Queerness, Irony and Its Discontents

Too much theory, too little meaning

I don’t like the term “queer”. It should go without saying that I’m happy for anyone to use whichever labels they like to describe themselves. This just isn’t one that sits comfortably with me. That’s not because I find it offensive—though many older gay men do, and the fact this often isn’t even acknowledged frustrates me—but because it’s imprecise, nebulous, increasingly capacious and freighted with a substantial amount of political and philosophical baggage.

But also: that’s the point, isn’t it? It’s meant to be loose. “Inclusive.”

That said, I understand that reclaiming a slur can feel powerful. It’s easy to see it as a refusal to bow to linguistic strictures; an insistence on the fact that language is a living, breathing thing that we can reshape and remould.

The term “queer” and its journey from a pejorative to something like a badge of honour can be marshalled as evidence that, ultimately, language cannot be constrained—it’s pliable and open to endless cycles of revision and reinterpretation. Incidentally, that process of redeeming and reappropriating homophobic language can also be observed in French (“pédé”) and even Vietnamese (“bê đê”).

Although I’m told by a native French speaker that the term “pédé” is still very much regarded as an insult in France. It’s probably closer to “faggot” or “fag”. You may well hear a gay man use it to describe a friend (or nemesis) who is also gay—but it would be unacceptable for a straight person to use it. In that sense then, it’s quite different from “queer”.

Anyway, I understand this point. And I like this way of conceptualising language. But I think it comes with trade-offs. Similarly—although I find it less irritating—I sometimes take issue with the catch-all acronym LGBTQ and its various permutations. While it obviously represents an attempt to capture a group of people with shared interests, aims and political objectives, the justification for clustering these different “identities” strikes me as less intuitive the older I get.

In fact, it may have less to do with ageing and maturing and more to do with how these individual categories, labels and cohorts have been politicised more recently. Sure, being a lesbian, gay or trans can be, to some extent, political in and of itself. But it’s pretty clear that the gay liberation movement has been an almost unmitigated success in the West—at least politically—and so I’m unconvinced that simply by being gay myself I’m automatically drawn into a political contingent.

I’m conscious that even entertaining that perspective leaves me vulnerable to accusations of complacency or even indifference to bigotry, discrimination and the suffering of others. It might sound like I’m saying, “the gay rights movement has secured much—if not all—of what it demanded, so now I have the luxury of political ambivalence, even inertia.”

It might sound selfish. I hope it doesn’t. But I suppose what I mean is: when I hear a politician or activist talk about the “LGBTQ community”, it means virtually nothing to me. Nor does the phrase “gay community” resonate much—I just don’t think these “communities” exist; at least not in the way they are glibly and reflexively referred to in much of the media and politics.

Though maybe if I’d been politically aware and literate in the '80s or '90s, say, I would have felt that sense of community, that sense of a shared purpose and objective.

“Queer”—and the ways in which it’s now most commonly deployed (“queerness”, “queering”)—is one abstraction too far for me. It’s vague and it’s intended to be. And once a word can be used to designate almost anybody, it ceases to have any meaning at all. There’s a lot more to me than my sexuality (at least I hope there is). But it’s undoubtedly an important part of who I am. But if I say, “I’m queer”, that conveys almost nothing about me – it merely hints that I don’t conform to conventional norms around sexuality or gender or something to that effect.

Instead, if I tell you I’m gay I reckon you’ll probably get the gist. Still, you might think that “queerness” being a broad church, so to speak, is to its credit. Again, I can see the appeal here.

But there’s another layer of meaning attached to the word “queer”: Queer Theory. And while it’s not necessary to buy into the tenets, esoteric as they are, of Queer Theory to adopt the term “queer” in day-to-day life—they certainly aren’t inextricably linked—it’s notable that the very ambiguity of the term is echoed in what Queer Theory itself posits.

In their book, Cynical Theories, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay describe this quixotic strand of thinking as follows:

“Queer Theory is about liberation from the normal, especially where it comes to norms of gender and sexuality. This is because it regards the very existence of categories of sex, gender, and sexuality to be oppressive. Because Queer Theory derives directly from postmodernism, it is radically sceptical that these categories are based in any biological reality.

Instead, it sees them quite artificially – wholly as a product of how we talk about those issues. It thus ignores biology nearly completely (or places it downstream of socialisation) and focuses upon them as social constructions perpetuated in language.”¹

Queer Theory is something that’s utterly mysterious to me, and yet I feel something close to disdain towards it. Partly, that’s because I’m gay (have I mentioned that yet?) and therefore feel as though I ought to buy into its perspective or worldview—or, at least, be relatively well-versed in it. But that’s a transparently ridiculous basis for dismissing a whole field of study so I’ve been trying to get to grips with it—in good faith! Or at least, as much good faith as I could muster.

I read sections of Bodies that Matter (1993) by Judith Butler—one of the principal architects of Queer Theory and certainly its most famous advocate—as well as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet (1990). I did my homework, okay? And while Butler’s thesis around “performativity” is relatively convincing, it also feels dated and the prose is wilfully obscure.

Even the Wikipedia entry for “Queer Theory” offers little illumination:

“Because this definition of queerness does not have a fixed reference point, Judith Butler has described the subject of queer theory as a site of 'collective contestation'. They suggest that 'queer' as a term should never be 'fully owned, but always and only redeployed, twisted, queered from a prior usage and in the direction of urgent and expanding political purposes'.

While proponents argue that this flexibility allows for the constant readjustment of queer theory to accommodate the experiences of people who face marginalisation and discrimination on account of their sexuality and gender, critics allege that such a 'subjectless critique', as it is often called, runs the risk of abstracting cultural forms from their social structure, political organisation, and historical context, reducing social theory to a mere 'textual idealism.'”²

I don’t know what this means—not really.

Meanwhile, a cursory Google search for recent articles, columns, or essays relating to Queer Theory reveals a selection of pieces with titles like these:

1. “Queering nuclear weapons: How LGBTQ+ inclusion strengthens security and reshapes disarmament.”³

2. “How can we understand The Mary Rose’s collection of personal objects through a Queer lens?”⁴

3. “Queer Theory and Theology Can Help Widen Church’s Understandings of God and Creation.”⁵

I’m afraid that my instinctive response to each of these queries or statements doesn’t stretch much further than “no, it doesn’t”, “I’m not sure” and “really?!” respectively.

The problem is that Queer Theory possesses (even flaunts) these characteristics by design; they’re a feature, not a bug. They’re not incidental. The interrogation, problematising and collapsing of categories and meaning is one of its core objectives—in fact, it’s both the means and the end.

But if what you’re espousing is simply a regurgitated formulation of radical scepticism; if you’re looking only to dismantle, critique and ridicule the status quo – without suggesting anything remotely coherent to replace it, then you’re left with nothing but pedantry and language games. There’s a strong link, I think, between the kind of postmodern thinking that gained a great deal of traction in the '90s—and whose legacy still reverberates today—and irony.

In his 1997 essay, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction”, David Foster Wallace contends that irony is a key feature of postmodernist thought and that, taken to its logical conclusion, is ultimately corrosive. Because both are impervious to questioning, analysis or critique. To even ask the question “what do you mean by that?” is to court derision.

It’s unpleasant, even painful, to see the principal component of British humour—surely our most treasured cultural asset and export—traduced in this way. And by an American, no less!

But here it is:

“And make no mistake: irony tyrannises us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don’t really mean what I’m saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.

Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like a hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalised irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its content is tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.”⁶

Arching an eyebrow and rolling your eyes is fun; playing the contrarian is a cheap thrill. I’m doing it now. But sincerity is harder, more exposing. What do you actually mean?

1. Cynical Theories, Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay, 2020

2. wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_theory

3. thebulletin.org/2023/06/queering-nuclear-weapons-how-lgbtq-inclusion-strengthens-security-and-reshapes-disarmament/

4. maryrose.org/blog/collections/the-collections-team/queering-the-mary-rose-s-collection/

5. newwaysministry.org/2023/07/26/queer-theory-and-theology-can-help-widen-churchs-understandings-of-god-and-creation/

6. E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction, David Foster Wallace, 1997