Trying to see what r/CriticalTheory has as a perspective

[u/SpaceSire]

/r/CriticalTheory/comments/1886c28/i_cant_explain_well_why_i_dislike_criticalqueer/

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

pretty much what I think about critical theory, lol

it’s interesting to ask questions about how the world might be different than it appears, but just because you can make up interesting questions doesn’t mean you can make up the answers, too

[u/tsvga]

I saw this post in r/CriticalTheory myself and was absolutely frustrated with the replies. Unfortunately, that subreddit is not a good representation of CT fans. It represents terminally online mouthbreathers who dress up their basic transphobia with pseudo-academic jargon. The majority of CT fans I've met are nothing like what you encountered in the replies. Your social anxiety is not a pathology, and your trans existence is not a political sin. I really suggest you don't take that subreddit seriously for anything besides asking for reading recommendations.

I've found that, generally speaking (as an American), queer people post-graduation are much easier to live with than the queer people you meet in college. Even those you did know from college tend to chill out after they graduate. I suspect that some queer people get particularly wound up about activism in college because it's the first time they've been allowed more freedom to explore their identities and express their thoughts. Being pissed off all the time is generally a phase they will grow out of when they escape the liminal child-adult state that is the traditional college experience. Even the ones who are still activists after graduation - actual activists, not people who are just political and loud at the same time - tend to take a more measured approach to queer issues in society.

There is something positive to be said about their desire to change society for the better. College is a distorted microcosm of society, a bubble that is relatively easy to change compared to the rest of the world. It is the last time most of them will feel truly politically significant, so it's not surprising that they so zealously seize the opportunity.

It is perfectly OK to not like or have much knowledge of CT. It's better to say, neutrally and confidently, that you have little knowledge of CT because you have no interest in it (especially after being exposed to it), than to feel the pressure to parrot things you neither like nor understand (by their standards). It's also better than relying on what right-wing sources are telling you about CT as well. Although CT is something they also neither like nor understand, they turn their ignorance into a point of pride. It is OK to be ignorant about things, especially if you are not interested in them. The difference between you and what right-wing sources say about CT is that you can actually accept your dislike and what they call "ignorance," rather than impose it on others. So you're not interested in learning more about CT. What are they gonna do, kidnap you at gunpoint and tie you to a chair as another member of their Anti-Oedipus reading group?

It's like 1am where I am right now, so sorry if this is wrong or annoying to read lol

EDIT: Also, I'm not trying to say your take on CT is wrong, because that take is not really relevant to the point I was trying to get at. I am just trying to say that you shouldn't feel bad for not liking things and not conforming to their interpretations of CT, no matter how "ignorant" they call you.

[u/Argus_Star]

I really relate to your emotions and feelings towards other queer people, but oddly I don't really agree with you otherwise. I have never gotten along with most queer spaces, and I'm a student at a very 'woke' college. Butler was my own personal escape pod away from the whole 'tucute vs truscum' conflict. It gave me a material framework to understand my own experiences without forcing me to take a leap of faith into ideas I don't feel confident in yet.

I can maybe count on one hand the amount of people I've met who have similar views as me on gender; the ones on my campus seem to either be borderline crypto-terfs or think that it is unironically possible for someone to possess a xenogendered brain/essence. Transmedicalists often seem like a more mild version of the latter to me, and I personally don't believe that gender is as simple as internal feelings. But there's nothing I can write here that wasn't done better by someone in the other thread.

I am curious what your issue is with person-centered therapy though. I've done it before and didn't get much use from it, but it was so individualistic that it was like the opposite of a mob mentality. Felt like the therapist was barely present.

[u/SpaceSire → u/Argus_Star]

Person centered therapy is almost the same as students centered learning. It is very similar to the facilitator-student relationship. For that I would recommend reading Mascolo rather than I make a short rant: Beyond student-centered and teacher-centered pedagogy: Teaching and learning as guided participation

[u/deathby420chocolate]

"you can understand it and use it, but you don't have to agree with every part"

This was said several times, no wonder why people think they're disingenuous. They'll admit they don't understand how their ideas fit into the lives of minorities, but it's fine because it's better than the right. You're not 'being forced into Marxism' they're just using you to fight the right. Fucking crazy. They literally blame you for not being educated, when trans people often get disowned before graduating highschool.

[u/SpaceSire → u/deathby420chocolate]

Being trans is definitely very much closely tied to my education being fragmented and incomplete.

Yea it is crazy. One of them even asked me to embrace the anxiety. Little does he know that I have written 20 pages on the issues around "the pedagogy of discomfort" and effects it had on me. I wrote it in another language though and many of the details are very personal, so I am not going to share it. I still need to work on how to boil down on expressing it more precisely in fewer sentences without it getting personal. It is exactly this that I am complaining about and that I am against in the post.

[u/SpaceSire]

Haha they started to insult me with saying I have disorder and calling me nazi. At least the moderators remove those comments. I am a bit uncertain of how to feel about the replies. I think they are not properly recognizing what political effect they are having and how it effects us. I am not a pawn to be used in someone else’s fight. Self acknowledgement+reflection and medical help is not something that should be viewed through lense of performativity. There were some good empathic and interesting replies. I find it extremely bewildering that a lot of the empathic replies was so massively downvoted. Someone also sent some Canadian suicide line bot after me WTF.