Power structures in the world give us a certain way of looking at things, and there are certain positions and labels we recognize within those structures.
But what if we stopped accepting those structures, or looked for alternatives to the normative positions that can often guide our thinking, or stood in the spaces between opposing positions?
As well as dealing with issues of sex and gender, queer theory is a way of asserting that we should be open to value and validity in all the ways we find it, and that we can make new ways of living, being, and creating for ourselves.
(And with all that said, I couldn’t resist this song.)
Queer Theory reading list:
Meg-John Barker: Queer A Graphic History (amazing resource)
Judith Butler: Undoing Gender (core text, dense language)
Sarah Ahmed: Queer Phenomenology (queer as a theoretical tool)
Kate Bornstein: Gender Outlaw (shocking and hillarious and wonderful)