Did you know that endocrine disruptors–chemicals that cause cancers and also disrupt hormones–are actually liberating?

Opposing the spread of such chemicals is a war on the Queer.

Really. I am not joking.

This doesn’t come from some crackpot–or, I should say, it comes from a very highly credentialed crackpot at King’s College in London.

Here is Anne Pollock on “Queering Endocrine Disruption”: “discourse of endocrine disruption in scientific and environmentalist literature has exemplified a ‘sex panic.’”/2 https://t.co/Xq8dqoUVZK pic.twitter.com/iMODcQB7AZ

— Geoff Shullenberger (@g_shullenberger) July 18, 2023

Anne Pollock is not some gender studies professor teaching at a community college to whom nobody listens. She is instead a highly respected professor who is the Head of the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine.

She runs the place.

Lest you think I am exaggerating about her claims, here is how she describes endocrine disruptors.

Queering endocrine disruption. What do I mean by this? For those who are familiar with the ecological alarm around endocrine disruption, it may seem to be already queer, not needing a present progressive verb from the likes of me. In addition to its association with breast, prostate, and other cancers, the major story of endocrine disruption is this: there is considerable scientific evidence that toxic chemicals that pollute our environment interfere with the endocrine systems of wildlife, contributing to an increased prevalence of animals that are sexually atypical—with lowered fertility, intersex characteristics, and pairing with animals of the same sex. I am by no means the first to point out that there is homophobia embedded in that ecological alarm. Many writers in feminist and queer ecocriticism have pointed out that discourse of endocrine disruption in both scientific and environmentalist literature has exemplified a “sex panic.” Posing intersex characteristics as the sine qua non of harm to our environment is a move steeped in heteronormativity. And yet to my knowledge, no one is celebrating the queer here. In this chapter, I want to suggest that we depathologize queer animals, even when that queerness is the product of humanproduced toxins in the environment, and even when it inhibits animals’ reproductive capacity. Perhaps we even might find a perverse joy here.

Uh, wat? So chemicals that cause cancer and other problems are good, and we should be joyful they exist, because they cause deformities in animals (and likely humans) that cause them to be sexually atypical and sometimes unable to reproduce.

Chemicals that Queer! How much better can you get?

Remember, she is the head of the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine.

From a queer feminist perspective, should we automatically decry the flourishing of nonreproductive male pairs of birds? The Nature News article features a photograph of a pair of white ibises walking along a Florida beach, in ankle-deep water, with a gently breaking wave just beyond them. I want to suggest that we sufficiently embrace the temptation to anthropomorphize so that we can see that gay stroll as having value in and of itself, and question whether reproductive fitness is the ultimate purpose of animal existence.

Yes, yes it is. Darwin and all. I seem to recall the scientific theory that today’s animals exist because of the process selected for reproductive fitness.

I kinda sorta maybe think it fits somewhere in that whole sciency thing. Correct me if I am wrong.

Head of the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine. At a premier university. 

Trust the science.

Heather Davis’s 2022 book from Duke UP surveys and contributes to this literature. Rather than responding with “anxiety about reproduction,” she says, we should “celebrate, socially and ecologically, the difference of these queer bodily formations.”/4 pic.twitter.com/tt4M9gzkA7

— Geoff Shullenberger (@g_shullenberger) July 18, 2023

She is not alone. There is a whole genre of academic literature making this point, and there is a reason for that.

Once you have divorced the idea of a telos–a natural end to which all living things are directed by either God or Nature–there is literally no standard by which to judge things. In fact, the ideology of Queer is entirely predicated upon the idea of destroying all norms. Queer=nihilist. That is not an interpretation based upon a deep esoteric reading. It is exactly what they are arguing.

There are no standards. We just invent them. Reality just IS. Embrace it.

However absurd this is, it is also the route to evil. Queer theorists like to dress up their theories with nice words about kindness and acceptance, but in fact, without a standard murder is as legitimate as anything else. Punch TERFs can get cheers. Threats of violence and murder against JK Rowling happen every day.

Because without standards, all there is is my will. I like it, so thus it should be.

Literal poisons are good because poison disrupts the normal. I am not reading that into Pollock’s essay. That is the actual frickin’ POINT of the essay.

I come back to this again and again, but for those who think I am mean to these peace-loving tolerant folks, I respond: this is exactly what they mean. Poison is good if it serves its purpose. Yes, they know they are poisoning children, and they WANT TO.

Don’t trust me. Trust what they argue once you strip out the adjectives. The adjectives are a smokescreen. “Kind?” This is what they mean by kind.

This is evil. Not misguided. Evil.

Head of the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine. Think about that.