Meg-John Barker, Jules Scheele: Queer (2016, Icon Books, Limited)
176 pages
English language
Published Dec. 25, 2016 by Icon Books, Limited.
Though not a graphic novel, this high illustrated nonfiction book explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do. Barker and Scheele show how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged. Each page focuses on a specific aspect of the subject.
I was surprised at how good this book is. To me it sounds like a feet of sithesizing and making accessible a great variety of subjects. The few qualifications / questions I had were tackled in the section on some of the criticisms made to queer theory. This book would probably be great for a reading group or collective reading.
So. This is a good start to queer theory, however misses out a few key things.
It completely ignores the idea why some people reject the word queer.
It also claims, bewilderingly, that cishet people can be queer. Kinksters... are not queer. Sorry, pals. It takes a lot of time to discuss lived experiences of actual queer people and then ignores the fact that a lot of queer people don't want cishet people in our spaces.
"I'm queering heterosexuality by engaging in kink." Sure, Jan.
Other than that I feel like this is a good introduction to queer theory in both academic and non-academic contexts. And it's given me a lot of recommendations for other theorists to read!!
