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in reply to @sapphire's post:

so, this stuff is reading the meta-narrative of oppression as a force that has a kind of agency. in other words, if queerphobia asserts, replaces, or maintains interpreted “normative behaviors,” then it must serve some societal role. a theory like this helps in the realm of advocating for ourselves, it makes things negotiable to assume individuals perpetuate these things out of the belief that they have something to lose or gain (because those social relations can be substituted or addressed), instead of just boilerplate eviiilll, or for just chaotic or mutually unintelligible reasons.

something like insecurity or fear is the “lose” angle. when things are no longer just “the way things are,” then from the positive, it’s like our social organization was predicated on lies for the convenience of power. ime this kind of way of seeing things is not a liberation for some people out there lol, the idea that we should rethink our social relations can get discarded for all kinds of reasons, but I’d boil down the tendency as either an investment or loyalty toward the “way things are.”

also, this importantly does not apply to the queerphobe as an individual person. what the queerphobe stands to gain, or how they benefit from oppression, or what they ultimately fear from a political standpoint, might not actually be why they act the way they do. oppression is contradictory and harms both ways. meta or macro-narratives explain the reasoning behind political units of organization, but they aren’t trying to explain behaviors or psychology.

I go into compulsive teaching mode sorry oomfie. hope this made sense lol