Question: does queer theory produce liberatory discourse that can and should inform LGBT activism or is queer theory nothing but pretentious crap? I feel compelled to ask this question in the bluntest possible vernacular following an extended exchange with a queer theorist on the Q-Study listserve.

Because she is on tenure track, I will refrain from naming my interlocutor and simply refer to her as 'H.' Having once been on tenure track myself, I am sensitive to the particular power dynamics in which an assistant professor is caught up. But I will not disguise my dismay with the quality and character of the ideas that H littered her messages to the list with, nor the manner in which she did so, because to me, they raise serious questions about the current state of queer theory. Let me begin with a quote from one of H's messages to the list:

"I'm always surprised when queer folks in particular start taking the moral high ground. This is exactly the tool of oppression that has so often been wielded against us. And my understanding of what i take to be the best, most exciting, and most radical queer theory is that which celebrates the shameful, the animal, the embodied, and declares that to be what is most human about us. admittedly, this is still ensconced in a moral framework (since "shameful" depends on a moral framework for intelligibility), but if the shameful becomes what is most dignified, then it also seems that the distinction between the two is so muddied that insisting upon it becomes a retrogressive act of moral policing. this withering away of morality is what i see as the task of queer theory/politics, not (as someone suggested) an
upholding of a binary in which queer theory wins out over morality..."

Here's my response to H: