm.’” (2) Ok, but why would someone want to do that? Because they believe that all norms are “regulated and connected to social power.” (3) By challenging norms, they see themselves as challenging power. Remember the stance against perceived power dynamics here. It is central to everything Queer Theorists and leftists in general center their politics on.
Put these two together and you have a person that is and does queer. Their identity stands outside of the norm and challenges the norm. They can then practice “queering spaces” both through their existence in that space and by then identifying what they see as systems of oppression and challenging them as such. They call this process “problematizing” which identifies what they see as problems and criticizes them until they believe those problems to be resolved. This is the critical in their critical theory.
Drag Queen Story Hour
Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) is a perfect example of how this strategy is applied. You take a person with a queer identity and put them in a place where they can challenge the norms of dress and behavior tied to one of the most basic categories known to humanity: male & female. DQSH is a combination of queer as an identity and an action. In their approach it’s framed as a way to be “inclusive” which is another word often used to open the door to allow everything that has previously been obviously inappropriate while bullying any naysayers.
It may sound cynical to call their approach a tactic or even frame it as disingenuous, but that is literally what they say it is. There is literature written by queer theorists on what they call “drag pedagogy”. It is an educational model built on drag as a tactic for introducing children to “alternative modes of kinship.” Again, in their words:
“Though DQSH publicly positions its impact in ‘help[ing] children develop empathy, learn about gender diversity and difference, and tap into their own creativity,’ we argue that its contributions can run deeper than morals and role models… It is undeniable that DQSH participates in many of these tropes of empathy, from the marketing language the program uses to its selection of books. Much of this is strategically done in order to justify its educational value.” (4)
Even the term “family friendly” they admit in this same paper has nothing to do with families as in parents and children. It’s “an old-school queer code to identify and connect with other queers on the street.”
When people tell you what they believe and are doing, we should believe them. And the stated goal is to serve as a “preparatory introduction to alternate modes of kinship”, whatever that means. I’ll not make any assumptions here but it doesn’t sound kosher.
Now if this was all done and stated as a means to entertain and educate adult learners, go for it! But the stated target is children.
Queer Marxism
Alright, so we now understand what their definition of queer is and means. It is an identity and an action, both of which seek to critique normalcy. And, we see how it is applied in the DQSH example. But why would someone want to critique normalcy? For the same reasons Marxists critiqued private property (capitalism).
Queer theorists see normalcy as a type of property that is used to oppress all of those who fall outside the guard rails of what is considered normal. That property is owned by normal people in power and used to shape societies that then continue to reproduce normal people and keep abnormal people outside of the guard rails and oppressed. That oppression starts very early in childhood and takes what would naturally — authentically — be abnormal people and twists them into normalcy. Queer theorists think that all children are queer but that our society twists them into being normal.
Reproducing this normalcy is a key to understanding their tactics. Marx’s theory of reproduction saw capitalism, the ability to own private property, as the thing that continuously reproduced the oppression of mankind. Owning private property was the tool the bourgeoisie used to attain and maintain power, separating the working class from the products of their labor and their humanity as reflected in that labor. In this sense, Marx was more so identifying a theory of humanity and pointing to economic situations as the barrier to that authentic humanity. He seems to be much more of a theologian than an economist. It was simply economies that stood in his way so they became a target of his analysis.
The target of the theories varies but the framework is all the same. You could easily expand this to ableism and fat studies.
In the same way, Queer theorists see normalcy as a means to attain and maintain power in the hands of the normals. But instead of private property being the thing to abolish, they see normal sex identities and behaviors as the property they need to identify and abolish. Instead of the bourgeoisie oppressing the working class through capitalism, it is heterosexuals oppressing anything else through their very existence. Being queer and queering spaces is the tactic used to break that power dynamic. Challenging the sex and/or gender binary is a way to challenge what they see as oppressive power dynamics. And doing it as early as possible is why children are such a perfect target.
Just like any other sexually reproducing animals, the most important categories to understand for the survival of any sexually reproducing species is male/female. Without that understanding, you cannot reproduce and your species goes extinct. So it’s no wonder that it’s one of the very first categories children recognize and identify, and then build an understanding of our world using those categories.
All of our descriptions of the world are references to humanity reflected in our world. The fact that we stand upright and reproduce sexually has shaped the manner in which we describe the entire universe. Both in a material sense and in its meaning.
Once you challenge and then break down the most basic category of human classification, you create a sort of crisis. Nothing makes sense as the framework with which you have been taught to see the world has been destroyed. You can develop a sense of anxiety because you are now thrust into the unknown. Your map for the world has been crumpled and tossed. You need a new map. That sense of anxiety can then be used as a means to introduce new ways of seeing yourself and the totality of humanity. And queer theorists have that new map.
Just like a cult, creating a sense of crisis as the world you once knew was made illegitimate, you search for a way to reform your map and quell that anxiety. Queer theory both creates the crisis and provides the answers to the questions it creates.
Wrapping it Up
Now, I have a lot more thoughts and things to talk about when it comes to this theory and the book. Logan Lancing does a great job of taking complicated prose and processes, and making them easy to understand. He traces not only the development of the theory, but how it came to be that our educational, medical and psychological associations became in part captured by this ideology. But I’m not writing the book, just reviewing it.
I do see a bit of a sea change as legislation to ban or change access to puberty blockers is introduced and other western nations are shutting down their gender clinics. We are also seeing a lot of whistleblowers come forward from these clinics and expose the awful things they are doing to kids. Hopefully some light will be shed on this issue and parents will feel like they are not just crazy homophobes for not wanting their kids exposed to queerness much less pornographic material.
So if you are generally interested in what all the hubbub around queerness is, why kids are expected to share their nakedness with kids of the opposite sex, and possibly why there is so much floating anxiety in our world, this book will be helpful.
As a parent of small children just starting school, I do feel like I at least need to be aware and this book was helpful. Living in a rural area away from big cities, I am less worried about this being an issue. But I also don’t want to be too relaxed, and make any assumptions. And there are also a lot of kids that aren’t mine whose parents need us to be vocal about this.
Every time you say things that others are scared to say, you help everyone else move a bit closer to being comfortable believing and saying the truth. It matters.
References
Halperin, D.M. (1995). Saint Foucault: Towards a gay ehigiography. Oxford University Press. (p. 61)
Burnes, T.R., Stanley, J.L., & Miville, M.L. (Eds.). (2017). Teaching LGBTQ psychology: Queering innovative pedagogy and practice. America Psychological Association.
McCann, H., & Monaghan, W. (Eds.). (2017). Queer Theory Now. Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Keenan, H., & Miss Hot Mess, L. (2021). Drag pedagogy: The playful practice of queer imagination in early childhood. Childhood Education, 97(4), 440–461