User:Mqduck/gender-rant

I'm certainly no expert on it, which is another reason I didn't want to change too much under the "Queer Theory" heading. But from what I know, at least it's basic premise is in line with my own views. So I'll try to give an answer from my point of view, but I make no guarantee that I do Queer Theory any justice. (Forgive it for being in history lesson form. It wasn't on purpose. It just kinda came out that way.)

1. The sociological premise: Gender is a cultural invention, designed so serve a social function. Though frequently not thought of as distinct from (biological) sex, which is inherent in a person, the gender ascribed to a person based on their sex is not inherent.

2. Though gender evolved greatly over time along with the cultures from which they're created, never in history was gender itself so directly challenged as by the women's movement, which had some roots in the enlightenment, started to spring up here and there as a distinct movement in the 19th Century and finally exploded in the 20th Century. By demanding recognition of their equality with men, and looking for social/cultural explanations for the different and unequal attributes and rolls assigned to men and women and demanded that they no longer be burdened by them, women were challenging the very purpose of gender itself.

3. When the gay rights movement, which can probably be fairly called a product of the sexual revolution, exploded following the Stonewall riots, homosexuals and all other shades of sexual and gender deviants (which I mean in the most positive way possible) challenged not just the inequality of men and women, but challenged gender from every possible angle, from who can have which genders, to how many genders there are, to what forms human sexual and romantic relationships are allowed to take and everything else.

4. The current focus of the gay rights movement is gay marriage. The goal is therefor to have homosexual men and women, the majority group among sexual minorities, be accepted as full members in the club of normal gender and sexual expression, complete with access to all of its old, decaying, but Not Dead Yet institutions like marriage.

5. Here I'm going to get into my own personal (though hardly unique) ideas on the matter. I view the struggle for the liberation of women and the liberation of non-heterosexuals as ultimately fighting the struggle: the struggle against gender. In my opinion, their highest goal is the abolition of gender itself.

I would actually go even further and say that ultimately they're fighting the same struggle as all liberation movements: against a mode of human society based on inequality and exploitation. But that's a much bigger can of worms.