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Childhood Innocence

On The Marxist Queering

Lies are Unbekoming | April 16, 2024

It can’t be overstated that Queer Theory thinks all children are sexual. The Queer Cult thinks society has constructed a myth of the “innocent child” to repress children’s sexuality so they can’t explore and experience it until they are already conditioned to be heterosexual or, at the very least, conditioned to fit into and stabilize a heterosexual society. – The Queering of the American Child

Innocence is in their way.

It’s the wall that must be breached.

It has gotten as far as it has because people do not say “No” anymore.

It has crept forward, millimeter by millimeter because, people wanted to “keep the peace.”

It has hollowed out all that was sacred because people didn’t want “to hurt it’s feelings.”

Well, it is here now, and it wants your child’s innocence.

What are you going to do about it?

CHILDHOOD INNOCENCE

From The Queering of the American Child

Beneath all of this, and as a final impediment to Queer Theory, is developmental psychology, particularly childhood developmental psychology. This field has long recognized that growing up is a developmental process containing certain milestones that takes place within boundaries usually defined as “age-appropriate.” Sex, sexuality, and even romantic or many emotionally involved relationships are not developmentally appropriate for children and can do lasting psychological damage if introduced irresponsibly. Learning to categorize the world at first concretely—man, woman, boy, girl —before moving to more complicated and nuanced understandings of ambiguities and differences is developmentally crucial to developing brains. All of this stands firmly in the way of Queer Theory and its ambitions to queer the child.

Queer Theory colonized and captured developmental psychology by attacking the notion of a normal and innocent child. The Queer Theory literature will not let one escape the idea that the ruling class in society (people who own “normalcy” as Bourgeoisie private property) uses the concepts of “normal child” and “childhood innocence” to keep children from exploring their true queer nature. In this view, the normal and innocent child is a justification for pushing all children through a “cisheterosexual” developmental track.

There is perhaps no better paper to turn to than Hannah Dyer’s Queer futurity and childhood innocence: Beyond the injury of development to summarize Queer Theory’s view of the “normal and innocent child” progressing through a “normal” developmental track. What the weird title of the paper indicates is that believing in and protecting childhood innocence limits the full range of the child’s future life in terms of how queer (recall: politically radical) he might be. That is, growing up normal and safeguarded by developmental appropriateness as outlined in rigorous child developmental psychology is characterized as a kind of injury to the child! In brief, believing in age-appropriate approaches backed through child developmental psychology allegedly injures kids who might otherwise have grown up to be Queer Activists by exposing them to a “normal” childhood that threatens to “straighten” them, against their best interests.

Borrowing from Foucault’s idea that the scientific disciplines serve as a regulatory “regime of truth” that perpetuates the status quo, Queer Activists like Dyer argue that psychologists are deeply “implicated in the harming of gay kids.” ¹⁸⁵  Queer Theory takes developmental psychology to task “for their catastrophic support for beliefs that queer childhood was not viable or healthy.” ¹⁸⁶  In this view, psychologists have served as a strong arm for the normal society , taking “queer children” and “straighten[ing] out their futures.” ¹⁸⁷  Allowing young children to understand the world in terms of simple, unambiguous, concrete, natural, normal, and real categories crucial to their healthy development, categories like man, woman, boy, girl , is, from the demented view of Queer Theory, an act of “straightening” kids and stealing from them the possibility of a queer future, thus oppressing them.

According to Queer Activists, what used to be called “gender identity disorder” harmed “queer” children because “as a diagnostic classification [it] assumed the ability to detect impulses not yet organized as queer identity and realign them with heterosexuality.” ¹⁸⁸  That is, “gender identity disorder” was a way to “fix” children rather than allow them to be “who they really are.” And allowing children to be “who they really are” requires ditching old paradigms in favor of “embracing [children’s] queer curiosity and patterns of growth.” ¹⁸⁹  Queer developmental psychology must “address the child as always already queer.” ¹⁹⁰ 

The idea that developmental psychology should abandon traditional theories and practices in favor of queer possibilities rests on the idea that society scripts children’s futures. Queer Theory claims that the soul is the prison of the body , and society convinces children’s souls to materialize certain futures on their bodies. That is, Queer Theory argues that disciplines like psychology serve to discipline kids that are stepping out of line, convincing them to get back on a predetermined developmental track, ultimately growing up and performing as a straight man or a straight woman. In this view, society treats all kids as “proto-heterosexuals” needing continuous developmental conditioning.

Before Queer Theory colonized the discipline, developmental psychologists worked to help children understand that “It Gets Better.” ¹⁹¹  They worked with children to help them constructively navigate their issues. An “it gets better” approach treats a child’s disorders as disorders that can be addressed while stressing that things will improve in time. Queer Theory could not tolerate that message because that message doesn’t address the here and now as defined on the cult’s terms. Queer Activists think that telling kids “it gets better” only stabilizes a definable future within the current sociopolitical order. “It gets better” postpones feelings to the “mythical adulthood,” requiring children to tolerate the intolerably oppressive social fabric they are drowning in.

A queer conception of child development is meant to “rupture conventional schemas of ‘growing-up,’” as it undoes “anticipated congruency” and “the enforcement of strict borders between childhood and adulthood.” Queer Cult Psychology “find[s] pleasure” in tearing down traditional theories of childhood developmental stages and replacing them with queer possibilities. That this is likely to induce crises for the children, as we saw, is considered a queer opportunity. That it will lead to psychological damage and personality disorders is viewed as an oppressive myth used to uphold the “normal” status quo of a cisheteronormative society.

For Queer Activists, the key societal construct that justifies the traditional and alienating [as Marx would use it!] developmental track is “childhood innocence.” The Queer Theory literature is unambiguous in this claim. Queer Activists believe that “childhood innocence” is a political construct that normal people use to keep children from learning about their true queer sexuality and desire. The “innocent child” is nothing more than a myth normal people tell society to control what children are exposed to. “Childhood innocence” keeps children away from forbidden knowledge—away from taking a bite of the apple . Queer Activists believe they must “queer the rhetoric of innocence that constrains all children and help to refuse attempts to calculate the child’s future before it has the opportunity to explore desire.”

The Queer Cult does not believe that children are innocent. Queer Activists believe children are full of queer sexuality and desire, claiming that society just suppresses and restricts those instincts to protect a normal child and their normal future . What they lack is initiation . In this view, all children are capable of reason and consent—capable of true human agency, as someone like Paulo Freire would define it. Queer Activists, like Dyer, claim that making childhood sexuality taboo “hurt[s] children’s curiosity and imagination” in an effort to protect a child’s “assumed proto-heterosexuality.” ¹⁹²  The Queer Cult isn’t interested in labeling things as too taboo for children. The Queer Cult is invested in fully ramping up the taboo while “understanding the possibility for children and youth to recruit amounts of bodily pleasure.” ¹⁹³ 

Queer theories of childhood are often brave in the ways that they wade into such taboo territory in order to show how what is considered perverse is often a mode of securing heteronormativity. Queer theory can be helped in its desires to prove that children are capable of possessing complexity and sexuality by exploring work done in the fields of early childhood studies and sociological studies of childhood. This is because these fields and their associated methods of inquiry prioritize the child’s possession of knowledge and agentic relation to the world. (Dyer, 2016)

It can’t be overstated that Queer Theory thinks all children are sexual. The Queer Cult thinks society has constructed a myth of the “innocent child” to repress children’s sexuality so they can’t explore and experience it until they are already conditioned to be heterosexual or, at the very least, conditioned to fit into and stabilize a heterosexual society. In this sense, society uses the language of childhood sexual trauma to “foreclose careful consideration of the child’s agentic relationship to perverse and queer sexuality.” ¹⁹⁴  Defining children as innocent prevents all children from being exposed to queer forms of sexuality and desire before their future is settled. The “innocent child” has but one path to choose from—cisheterosexuality—as all other queer possibilities are deemed “developmentally inappropriate.”

BULLDOZING THE WALL

Hannah Dyer’s Queer futurity and childhood innocence isn’t an outlier in the Queer Theory literature. Queer Activists consider childhood “an arguable crucible or ground zero of all sexual politics.” ¹⁹⁵  They think this way because they believe children are pawns that normal people use to protect their dominant interests. In this view, who gets to decide what “a child,” “childhood,” and “innocence” mean determines the future of society. If normal people get to define these concepts, then the future will be normal. If Queer Activists get to define these concepts, then the future will be queer . “Queer futurity” is a vision of a future that isn’t limited by current societal norms and expectations, particularly those related to sex and sexuality. Hannah Dyer and other Queer Activists make clear that any hope for queer futurity is lost in the concept of “the innocent child,” so “the innocent child” is a barrier they know they must destroy. Or, as Queer Activist Lee Edelman says in his book No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive :

Fuck the social order and the Child in whose name we’re collectively terrorized; fuck Annie; fuck the waif from Les Mis ; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the Net; fuck Laws both with capital Ls and with small; fuck the whole network of Symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop. ¹⁹⁶  (Edelman, 2004, p. 29)

Queer Activists queered developmental psychology because the discipline was a significant barrier to Queer Cult initiation. In the past, psychologists considered children innocent and incapable of grasping the concepts of sexuality and desire. This was a huge problem for Queer Activists who believed that children must explore sexuality , gender, and desire before the clock of “normalcy” strikes midnight. Twenty years ago, it would have been considered child abuse to discuss sexuality and desire with little kids. Likewise, “affirming” a child’s mental health disorder would have been considered psychologically abusive. Queer Pedagogy would have been stopped dead in its tracks. Today, all of this is considered developmentally appropriate.

Developmental psychology was the great wall that prevented Queer Activists from presenting, discussing, and encouraging developmentally inappropriate ideas, concepts, and themes with kids. The discipline was bulldozed by Queer Activists who endlessly declared that “childhood innocence” creates an unjust distinction between appropriate and inappropriate discussions and content. Queer Theory dissolves distinctions, melding opposites together and creating a new whole understood on its own terms. In this case, Queer Activists claimed that what is considered appropriate or inappropriate is arbitrarily defined by those in power for their own benefit. So, nothing is appropriate or inappropriate—everything is contextual and subjective. But, because Queer Activists claim to know the truth about how the world works, they think they are the only ones who can determine the correct context of any given situation. Ketanji Brown Jackson felt she couldn’t define the word “woman” during her U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearing because Queer Activists have bullied everyone into thinking that question must be deferred to them. Queer Activists think they are the only ones capable of answering questions related to sex, “gender,” and sexuality. Their insight is considered sacred , and they say talking to kids about sex, sexuality, and desire is not only appropriate but necessary.

The Queer Cult uses Queer Pedagogy to coerce children to bite the apple and learn about the secrets of queer sex, sexuality, and desire. Queer Pedagogy exists to take innocent children and initiate them into the revealed knowledge of the Queer Cult. This initiation process intentionally places kids into an identity crisis. Now, a parent can’t take their child to a developmental psychologist to address sex and “gender” confusion because the psychologist serves only to affirm the initiation . The only thing waiting for a child with “gender dysphoria” on the other side of the referral is Queer Cult Psychology.

Queer Activists, following Eve Kosofsky Sedwick’s seminal work Epistemology of the Closet, fundamentally believe that innocence/initiation is a binary that must be overcome. Like the binaries of “appropriate” vs. “inappropriate” and “man” vs. “woman,” innocence vs. initiation must be dissolved, revealing a new, higher truth: namely, that innocence is a social construct normal people use to initiate children into cisheterosexuality. In this view, innocence is initiation and initiation is innocence. Queer Activists think the two concepts are the same if one can only view them from the more elevated state of queer consciousness.

“The closet” is where the magic happens—where innocence and initiation become one and the same. Queer Activists use Queer Pedagogy to force kids into the closet where they develop their queer consciousness and transcend their innocence through initiation into the Queer Cult. The closet, where you keep secrets from others like your parents, is where children are initiated, learning that they aren’t so innocent after all—they’re queer .

Some parents are demanding their day in court after learning that the “inclusive” education their children are receiving is queer . When that day arrives, they are met by the expert testimony of a Queer Cult psychologist who is all too thrilled to tell them that their “innocent” child isn’t so innocent after all. “If you scratch a child,” they might say, “you will find a queer.” ¹⁹⁷ 

April 17, 2024 - Posted by aletho | Book Review, Timeless or most popular