Cynnical Theories Ch 4 Queer Theory: Freedom from the Normal
"Queer theory presumes that oppression follows from categorization, which arises every time language constructs a sense of what is "normal" by producing and maintaining rigid categories of sex (male and female), gender (masculine and feminine), and sexuality (straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and so on) and "scripting" people into them." Queer theory relies heavily on the postmodern knowledge principle, that objective knowledge is impossible to acquire. You can't say what is a woman and what isn't a woman, you can't possibly know that. It is an "unmodified manifestation" of the postmodern themes of the power of language: when we create labels to categorize people we are using power to control them and how they are viewed and expected to act. The blurring of boundaries, another post modern theme, hardly needs mentioning with regards to queer theory. In short, queer theory is thoroughly and unabashedly postmodern. Obviously, many thi