You know, I was just gonna leave this, but then I thought, hey maybe somebody else might find this useful.
Because this user's "N-word theory argument" has a big hole in it. To wit, Queer Theory was developed by people identifying as Queer or some flavour of LGBT+/fluid in the 90s. It's similar to how Crip Theory was developed by disabled people.
In both these cases, it occured because these folks recognised they had a different way of relating to, and being-in-the-world to the so-called abled/heteronormative folks.
LGBTQ+ and Disability Rights movements have actually not been about "becoming the norm" but pointing out that "the norm" is a set of bullshit structures which harm everyone (including those squarely fitting the norm definitionally).
To have the same "rights" as those regarded as "the norm" means to be not-excluded on the basis of who we are, because there is nothing wrong with us. Indeed, we have experiences and situated knowledges which may benefit everybody if they are taken seriously.
However, there are a chunk of people who query "rights-based discourse" as potentially not being enough and they have existed alongside-and-in-often-solidarity with "rights" campaigners.
Often, they wish to avoid recuperation and assimilationism as much as possible, because the totalisng properties of a/the dominant culture begin to homogenise and de-situate the knowledge and specific lived experiences of folks. Therefore, they may argue that ideas of inclusion and integration come with specific risks, since things are being done in, and according to, the terms of the dominant power-structures - LGBTQ+ activists have been warning about "pinkwashing" "Rainbow Capitalism" being potential issues for decades.
Nor is this an isolationist stance. To put it crudely, with less nuance than is actually required:
We might say there is a spectrum wherein you have everything from "there's nothing wrong with me, I am [XYZ], a person who lives and experiences [123] I'm just like everyone else," to:
"there's nothing wrong with me, I am [XYZ], a person who lives and experiences [123] and because of those experiences I have different knowledges, understandings etc which render the norm, with all its assumptions implications and attempts at capture somewhere I can never fit, and that's brilliant and totally ok, and there are others like me and we exist in our own way with our own knowledges and culture."
There are people in the world, usually the latter kind, who witness the norm, and all its assumptions, demands, colonialisms and insistences that it is the only game in town (insistences which it backs with social, political, and physical violence against those who resist its insistences) and say:
No. We exist. We exist as we are. And you have beaten us, exiled us, burnt us, imprisoned us, killed us, and yet we persist. People like us existed before your norms were a dream in someone's mind. We will continue to exist, even under all the threats you may marshal. Your dominance is not total. It is ever incomplete.
That is the Fuck You of "Not Gay as in Happy, But Queer as in Fuck You.
Now, these positions are not exclusive. Plenty of folks of the Fuck You variety will, have, and are, working to secure "rights" with folks who just want to be "normal", because as I said, solidarity matters. But neither are they going to rest on their laurels and hold "the norm" as their ultimate goal.
Because something is understood: "the norm" will not love you, until you become it in totality, until you become its creature, indistinguishable from any other part of it. And if you stray from performing the proper norm, in the proper place, there will be consequences, because "the norm" is the only game in town. There is nothing else. Anything else is improper, impure, problematic and must be brought to heel.
And frankly, I'm rather glad the poster above called me a retard in their tags, after referring only to the "N-Word." Because it illustrates my point nicely.
Retard, (as with moron, idiot etc) was originally a medical term applied to folks with what we might call today "learning disabilities", and then this term became an insult. An ableist insult - because to be disabled, to be "retarded" was bad, was less than, was something you did not, should not want to be. Because to be disabled is the ultimate punishment, the ultimate state to be put-down into - hence its use as a put-down.
As disability scholar Dan Goodley writes:
"Ableist processes create a corporeal standard, which presumes ablebodiedness, inaugurates the norm and purifies the ableist
ideal."
That is, when the poster above uses "retard" instead of perhaps "R-Word" they are dismissing my post, my rhetorical position as fundamentally not worthwhile. Which is, of course, their right - but as an illustration of what I'm talking about is wonderful, so thanks for that
