This post will provide a summary of the article “Queer Futurity and Childhood Innocence: Beyond the Injury of Development” by Hannah Dyer. The article addresses what the author believes are several erroneous assumptions that professionals have about child development and sexuality. By disrupting these misunderstandings the author claims that it will help children.

The author begins the paper by stating that there is a mistake in assuming that children are a-sexual and will soon be heterosexual as they mature. From there, the author builds this argument and concludes the paper with a critique of a video that makes the argument that being homosexual becomes easier once leaving school.

Introduction

It is important to explain several terms before exploring the paper in detail. The word “queer” usually means strange, however, in the context of queer theory “queer” means to challenge whatever is considered “normal.” Queer wants to unsettle all established norms even norms regarding homosexuality. For proponents of queer theory, anything normal can be considered problematic. Queer means deviance from anything normative whether gay or straight. In other words, there can be no identities as everything is always in a state of unsettled flux.

A word that appears in the title of the paper is “futurity.” Futurity in the context of queer theory is a criticism of current problems faced by queer people using ideas from several places such as historicism, utopianism, as well as death drive (negative views of non-traditional sex acts).

The author states that queer theory sees childhood as a place of heteronormative intervention. In other words, childhood is an assault on assuming that children will pursue traditional sexuality. The author provides a quote that it “is open season on gay kids” without providing any statistics to support this. For the author, there appears to be little support for raising children who are homosexual. However, this assumes that children are sexual which is an assumption that the author makes and is counter to the traditional assumption that children are not sexual.

Dyer continues by stating that early childhood theories avoid topics on sexuality because there is an assumption of innocence. The author disagrees with this and uses the term “figure of the Child” which is another way of stating this assumption of innocence. The phrase “figure of Child” is a term borrowed from queer theory. The word “Child” is deliberately capitalized.

For the author, one step in the reform of early childhood theories on development is to get rid of this assumption of innocence. This is because current theories supposedly reduce children to figures without complexity (things are always too simple for critical theorists). The current theories could harm children as they exclude the possibility of the child possessing a queer nature. However, no statistical support is given for this statement.

Another critique the author provides is her concern with childhood education wanting to stabilize and define queerness as an identity. As mentioned earlier, for Dyer, queerness is contingent and cannot be permanently defined. This is because the definition will change as what is normal changes. Since queer theory is always against normativity, its definition will change with whatever is considered normal. Right now, heterosexuality is considered normal so queer theory is in opposition to this. If heterosexuality were no longer considered normal queer theory would move on and attack whatever else is now “normal.” There will never be any fixed definitions for supporters of this theory for almost anything. For example, gender is now considered fluid.

Dyer states that queer theory provides advances in the care of children through methodology, pedagogy, and epistemology. For methodology in particular, queer theory can disrupt the assumption of sequential steps towards normalcy, which may not apply to every child. Queer theory can also help analyze how normativity is reproduced. Reproduction is a frequent complaint of Marxists with the complaint that the existing society wants to reproduce itself and one vehicle for this reproduction is education. Lastly, Dyer speaks of the need to loosen parameters around normative development as queerness destroys identity and does not support the development of identities.

Making Childhood Education “Get Better”

The final section of the paper is a critique of “It Gets Better” a video created to support youth with alternative sexual preferences. Essentially, the video states that having an alternative sexual preference will be easier as an adult. However, the author critiques this argument as untrue. In addition, Dyer criticizes this video for not taking race and class into account. As such, this video falls short of supporting kids who it claims to help.

Conclusion

This article provides an insight into what queer theory is and what it is trying to do. However, one article cannot speak for an entire field. The ideas presented here of overturning anything normal are shocking but may not be something that everybody in this domain agrees with.