Gay Not QueerGay identities are based on biological sex; gender identities erase biological sex and replace it with gender.
Peter Gajdics
25 Nov 2022
A few years after the publication of my first book, which was about my six years in a form of conversion therapy, another author invited me onto his podcast of “Queer Writers.” His show’s name should have warned me of what was to follow, but in the rush of scheduling, I entered the interview cold. At the top of the show the author introduced me as a “queer writer.” I clarified that I do not identify as “queer”; I am gay. None of that seemed to matter.
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I am not queer. I am a gay man. And I do not buy the notion that “gay” must automatically be grouped into or conflated with the label of “queer.” The former is not the same as or even a subgroup of the latter. In fact, in many respects, the identities of gay and queer stand in direct opposition to each other. Like the host of the podcast, most people typically never bother to ask me how I identify. They learn that I am gay, and they simply assume that makes me queer. It does not.
Until recently, I never thought it necessary to define “gay” or “man,” but when I say that I am gay, I mean that I am same-sex attracted; when I say that I am a man, I mean that I am an adult male. In other words, I am an adult male who is attracted to other adult males. Males are one of the two sexes of a binary species Homo sapiens. Just as adult males are called men, adult females are called women; and just as same-sex attracted males are called gay men, same-sex attracted females are called lesbians. Gay men are attracted to other males; gay women, or lesbians, are attracted to other females. None of this implies that gay men or lesbians are queer, for the identity of queer is another matter entirely.
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I don’t agree that someone can be born into the “wrong body.” Such a possibility implies that there is a “right body”—and all any of us ever know is the body we were born into. Bodies are not right or wrong; they just are. Experiencing distress with the body we were born into is something else entirely—but it still does not imply that it is a wrong body; it just means that the body is a source of distress.
I don’t agree that biological sex is “assigned at birth,” although the frequency with which this term is repeated now makes it sound as if a person’s sex is somehow discretionary at this point. It is not. Assigned sex is language originally used for intersex people—those born with a mix of male and female characteristics, most of whom go on to live as one or the other sex—later appropriated by gender ideologues and promoted to the broader public. Assigned sex helps to justify the idea that some people might be a sex other than their birth sex. To say that the sex of all people is assigned is simply a lie. Biological sex is almost always objectively perceivable as male or female at birth. Sex is discovered, not assigned.
I don’t agree that biological sex can be changed. As a noun, sex is rooted in biology; it is not subjective. All humans are born with gametes (reproductive cells)—males with small gametes (sperm) and females with large gametes (eggs). The most anyone can do if they feel distress with their biological sex, is cosmetically change their appearance through medication or surgery. None of this changes a person’s biological sex—it just changes their appearance.
I don’t agree that there are endless sexualities or that there are more than two genders. Since the human species is binary, all people experience some degree of same-sex or opposite-sex attraction. Even those claiming to be asexual do not disprove a binary, since these people are just not attracted to either of the two sexes.
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Queer theory wanted to deconstruct much of what gays had fought to build—and more. In her 2017 lecture “Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Guide to Gender Variance,” queer theorist Judith “Jack” Halberstam described (at 36:20) the goals of queer activism as “the complete transformation of the society, and the rethinking of intimate relationships completely.” Queers, in this context, are not interested in advancing any of the rights for which gays tirelessly fought; queers want to radically transform the very structures of society of which gays themselves are now a part.
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More recently, though, queer identity has taken a more menacing turn. A plethora of new gender identities, all cobbled together under the broad label of “queer,” has supplanted the activism from a few short decades ago that was rich in meaning and replaced it with what seems now explicitly about transgression. Today, it is not simply that I don’t identify as queer; I find the whole idea of a queer identity to be incoherent and possibly even delusional.
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Source:
https://quillette.com/2022/11/25/gay-not-queer/