Friday, October 11, 2019

Queering Politics Part 1: Social Factionalization

Any time we create stricture around behavior there must be people who subvert it. 
This is necessary both so we can define the boundaries for the behavior in the first place (what it means to be a "citizen" of the group or society), but also so those boundaries can change over time in response to changing circumstance.
This is true of queerness but also of madness and of criminality.

Without social stricture around sexuality we could not have queerness. Queerness would serve no purpose. We might still have same sex attraction and sexual behavior but we'd have no boundaries around it, no way to define it, and there would be no subversion - no taboo - to it. Therefore it becomes socially neutral.

Without legal criminal codes we could not have criminals. Criminals would serve no purpose. We might still have things like theft and murder, but we'd have no boundaries around it, no way to define it and there would be no social subversion to it. It becomes socially neutral. The crime of homosexuality begat the legalization of it - the crime helped change the law.

Without the concept of sanity we could not have madness. The mad would serve no purpose. We might still have things like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder but we'd have no boundaries around it, no way to define it, and there would be no social subversion to it. It becomes socially neutral. The madness of homosexuality begat the normalization of it.

We create these groups not only for the purpose of sorting and categorization, but also to influence behavior. Membership to a group comes with a social contract. However, outgroups can and sometimes will alter the behavior of an ingroup over time by whittling away at the edges of it. This force is stronger the larger or dominant the outgroup is. Consider the Christians in early Greece and Rome, and the adoption of pagan holidays, but even minority outgroups can agitate to change ingroup parameters over time. Consider queer rights movements and other civil rights movements did in the US.





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