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Queer theory: philosophy and political critique, not an empirical discipline

Queer theory is an academic movement that emerged in 1990. It works with textual analysis and political critique rather than testable hypotheses. That a movement is influential does not make it empirically validated.

Origin and key figures

The term "queer theory" was coined by Teresa de Lauretis, who organised the first conference on the subject in 1990 (source). Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Epistemology of the Closet, 1990) and Judith Butler's Gender Trouble (1990) are among the core texts (source, source). The movement sees knowledge production as bound up with power relations. De Lauretis abandoned the term about three years later because, according to Annamarie Jagose's overview, it had been taken over by the mainstream forces and institutions it was coined to resist (source).

Not an empirical discipline

Queer theory works mainly with textual analysis and political critique and rarely yields testable hypotheses. It therefore lacks the self-correction of empirical research. See unfalsifiable : a theory that reinterprets every counterexample as proof of itself is hard to refute. Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay treat queer theory in Cynical Theories (2020) as one of the fields in which, in their account, "applied postmodernism" emerged (source).

Influence outside the university

Helen Joyce argues in Trans (2021) that lobbying by trans activists allowed gender identity to replace biological sex in policy (source). The Yogyakarta Principles were drafted in 2006 by a group of human rights experts and were not adopted by states or the United Nations by treaty (source). How great the influence of academic movements on policy and guidelines has been is not answered by this article: no study of this was found.

The clinical context

The Cass Review (2024) calls care for young people with gender dysphoria "an area of remarkably weak evidence" in its foreword (source). Cass writes (para. 9.32) that WPATH 8 overstates the strength of the evidence, and calls the organisation highly influential in international practice (source). The report does not mention queer theory and draws no link between academic movements and guidelines. In the foreword Cass also writes that there are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views (source). Kathleen Stock announced on 28 October 2021 that she was leaving the University of Sussex, after a controversy over her views on trans rights (source).

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