Over the course of the last 4 years, I’ve amassed an enormous collection of screenshots; many of which feature (or will feature) in the images I’m producing as the ongoing results of my education.
Although most of these screenshots are filed away in folders with easy key wording and indexing shortcuts, others had become set-aside. “specials” that I kept tucked-away separately - often because I knew I’d need to return to them later, or they somehow hit hard on something I was starting to understand the power & significance of, and so wanted to explore further.
The 2 screenshots below seemed to say it all really, about how our own daughter was groomed by people that had bought into trendy Queer Theory (QT) without any critical understanding the true nature of the pseudo-philosophy inherent in this intellectual quackery. As so many other GC people have already pointed out, it seems to be the perfect example of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Except there’s no little boy in the crowd running around pointing out the deceit and the downright fakery of it all.
I found testimonies from former students (& lecturers) of QT who went along with it all for years, while pretending to understand the musings of Judith Butler et al, and secretly hiding the shame of not making sense of it. They simply put up with the nonsense because you were somehow excluded from a reified group if you didn’t. No-one wants to look stupid, and so people put up with this for years.
I tried to read up on it myself and literally had my brain fried in the process; being linguistically challenged in the first place (it’s why my professional life is all about the visual arts) I was already at a disadvantage. We found QT quotes in diaries our daughter left behind, and I’m fairly certain that those times when she was up in her bedroom apparently writing reflective prose/poetry, or catching up with old friends online, she was actually grappling with QT and adding this as a bolt-on to her burgeoning “identity” for the tribe she aspired to join.
To this day, I still get no satisfactory answer - let alone any consistency in replies - to the question “What does it mean. to be queer?” and I think the reason for this is quite simple; most people don’t know either. They’re just happy to adopt an edgy label. Just accept it without exception.
On an individual level, declaring yourself queer perfectly reflects the pretence and performance of the wider cultural groupthink that claims a special status, while benefiting from the confusion of the prols below, who will never “get it”. I’ve heard it all - it’s being gender-fluid and cool about pansexuality. It’s being bisexual, except you’re attracted to all genders, because sex doesn’t exist. It’s about being straight, but supporting or adopting gendered souls. It’s like being non binary but not the same. It’s about being same-gender-attracted but uses sex and gender interchangeably.
Where I come from, the term “queer” WAS a pejorative slur, used by straight people back in the eighties, to insult gay men. Transgenderism has neatly appropriated this term and repurposed it for a different era.
In the same way that sex and gender are always conflated - and that always benefits the sex denialists - the concepts of QT and Queer Identities are often conflated too and require decoupling - not least among the young, childless trans youth that mostly seem to identify with both concepts. Many young trans will claim a queer identity (a special, gender-addled-but-unspecific term in support of everything trans) but will have only the simplest understanding of QT’s endless boundary-busting drive to disrupt and destroy age barriers, safeguarding, or even species separations (I’m not kidding - it’s why many young trans call their pets “children” and literally mean it).
In real life situations, the legacy of QT plays out in situations where issues like age-appropriateness come in to play, and the early sexualisation of children - drag-time story hour, for example. Or when age restrictions are lowered and parents are painted as right wing bigots for objecting. It’s about “Queering the Classroom” and the early introduction of pronouns for 4 yr olds and getting gendered thinking and sex denialism into schools.
For teens in particular, the most visible examples of QT-driven culture arise in the influence of gaming identities and characters, of hybrid animal/human avatars, in manga porn, in cosplay, in online profiles or artworks that exploit our confusion over age or sex, or even transhuman superheroes. In an age where you can be anything you want to be, and where all those messages about the power of children and young people to change the world and forge new ways of being, QT feeds right into that Gen Z thing; brought up to find meaning and value in stuff delivered through a screen at the expense of developing and forging self-awareness and a strong sense of self and personal worth through connection and relationships.
Queer Theory is behind the move to remove the stigma and shame from Kink fascinations, or being a Furry (adopting a temporary animal “identity” as a sexual fetish) and heading the front of a Pride March on all fours, police in support of course grinning for the cameras and doing a great PR job for the Pride crowd.
Of course Queer Theory has to destroy sex-based spaces and rights for Women, to not do so would be unthinkable. Gender only and ever benefits men after all. Smashing boundaries, like infantile, attention-seeing anarchists, seems to be the thing with QT. Smashing boundaries and differences between the sexes obviously, but also links with paedophilia and paedophile apologists too. It’s disturbing to see how much the men get away with, and how damaging it is for women and children. The trans “movement” finds it impossible to police these new entrants - all of them wanting a bigger piece of the pie.
QT is the perfect partner to Gender Ideology; so much so that I wonder which is the more forceful driver of the two, or even if the two have any meaningful separation at all. I guess the blend is different for everyone. I think QT is also used as an externalising “justifier” for many that believe themselves internally to be dysphoric. Of course other factors - mental health, dysmorphia, dissociation, trauma, autism, personality disorders, internalised homophobia, and so on are all evidenced and acknowledged multiple times elsewhere, and hardwired to the potential to socially and medically transition
Families are a gift of a target for QT; representing the ultimate package of vile cishetnormativity, patriarchal privilege, white capitalism, the reality of biological sex, and all the rest of it. So many things to smash up. To young people deeply troubled by their own perceived gender nonconformity and sense of self (& encouraged by groomers supported by a largely indifferent public), QT offers an attractive surface solution as a mask to much deeper troubles that a more holistic therapy should be brought in to explore.
A questioning parents confusion over QT buys time for a troubled, home-based trans teen, during which they can explore other aspects of their slow, secretive transition in stealth. Stonewall understood this perfectly. Mermaids, Gendered Intelligence, Allsorts - they’re all at it - paint the parents as unsupportive (if parents have even the mildest concerns), as prejudicial, discriminatory, as neglectful and abusive, (as our daughter has smeared our lives ) and you have the perfect platform upon which to build your identity of oppression, appease the cult elders, and start your gender journey as The Special One.
I can never forgive the people who inculcated our daughter with this mindset, who groomed and promoted this radicalised identity she inhabits today. The grooming and radicalisation of our daughter, her poor mental health, her rigid thinking, and the psychoactive effects of testosterone have all contributed to the very different person she is today.
I still feel nothing but compassion and love for her, even though she has taught herself that other things are true. All we can do in the meantime is live with hope and truth and light. I also feel it’s important to remember constantly the beautiful kind and sensitive person she was, that she IS, behind all the psychic terrorism - and a nature, of a new “self”, that is so un-authentically hers, created by the ideology that sustains her life, interests and ambitions.
I’ll continue to contribute short written pieces where they arise spontaneously during work that I’m making. I set out to write about our estrangement and to contribute an honest and personal account of the devastating effect that gender radicalisation has had on our family. So I’ll keep sticking with that for as long as I have something worthwhile to say with either words or images (or both). I’ll also continue to oppose anyone or anything that teaches children that their bodies are “wrong” and need fixing with transgenderism.
Please feel free to share, or comment, your feedback and comments are always what I value the most in this whole exercise. As ever, thank you for reading :-)
dentonyogacarter.substack.com/p/we-used-to-have-a-daughter
Thank you for writing this. I asked my liberal teacher friends where their line was (everyone has a line) since they support their students' pronouns, not considering it a gateway to medicalizing children. Are they all for MAP? Minor attracted persons are fighting to be destigmatized ... that was about when I just had to quit twitter. I will show them this if it comes up again. Thank you for wording it so well. And I am so so sorry for your pain concerning your daughter. No parent should have to go through this.
Thank you for writing this. It is very helpful to me as someone who is still early on the road and desperately hopes to avoid estrangement and that the actions we've taken preventatively will be enough to prevent the wedge. I am grateful that our shock moment came at a younger age than yours did, but my heart still breaks for what you are going through as it's one of my worst nightmares.
The fact that people are out there, actively working to break up families and to deny the reality of biological sex is wrong. I just hope enough people stand up and tell this minority extremist group that this is not acceptable soon enough that we see this generation become more conservative and lash out against the grooming and indoctrination present everywhere. I long for a day where you can go anywhere and do anything without seeing pronouns or hearing people talk about pronouns. I often find myself wondering how the gendered languages have handled this and whether people who speak a gendered language are less likely to be caught up in the nonsense of the QT fad. Hopefully this fad dies a fast and painful death.