In Context

In 2022 a Pew Research Poll showed that large sections of the American population believe that the categories of “men” and “women” are not objective and biological, but political. “Half of adults aged 18-29 say someone can be a man or a woman even if that differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. This compares with about four-in-ten of those aged 30-49 and about a third of those 50 and older.” [xix]. How did this happen? The answer is an historical process beginning with radical feminist theory and culminating in modern Queer Theory.

With the break-down of the modern family and many children coming from broken homes, schools and universities are filled with anxious and traumatized young people seeking role-models, love, and affirmation. This is a perfect situation for emotional manipulation. Logan Lancing and James Lindsay argue that one of the most prevalent and dangerous forms of child manipulation today is Queer Theory and the Queer Activism it unleashes on children, especially in schools.

Lancing and Lindsay meticulously document the origins and nature of Queer Theory, as well as how it is infiltrating schools around America. Very importantly, Lancing and Lindsay show us how to recognize when Queer Activism has infiltrated our children’s schools using many case studies that crystalise exactly what Queer Activism looks like, so parents can recognise it and resist it.

Big Ideas

• ‘Gender’ is a made-up concept designed to confuse people – children especially – and destabilise their identities as either male or female
• We must stop talking about “gender” and stick to the word “sex”
• Queer Theory is an extension of Marxism as it has evolved since the 1960s
• The foundations of Queer Theory were laid by Simone De Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler
• Queer Activists have infiltrated governments, schools, and universities with the aim of undermining parental authority and “queering” our children

What is queer theory?

Drawing on many primary documents from Queer Theory’s original theorists, as well as government policy documents and classroom textbooks, Lansing and Lindsay define Queer Theory as:

…a radical ideology that uses activism, (queering) to convince people that nothing is normal or natural. It specializes in convincing people that sex, gender, and sexuality are social (political) constructs – fabrications invented and sold as “the truth” by dominant classes…Queer Theory’s activity is to deconstruct the very concept of normalcy. [43]

In short, Queer Theory is all about conceptual “disruption” to cause identity “crisis” (on “crisis” see below).

Children’s beliefs regarding sex and sexuality are questioned to the point of creating confusion, all with the aim of making them open to the claims of Queer Theory: there is no normal expression of gender or sexuality, and all claims to normality are harmful and oppressive, and must be overthrown through institutional capture and Queer Activism.

One classic example used to confuse people are very rare occurrences of inter-sex people, that is, people born with either both male and female genitalia or ambiguous genitalia. Queer Theorists cite this to “disrupt” the idea that male and female are the only categories, and that there may be other categories that transcend male or female.

Another method of confusion and disruption is to sharply distinguish sex (biological) from gender (subjective identity). Then children are asked what gender they feel like, which makes it easier to convince them that they may be a boy trapped in the body of a girl, or vice versa. In truth, “gender” is merely a made-up category created to confuse people, children especially.

Some other tactics of Queer Activism with children and young people include:

• Love bombing: Lavishing attention and praise upon children to draw their loyalties away from their parents and towards the Queer Activist. [xi]
• Trauma bonding: Exposing children to age-inappropriate content related to sex, “gender”, and sexuality, causing emotional disturbance, only to assure them they they’re safe in the activist’s presence, so they bond to the very person who traumatized them. [xii]
• Searching for oppression: Convincing children that oppression is everywhere, and they are either a victim of it or can be a superhero in being a Queer Activist against it. [xiv]
• Weaving Queer Theory into every subject of study to indoctrinate children thoroughly [129-134]

Where did queer theory come from?

Queer Theory rose out of the broader Critical Theory movement, itself an expression of twentieth-century Marxist theory and activism. The major theorists behind queer theory are Simone De Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler. The (often unknowing) disciples of these theorists have taken jobs in kindergartens, primary and high schools, and universities throughout the English-speaking world, spreading their ideology.

1949 was the seminal year, when the year French intellectual Simone De Beauvoir published The Second Sex. In probably the most important work of twentieth-century feminism, De Beauvoir asserted “One is not born but becomes a woman.” [30] What Beauvoir meant was that women are essentially the creation of political and social constructions; political and social constructions that serve men. Beauvoir’s work laid the groundwork for the idea that masculinity and femininity are essentially social constructs. As we will see, the transgender movement radicalises this even more by denying the objective reality of sex itself.

The next important theorist, perhaps the most important of them all, was French philosopher Michel Foucault, whose “influence cannot be overstated.” [34] Despite the fact that this former Marxist was also a notorious paedophile, his works are some of the most celebrated and cited in all academia. According to Foucault,  society is made up of institutions that “generate regimes of truth.” [34] By this, Foucault means that it is not violence or its threat that coerces people to conformity – as in the old days – but truth claims perpetuated through institutions, most notoriously health institutions and medical establishments. These institutions promote ideas of “healthy” sexuality, body image, psychology, and masculinity. Citizens are collectively “disciplined” by these truth regimes to think and behave in the “right” way: “Under the constant threat of being labeled abnormal or deviant, our minds imprison our bodies, requiring them to act a certain way in the world.” [36] In other words, male, female, sane, insane, moral and immoral sex are all social-political constructs. The task of enlightenment is to be liberated from them all.

Finally, Judith Butler is an American academic whose seminal book Gender Trouble (1990) posited the idea of “gender performativity.” [37] This was a continuation of Beauvoir and Foucault’s views that our expression of our sex is largely a social construct to serve white, heterosexual men. For Butler, a man or a woman is not something that one is, it is something that one performs. So far this isn’t very radical, but Butler goes even further and seems to say that the whole idea of biological sex is a social construct too, at least a social construct with respect to the notion that biological sex is significant to one’s identity. Butler says:

If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called “sex” is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequences that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all. [39]

Interestingly, Butler’s strategy to disrupt and delegitimise common views on sex and gender is to parody them, most notably through drag. That is, men imitating women/femininity, and women imitating men/masculinity. In other words, drag is a form of resistance and queerification (indoctrination into Queer Theory).

How are our children being indoctrinated today?

Queer Theory has entered schools around the English-speaking world, from kindergartens all the way through universities. According to the authors, the American Department of Education is “wholly captured by Queer Theory.” [102] State departments of education are similarly so captured, and an organization that helps push it is The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). [137-38]

Central to Queer Theory education, or, better, queering our children, is the imperative of “crisis”. As one queer theorist quoted by Lancing and Lindsay says, pushing children to personal crisis is necessary to “spur children to work for positive social change.” [134].

Identity is the lever of crisis in queer classrooms. Queer activists use the cover of math and reading lessons to “proliferate identifications” and introduce children to the smorgasbord of identities they have to choose from….Simply put, Queer Activists convince kids they can’t identify as normal  boys or girls – they must choose political positions and enter into an identity crisis. [135-36]

Textbooks to train teachers to weave Queer Theory into all subjects are widely available, one of them is entitled Queering Critical Literacy and Numeracy for Social Justice, a book teaching teaches how to use every opportunity in any subject to turn children in to queer warriors. [129-34]

Students will also encounter Queer Theory through sex-education classes, which once were about teaching where babies come from, and then how to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, but which are now about promoting Queer Theory and generating identity crises among children. But there are other more subtle ways, such as schools banning gendered language in addressing children, or insisting that children state their preferred pro-nouns, as though their actual sex isn’t definitive testimony as to whether they are a boy or a girl. There is also the issue of restrooms and changerooms that allow members of the opposite sex to use them so long as they identify as “trans”.

One of the most obvious ways children are encountering queer activism is with the trend of “drag queen story hour” held in libraries throughout the English-speaking world. [104] It is telling that at the time this book was published the sitting president of the American Library Association, Emily Drabinski, is a self-described “Marxist lesbian”. [149] As stated above, Judith Butler believed that donning drag is an excellent way to destabilise and disrupt sex and gender stereotypes, but also the notion that sex is itself objective and not a social construct. In other words, drag queen story hour is calculated to confuse children, even to create identity crises where otherwise there would be none.

What can be done?

Parents must be as active against Queer Theory and its presence in schools and other public institutions as they would be against organised cults seeking to groom their children and take them from parents. Indeed, Queer Activists “use emotionally manipulative methods to control cult members and recruit new outer school initiates.” The cult ““love bombs” potential recruits with affection and praise.” Furthermore, “Queer Activists welcome recruits into a “safe” and “inclusive” environment where they feel like they are the most important person in the world….” [xi] In an age where children have never been so anxious and traumatized by family break-up, Queer Activists can be highly effective at manipulating and controlling children to the point of turning them against their families.

In this respect there is much hope, for parents around America have been turning up to local school district meetings, as well as P and C meetings and exposing the queer activism taking place. Persistent, informed, and targeted parent power works.

Commentary

The Queering of the American Child is a meticulously researched book that shows where Queer Theory has come from, what it is, and how it has infiltrated modern schools.  It shows without a doubt that Queer Theorists and activists openly state that they want to shape the minds of children and the youth, whether their parents like it or not. The book is well complemented by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay’s Cynical Theories, and Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer’s Critical Dilemma.

The book is disturbing, not because it says anything graphic, but because when one reads it one sees how successful Queer Activism has been in modern Anglophone societies. Lancing and Lindsay say:

In the end the cult always self-implodes. We can accelerate the process with discernment, exposure, and the rule of law. Remove it from schools, kicking and screaming. That’s what a healthy, normal society would do. [204]

True, we are seeing the implosion of Queer Theory in some respects, the shut-down of the Tavistock Clinic as well as the Cass Report, for example. But parents and citizens cannot just assume that goodness will prevail inevitably. A good place to start is to read this book and become informed about what Queer Theory is so the message can be challenged in the presence of impressionable young people. Absolutely necessary is parent activism. Indeed, it was only a small number of activists who made this such a powerful movement in the first place. We must hopefully imagine what can be done if the thousands of awake parents rose up to speak out against this pernicious movement. Things can change, and reading The Queering of the American Child is a good place to start.