Horowitz on Queer Liberation

Horowitz on Queer Liberation

On queer liberation as the ultimate revolutionary project, from David Horowitz’s 1998 book, The Politics of Bad Faith:

To the queer theorist, all identities, gay and straight, are the product of the socially imposed ideal—hetero-normativity—which structures the system of oppression. For the new revolutionaries, the enemy is no longer a ruling class or a hegemonic race or even a dominant gender, but the sexual order of nature itself. … Oppression lies in the very idea of the normal, the fixed order that arrays humanity into two complementary, procreating sexes. It is the gender-patriarchy system through which heterosexual males oppress their victims: women and gays. In Catharine MacKinnon’s preposterous formulation, “Women and men are divided by gender, made into the sexes as we know them, by the social requirements of its dominant form, heterosexuality, which institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission.” In other words, it is not nature but “society” that creates two sexes, and does so in order that one might dominate the other. The task of the sexual revolutionary is to overthrow the norm that structures this oppression.
Queer revolution is thus the ultimate subversive project. It proclaims not only the death of society’s God, but of nature’s law—the very idea of a reality beyond the control of human will. For these revolutionaries, not even biology constrains human possibility or limits human hope. Theirs is the consummate Nietzschean fantasy: a world in which humanity is God. On this brave new horizon, mankind can finally realize its potential as a self-creating species able to defy even its own sexual gravity. The transformed future will give birth not just to a “new man” and “new woman,” but to a new revolutionary people, no longer male and female, but queer. “Queer” is the Promethean category of the contemporary left, the triumph of the revolutionary subject over history and nature, the postmodern vision of a brave new world.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 13, 2003 02:31 PM | Send

Comments

What’s odd is that the views Horowitz is criticizing are pretty much mainstream or at least not very far from the surface. Say anything at odds with them, refer to “normal” or “natural” sexual relations for example, and you’re a bigoted extremist.

Posted by: Jim Kalb on January 13, 2003 5:15 PM

It’s a good piece by Horowitz which clearly identifies the radical liberal premises behind queer theory (the self-created individual denying impediments to human will).

My one quibble is that Horowitz seems to suggest that queer theory is the first to deny the constraints of biology or “nature’s order”.

This isn’t true. Radical feminism has done the same, and has perhaps cleared the way for radical queer theory. For instance, it would seem obvious that women are biologically more connected to the care of babies than men. Yet in this feminist era we are supposed to operate as if this were not true; you aren’t supposed to assume that the mother is the more obvious parent to care for the baby.

Posted by: Mark Richardson on January 13, 2003 5:52 PM

Oddly enough, though, I believe Horowitz has also argued that homosexuals are “born that way,” a proposition that has little backing from science, and would also seem anathema to his stated views on homosexuality. I suppose it isn’t entirely inconsistent, but I think it detracts from his writings on the subject.

Posted by: Owen Courrèges on January 13, 2003 7:14 PM

As I understand it, Horowitz’s position is that homosexuality is both natural AND abnormal. That is, a small part of the human population is naturally oriented toward homosexuality and so should be tolerated. At the same time, heterosexuality is natural and normal for the vast majority and they should not be challenged and attacked.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on January 13, 2003 7:24 PM