10 - Queer Theory: Subverting Life's Categories
Gender: A Wider Lens
Sasha Ayad and Stella O'Malley
4.6 • 961 Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2021
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Few people are aware of how much the political discussion around gender and sexuality has been touched by queer theory. This philosophy questions how we know what we know and turns hierarchies on their heads. Sasha and Stella explore the “smashing of binaries” in their therapeutic work and personal lives and discuss the positive and negative outcomes of taking queer theory thinking to its limits.
Links:
- Butler, Judith (2007). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.
- Jagose, Annamarie (1996). Queer Theory: An introduction (Reprint. ed.). New York: New York Univ. Press
- Foucault, Michel (1978) [1976] The History of Sexuality: Volume 1: An Introduction. London: Allen Lane.
- Foucault, Michel (1992) [1984]. The History of Sexuality: Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure. London: Penguin Books.
- Foucault, Michel (1990) [1984]. The History of Sexuality Volume 3: The Care of the Self. London: Penguin Books.
- Foucault, Michel (2021) [2021]. The History of Sexuality Volume 4: Confessions of the Flesh. London: Penguin Books
- Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve (1990) Epistemology of the Closet
- Hood, Morag (2019). Brenda is a Sheep. London: Two Hoots
- “What I Saw at Drag Queen Story Hour,” WSJ
- Kate Bornstein
Extended Notes
- Mother and father are no longer inclusive?
- So much of our female oppression has been based upon our reproductive system.
- Queer theory is a “slippery fish.” What is the definition of queer theory?
- In any good democracy, there is a questioning of how we know what we know.
- Ireland is objecting to all sorts of oppression. They know first-hand what it’s like.
- How do you get through life if you have no idea what you know?
- Stella’s daughter once asked: Who says being fat is unhealthy?
- Queer theory will always be evolving.
- If you can’t be a man, and if you can’t be a woman, then what are you?
- Sasha shares some of her struggles as a woman and how she found her sexual orientation.
- The development of a woman’s sexuality feels very understudied. People might scoff at this, but Stella explains further.
- Not everything is due to a social construct.
- Is gender a performance?
- If there was a person by themselves on an island, would they really have a gender?
- We are not walking gender identities, there is so much more to us. You can’t use categories of behavior to try and assume someone’s...
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to gender, a wider lens. |
| 0:04.0 | I'm Stella O'Malley, a psychotherapist in Ireland. |
| 0:06.5 | And I'm Sasha Ayad, an adolescent therapist in the United States. |
| 0:10.6 | Since 2016, my practice has been exclusively dedicated to gender questioning teens |
| 0:16.1 | and families impacted by gender dysphoria. I also work with gender questioning |
| 0:20.7 | teenagers and I facilitated support meetings for families and |
| 0:24.2 | individuals who have been impacted by gender issues. We're curious about the |
| 0:28.1 | concept of gender and how it's unfolding in the wider culture. Join us as we look at gender through a wider lens. |
| 0:35.0 | Hi Sasha, how are you? |
| 0:39.0 | Doing well, Stella, how are you doing? |
| 0:41.0 | I'm good. |
| 0:42.0 | I'm very, what's the word wary and very intrigued by this |
| 0:46.8 | episode because it's about queer theory which is something I've been hearing so much |
| 0:51.6 | about. I'm no queer theorist but I've heard so much about in recent years I was really |
| 0:56.2 | really fascinated to just to study it to realize how much I didn't know. What are your |
| 1:01.9 | thoughts? Yeah, you know I think that we're in the |
| 1:05.4 | age right now of trans women or women and biological sex is not real and I mean here in the US Congress has recently proposed to stop using |
| 1:15.8 | the words mother and father in the name of inclusivity and I think for a lot of people |
| 1:20.8 | out there they're wondering you know what the heck how did we get here where the words mother and father are not inclusive and I don't know if we can really answer those questions without understanding this very, very important foundational theory, which is all about |
| 1:36.3 | smashing binaries and breaking down norms, and that is queer theory. |
| 1:42.8 | So we're going to do our best without being experts. |
| 1:45.8 | I mean, obviously neither of us are queer theorists, |
... |
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