The Importance Of Queer Theory

Our understanding of the way we think is perhaps one of the most crucial aspects of understanding our own society. It is for this reason that the fields of psychotherapy, psychology, psychiatry, and sociology are so incredibly important. Within these areas of study, the boundaries of normative life must fall away in order for us to truly understand our minds. When there is discrimination in a field as extensive as the understanding of the human psyche, we run the risk of wholly alienating entire segments of the population. Until about the 1980s, there was systematic and overt discrimination against gay members of the psychological field who wanted to either get help, or pursue a career. A major advocate for LGBTQ acceptance into this arena,

Isay began his career believing that the sexuality of a person was ultimately determined by the natural biological condition of it; therein creating space for the conceptualization that gayness is, in fact, a disease to be cured. According to Jay Prosser in Judith Butler: Queer Feminism, Freud’s ideology of sexuality was that, first and foremost it was inherently created by sensation of the body (1998). In this understanding, queer is a learned trait, deriving its basis from bodily experience. Freud was not implying that such a thing should be corrected, but it was nonetheless a projection of the bodily understanding and could therefore be tempered or manipulated. In direct opposition to this idea, Judith Butler’s interpretation reverses the roles altogether, claiming instead that the body and its sensations are shaped by the psyche (1998). This subversion is important, insomuch as it places the epicenter of sexuality foremost, in the human mind. More importantly, this placement eradicates the ability to label sexuality as a lower function of thinking, or an illness to be treated. Isay’s interpretation of gayness as a naturally occurring disposition of sexuality runs concurrently with Butler’s conceptualization of a mentally driven, non-fixable, fluid preference, which finds no room for treatment as an