Meg-John Barker

I sought out this work because of the subtitle, "A Graphic History." I was hoping for a graphic novel and instead received a pretty dull PowerPoint presentation. Basically a droning lecture is typeset in big blocks of text that float over bland illustrations that exhibit little continuity or flow. The most amusing part of the book for me was the several minutes I spent afterward using Google Images to search for the various real people whose images appear in the book and counting how many show more times the illustrator used the very first picture to appear in the search as her direct photo reference. And then I spent more time registering how many times that single portrait was simply copied and pasted, tweaked or flipped as the person reappeared throughout the book. That seems like a pretty lazy and uninspired technique for an artist.

Speaking of lazy and uninspired, I always like to find my own thoughts on a work summarized within it: "Perhaps the most well-known criticism of queer theory is that it is inaccessible....There's a serious point here that if a theory is too abstract, complex, and opaque it will exclude those outside academia from engaging with it. It may also be regarded as elitist and class-biased." I did not engage with this work, but I do appreciate the exposure to ideas that are new to me even if the presentation is lacking. show less

You know how they say “When the student is ready the teacher will appear”? Well, I've been learning a lot of lessons over the last few years, but this book arrived back in my sights at exactly the right time. It's been on my wish list for a while, but after meeting the author at a conference and going to a valuable workshop of theirs on self-care and activist burnout, I knew I wanted to repay them by buying this... and it was well worth it.

I've just come out of a four year relationship show more which began just as I was embarking on a psychology degree, becoming interested in gender and feminism, learning about social constructionism, and during which I've been questioning my previously held beliefs.

The book covers our taken-for-granted rules about relationships, the ways in which these may be problematic and the alternative 'rules' which exist outwith mainstream society... suggesting that it may be best to hold all rules lightly, and to be flexible and in-the-moment about what really works for ourselves as individuals. Each chapter relates these thoughts to a specific topic - ourselves, attraction & body image, gender, sexuality, monogamy, conflict, break-ups and commitment. Some of the ideas resonated with thoughts I'd already had, and many were new and prompted deeper (and ongoing) reflection.

This is definitely a book I'll be re-reading and thinking about for a long time. It's had a massive impact on me and the way I'll go about any future relationships. Seriously, I think it should be required reading for everyone - even on the national curriculum! show less

I like that theory exists, but generally I don't want anything to do with it. As a research scientist I was firmly an experimentalist. And in general I am more of an action-oriented person than a pure-thought person (while I also appreciate that the people who do favor theory have bridged the gap to get me to where I am able to take action on things).

There were some interesting nuggets in this book, and it definitely helped me to appreciate theory maybe a tiny bit more by giving it show more illustrations, but otherwise I was just kind of bored by the whole thing.

Also, due to my lack of theoretical knowledge in queer / gender theory, I lack the ability to critique this book on a higher level, as other commenters have done. I will admit that there probably are large flaws in this book that I am unable to detect, so I will leave that as a warning to others who, like me, don't know Sartre from Nietzsche. show less

The title made me expect this would be a graphic novel about the history of queerness; instead, it's a basic, slightly bland sociological primer on academic queer theory broken up by lots of black-and-white illustrations. Less Queer: A Graphic History and more Queer Studies: A Primer with Some Infographics. The illustrations help to explain some of the more abstract concepts described here by Meg-John Barker, but I was disappointed at how, well, normative they were—I feel that a book on show more this topic could and should have made more expansive use of the graphic novel format. And while I appreciate that there's only so much you can cram into a brief, accessible introduction to a topic, I found some of the explanations to be simplified to the point of confusion and lack of rationale for the (stated) focus on Western (by which they really mean almost entirely Anglophone scholars + Foucault) scholarship a bit odd. show less