The Universal Solvent

Introduction

As a nurse, I get paid to know normal. A busted forearm is easy to spot because I am an expert in normal forearms. Come to the ER with your skin the color of Homer Simpson, and I know you got yourself a bum liver, because I know normal livers.

You are not half bad at this yourself. If your morning pee resembles a cup of Earl Gray you would be clued into some abnormality afoot. In this situation, you want a doctor’s expertise on how your symptoms deviate from the well established range of normal urine, and to bring your acute renal failure back into conformity with other well behaved kidneys. Not only are you grateful for this normalcy, but pay good money for it. 

Psychiatry also has this principle of normalcy. If I am taking tepid, midday baths and applying excessive amounts of lipstick while listening to A Whiter Shade of Pale on repeat, I seek expert psychiatric help, concluding rightly that I have swerved outside the bounds of normal human behavior. Prozac and some cognitive behavioral therapy may adjust the dials to get me back to the sunny fields of normal. 

At risk of belaboring the point, normal parameters also exist in auto mechanics, computer programming, veterinary medicine, general contracting, welding, farming, dentistry, and dairy homogenization. In short, all avenues of human endeavor and functioning have a range of what is considered normal that we assiduously protect, because it is within the boundaries of normal that we find optimal functioning. I mean, what is this whole climate change hysteria about if not returning our planet to some kind of “normal” parameters? 

One Notable Exception

If we live in a world shot through with normalcy and look to align ourselves, our things, and our earth to normal functioning when they deviate, it is a wonder why gender norms are met with such a surprising amount of spleen. Is there any area where norms are seen as detestable as they are with gender and sex? Doesn’t that make you a bit suspicious? It is one thing to acknowledge that the boundaries of gender norms exist, yet decide to live outside of them. It is another thing entirely to consign the long and stellar history of gender and sexual norms – like that old timey assertion that boys have penises and girls have vaginas – as nothing but some white guys flexing their hegemonic muscles. 

Just the fact that we have a word like heteronormativity is evidence there is some bone rot in the cultural body. Isn’t it strange there is this disconnect between our dogged pursuit of normalcy in every area of our lives and the spasms of offense that happen when any norm whatever is applied to gender? Why this one notable exception? Why there? Can’t you tell by these rhetorical questions that I already have thoughts on this? Is it increasing the suspense?

There has been an imposition in the cultural conversation that has subtly and insistently intruded into our vernacular. We find ourselves saying things like “biological male” and “non-binary”, “inclusive” and “gender affirming”, though we aren’t entirely sure when or how this came about, or who introduced these strange words into our native tongue. It’s like if an alien came down and took it upon itself to rearrange our categories of color without asking us, telling us to refer to green as “non-yellow” or white as “colors inclusive”. Who does this chump think he is?

That chump is queer. Queer, the caboose in the LGBTQ train, is the reason for our strange new vocabulary, the insistence on priggish peculiarities, and the tip-toeing through the mine field of sensitive pronouns in corporate meetings. Queer is not merely only one quaint identity amongst a growing multitude of sexual expressions, but has been revealed to be the androgynous sleeping giant, the spirit of the age, the self-appointed empress of our time. And that queen has come to slay.

You will notice I am capitalizing Queer so as to differentiate the ideology of Queer from the identity of queer, because there is a difference, which you will see below.

But before we can answer the mystery of gender norm rejection we need to begin with an understanding of Queer ideology, and before that we need to first walk through the the relationship between the natural and the normal and the various ways we arrive upon norms. For implicit in any discussion of the normal are the boundaries which define what is in play and out of bounds. My we have a lot to do.

The Warm Comfort of Boundaries

Throughout life we encounter numerous and sundry boundaries. Sometimes its Mrs. Smith imposing the classroom rules when a fourth grader floats a paper airplane during geography class, and other times it is the hard boundary of physics when that same fourth grader jumps off a roof convinced a thirteen gallon trash bag will slow his descent (semi-autobiographical). Boundaries present themselves in all areas of life, and generally fall into three categories starting with the good old fashion natural world.

Nature is replete with boundaries. Earth and sky, sea and land, before and after – these are clear cut demarcations that exist within our world. Humans are subject to any number of boundaries imposed by the natural world. We cannot fly or breathe underwater. Try as we may, traveling back in time is not in the cards. Two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time. One cannot drink anti-freeze and not expect to experience life out of bounds. Many of these boundaries are transgressed on pain of death. God set these natural boundaries when he spun the universe into being, and his inscrutable wisdom he did not see fit to let me walk on water, fly, or have an angulated forearm as a point of personal preference.

But we also exist within social boundaries. Civil and legal codes, social etiquette and propriety, and cultural taboos are many faceted manifestations of social boundaries. Sometimes these boundaries are codified and enforced, like the rules of the road. Other times they are unspoken, like giving your seat up for an old bag lady on a city bus. These social boundaries are extensions of natural boundaries applied to civic life. Speed limits protect from accidents and injury, a nod to Newton’s laws of motion and the death and dismemberment that occurs if disobeyed. Building codes have a firm understanding of gravity and fire’s insatiable appetite. Marriage laws formalize and enshrine the natural reality of a man and women creating a small scale civilization in their home as they raise the next generation. Just laws which rulers enforce are nothing if not the recognizing the innate dignity of humans and their deserving fair and equal treatment. Name a social boundary and you will find a string tying it to a natural one. God’s objective natural boundaries finds civil expression in man’s affairs.

Lastly, there are observational boundaries. Statistically, boundaries emerge when enough samples of the population are taken. Take any statistic such as median income, average height for men, or bone density in women, and after collecting a hundred thousand data points, a bell curve will emerge where 95% of all data points would fall within two standard deviations of the mean. Boundaries in this sense are the mathematical result of enough data points taken over time they come to resemble a fence, and within the fence is the green pasture of the normal. Statistics can be used to describe societal norms in mathy terms.

Statistical boundaries are last because they are the least important. They are not prescriptive for boundaries, like nature is of the social, but merely descriptive. When the body mass index of 18-45 year-old men in Houston, Texas is averaged and found to be deep into the “jolly whopper” category, this is not prescriptive of optimal health. While this does show a “normal” boundary for a specific people in a certain time and place, this does not mean then that the natural boundary of men’s stomachs ought to be hanging seven inches below the belt.

OK, finished with the first task of establishing the relationship between natural and social boundaries and how they can be tabulated through statistical means. Now we need to take just a small swig off that bottle of pee that is Queer ideology. This is just a sip, mind you – you don’t have to drink the whole bottle to know its sour.

Not Your Grandmother’s Queer

Before we continue, we need to understand Queer’s new and improved working definition. This isn’t your grandmother’s queer – that quaint synonym for “odd”. Neither is it your mom’s queer – a crass synonym for homosexual. It is a genetically engineered version, perhaps of the same kind you may find manufactured in a Chinese lab, viral and preeminently contagious – the kind that gets into the DNA and hijacks the machinery to replicate itself. It is a worldview, which is to say it is a religion, and like any religion, it is intent on world conquest. Somewhere over the past decade queer transitioned into Queer – from a rather small community of gay men and women on the outskirts of society, to a skewing mind virus taught in schools, disseminated over media, preached in churches, and ladening HR departments across the nation with DEI mandates. It is not to be trifled with. Much of this understanding comes from the perspicacity of James Lindsay and his Translations from the Wokish which you should all have bookmarked on your browser.

In a sense, defining Queer is antithetical to its nature, since definitions are nothing if not boundaries of identity, and Queer exists to transgress boundaries. Queer is a noun. It is also an adjective. In its activist form it is a verb. Simultaneously, it exists as an idea, a process and an identity. There is a gnostic quality about it, of secret knowledge understandable only to those on the inside. Because of this, Queer has been coyly referred to as an “identity without an essence” – whatever that means. In practice, it is iconoclastic, defined by its obstruction and destruction of normative categories, particularly sexual, but in general dislikes the normative anywhere it is found. Queer takes as its position the opposition to the norm, whatever that norm may be, and from that position dissolves normalcy. In short, Queer is the universal solvent of norms.

Queer’s boundary hatred springs from two fundamental axioms: First, boundaries – all boundaries – are power structures erected by the powerful dividing society between the elites inside the norm’s boundaries and those oppressed individuals outside of it. Secondly, it is taken for granted that power is bad and oppressive by nature. Those in power are, whether consciously or unconsciously, inherently bad, and the oppressed are victims of injustice – by default on the side of the angels. Viewed through this lens, the world is suffused with oppression and rotten with disparity. To correct this, Queer begins to disassemble these “oppressive” boundaries and the tool of choice is a process called “problematizing” the norms.

Okay, so what the crap does it mean to problematize? To use Lindsay’s definition, to problematize something is to take a societal norm and reveal the (presumed) inherent oppressions baked in. Here, let me problematize a few things to show you.

SAT testing for college admission maintains a system of privilege for those who helped build the system of college admission criteria maintaining and augmenting the gap between upper and lower classes of society. SAT testing is classist, oppressing the poor.

Requiring IDs to vote is showing preference to those in society, mostly white, who have the means to obtain an ID, who can then vote for legislators who will act in their favor to maintain their own status quo. Requiring voter ID is racist, oppressing blacks.

Incest taboos are rooted in a fear of the abnormal, the birth defects which result when a son impregnates his mom. Cis-abled persons structure society around their able bodies, a society which marginalizes the deformed and abnormal. Incest taboos are ableism, oppressing the abnormal or “other-abled.”

Being on time is a cultural artifact of capitalistic, greed-based values rooted in the industrial revolution, largely by white entrepreneurs and is not endemic to the African peoples who had a much looser grasp on timeliness. Being on time is rooted in white privilege.

– You can problematize anything with nipples

Bet you didn’t know all those things were bound up in oppressive hegemonic forces, did you? Each of these examples was pulled from actual attempts to “queer” boundaries, but it is important to know that the problematizing can be applied to all boundaries and is exquisitely successful historically. Presuming to uncover the false consciousness of a thing, Queer pulls back the proverbial curtain to see the powerful and oppressive substructures pulling the strings. Presuming some secret knowledge, Queer unmasks all those innocent motivations, to reveal the ugly, oppressive and bigoted roots. After the norm is destabilized, shell shocked from the misrepresentation, accusation and impending cancellation, it is eager to do whatever it can to right the wrongs of its existence. And wouldn’t you know it, but Queer has a remediation plan just for this purpose? This is the story of so many organizations and individuals in the past five years it has its own name – to go woke.

Lest you think this is in line with the Christian value of “releasing the bonds of the oppressed” and establishing justice, what funds the Queer movement is not the love of Christ but an obsequiousness to pacify the loudmouths at best, and power envy at worst. This is not a movement that should be underwritten by the Church, but opposed. The moral impetus Queer pulls from grows from a twisted sense of justice and goodness and sets mankind in his infinite mutability as the definer of all reality. Knowing the past is key to the present, it tears through the history books with eraser in one hand and a pen in the other, rewriting all of history in dim light of its smelly little orthodoxy – to use Orwell’s phrase. It’s bad news, kids.

Back to the Subject at Hand

Now that we have some semblance of Queer, let’s get back to the levels of boundaries.

To recap, the boundaries we find in our world are not independent of each other: social boundaries are built around existing natural boundaries, like a city building its boundaries around natural geographic features of mountains and oceans. Statistical boundaries would be likened to a topography map – a two dimensional, abstract representation of what is there. Importantly, this effect only goes one way: from natural to social to statistical. It cannot go back up. Descriptive stats cannot regurgitate back up and rewire reality of the natural world. It doesn’t work like that.

Unless you queer it.

Applying Queer solvent to the three levels of boundaries upends the entire structure. Since statistics describes societal norms, and norms are de facto oppressive and bad, for the sake of its own sense of justice Queer must dissolve them. Those shadowy tails on the edges of the bell curve crosshatched with intersectionality hold the golden ingots of truth in their marginalized and lived experience. That big bell of normalcy is nothing more than a patriarchal bulge, a giant phallic reminder of the Man in charge. Or to change the metaphor, it is an abscess holding all the purulent fluid of oppressive power. Justice demands it be drained and the fresh, healthy tissue on the edges of the wound proliferate towards the center. To right this fundamental wrong, the statistical must become prescriptive.

Values of the vanishingly small subgroups are then used to rewrite to the social boundaries. You are currently living here, where definitions of marriage, sex and gender are uprooted because they are norms and therefore oppressive and bad. Enter drag queen story hour, DEI trainings, Obergefell, and the ironically named Respect for Marriage Act that managed to slither its way through congress. These are all the results of dissolving norms in society and restructuring with new “boundaries” which have all the rigidity, structure, and smell of used toilet paper. Gender norms of a society are systematically problematized as ideas erected by the ruling class of a specific time that have not a thing to do with any biological boundary. Therefore, they are oppressive, destined for dissolution, and any and all permutation of gender and sexuality, however perverse, be given moral equivalence. Man and women in holy matrimony is on the same moral plane as the Two-Spirit cat self living with his polycule in an open relationship smorgasbord. This is the only outcome that will satisfy Queer and is the logical conclusion of its strange equity – all sexual functioning and gender identity is equally normal, equally absurd, and on a plane of infinite gray.

Now, you’d think this is as far as the queering could go – weird statistical anomalies used to rewire societal norms, but unable to trespass that next level up onto the created order. But you would be wrong. To finish off the great boundary rehaul, Queer attempts to uproot the very natural world that God made, thinking a woman can be a man and a man can give birth. Breast are lopped, testicles are chemically castrated, and facial hair darkens the lips of women goaded toward androgyny by exogenous hormones. The unmaking storms the gates of creation and presumes to redraw the shorelines and mountain scapes of the good earth.

The Answer To The Question

Not addressed here is the anatomy and origins of Queer, which I hope to tackle in a future post. But for now, we are at a place to answer the question posited above: why is gender in particular the target of Queer? Certainly queering expands out from the center, but the place where the disease sets in is specifically and peculiarly gender. Why? Answer: because gender is the only manifestation of the image of God on earth. Masculine and feminine are eternally bound up in the heart of God which he placed into his creation, man and woman. Masculinity on planet earth is shaped like male; femininity on this blue marble is formed as female. This image of God which He chose to place in one form or the other and unified through marriage is the foundation of civilization, the conduit of truth, goodness and beauty in creation. Each person carries one or the other God-selected shape. Since sinful man cannot murder God as we would like, unreachable as He is, we kill the next closest thing – His image on earth. Queer is the burning of the Creator in effigy.

From there, the queering of all else follows. Queer severs gender and sex, divine and mortal, heaven and earth – snipping the string that tethers mankind from created order. From that frayed end the rest of the universe is free to unravel. The queering of academics, sports, politics, physical health and wellness, beauty, parenting, transporation – everything – is now in peril of unweaving, dismantling. Contaminate the spring, and all the lands are poisoned.

Importantly, for a Christian response, Queer is not queer. In other words, we are not fighting against flesh and blood but against ideologies, a dark logismos, which is raising itself up against the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5). It goes without saying, ridding the world of this rot is not in attacking people who identify as queer or those who have had the queer bomb strapped to their chest by ideologues and sent into institutions and organizations. For crying out loud, in 2021 one out of six Gen-Zers identified as queer, and in 2022 one out of five. That means by 2027 there will be more people identifying as queer than there are people. Most of them are victims of a variety of cultural and familial shipwrecks and the Queer flotsam is the only thing to cling to. I have people in my extended family, and its painful to watch them pretend like coke-colored urine and angulated forearms is the privilege of living out their personal truth.

This is not a problem that can be fixed by calling your representative. Irate parents at PTA meetings are an encouraging kickback but is not how the acid will be neutralized. The cure is closer than that: the glad acceptance of nature, a thankful heart, and a God-honoring disposition. The Church must lead in this and its battle cry ought to be a barbaric yawp of joy for God’s goodness, being as manly and womanly as it is possible to be, and feasting merrily when God lays a table before us in the presence of our enemies. Only if this comes first can Christians then glom together, link arms, and Care Bear stare the crap out of that false and unnatural idol.

Conclusion

Our lives are replete with norms in all areas of social and biological life; humanity’s myriad mechanical inventions are built within parameters of optimal functioning. There is no escaping these boundaries without consequences. Thus we often bend our lives toward the center of the bell curve of normal. On the highest level, boundaries are set up by God when He created the universe according to laws and principles which govern the creation, which themselves have an extraordinarily narrow margin of error. As we interact with these physical boundaries gifted by God, humans build their societies in consideration and obeisance toward them. These norms can be mathematically observed through statistical means.

Queer upends this hierarchy by problematizing natural processes and social norms by revisioning them with harmful and oppressive motivations and therefore justifying their destruction. The black heart of Queer is of that same strain that built Babel – humans hating God and scheming since creation different ways to get rid of Him. Queer is just one of our latest inventions. There will be others.

It is essential to understand the intent and mechanism of Queer and not get distracted by the baleful cow eyes, wound collecting and monetization of suffering. Indeed, if you stand against this black tide you be shown photo albums of young people looking like bedraggled kittens and sob stories about how your oppressive norms made them this way, and if you don’t change your tune they just might kill themselves. Thus many Christians placed their hand over their mouths and sat in their assigned corner. But this is not the way. To the victims of this grift, a growing multitude, they need solid truth, compassion, and an invitation into true community where they can learn how to live out their God-given gender with joy. The rapidly unraveling of norms in athletics, academics, economics and the hard and soft sciences, which have resulted from Queer’s de-creation activities needs to be met with a glory in the mechanics of God’s creations and discovery of the boundaries he put in place. To the grifters, the response needs from a firm, intransigent love accompanied by knowledge rooted in history and truth that boldly reveals the inconsistencies and lies. Loving your neighbor means protecting him and this includes from rancid ideologies that exchange sweet for bitter, light for dark, good for evil, and straight forearms for crooked.