A thread: I first came across Queer Theory in my early 20s, whilst working on the collective at Modern Times Bookstore, San Francisco, California. Now closed, it is rightly regarded & revered as an iconic institution of the progressive left in the USA. 1/

I hadn’t been to university yet & I was in awe & inspired by most everything & everyone around me. Kathy Acker, June Jordan, Angela Davis, Essex Hemphill, Alice Walker, Cornel West & so many others were all visitors to the store. Armistead Maupin lived around the corner. 2/

I was a black girl from Cowley, Oxford, living my very own Tales of the City in early 1990s SF & it was thrilling. People would come into the bookshop starry eyed looking for works by Foucault, who I’d never heard of but did my best to pretend otherwise. 3/

When Judith Butler arrived in northern California to begin teaching at UC Berkeley, she lived above the bookstore. We met, she was miserable, but she had just locked herself out of the flat & was stood in front of me barefoot. 4/

The bubble burst when doyenne of the left & 3rd wave feminism, Pat Califia (now Patrick) edited Public Sex (1994). In it Califia advocated for (extreme) pedophilia. They would later print a retraction in the 2nd edition & I’m grateful that they did so. 5/

But the dye was cast. My awe of the progressive left was shattered. The sexual abuse by mostly men of children was being intellectualised, rationalised & condoned by too many on the left, incl. Foucault. It was viewed as the next & perhaps the last sexual taboo. 6/

What chilled me to the bone & does to this day, was how many of the people who I respected & admired brought into this bull about paedohillia (none of the names mentioned in this thread save for PC). A whole language sprung up, seemingly overnight: it was a rights issue...7/

Children‘s sexuality needs liberating; they said the same about the gays etc. I had hoped that those sinister actors went away. They did not. I fear that they have once again embedded themselves within the LGB & T movement. 8/

What seemed thrilling & radical 30 years ago turned out to be the birth of a monstrosity, IMHO. People trot out Queer this & Queer that & I wonder if they fully understand the lunatic, offensive & dangerous ramblings of its most ardent advocates, both living & dead. 9/

All things that come calling dressed up in a Rainbow Flag are not benign. Stupid politicians & institutions, petrified of being labelled phobic, want a quick fix, a quick stamp of approval. Their gullibility, laziness & homophobia has brought us to this place. 10/

Do not be dazzled by the rainbow or anything else. Be clear headed, rational & compassionate. If you are, you will understand that the only sexual liberation & autonomy that children need is to be left to grow into young adulthood unmolested. 11/

We must demand that children be allowed to grow into maturity without adults & our adult organisations & institutions claiming first dibs on them, labelling them as LGB or T or S out of a need to validate our own adult identities. To do otherwise is child abuse. 12/

And that is why I am lesbian and not queer. Women like me & our male allies will never stop fighting against those who would seek to sexualise children & dismantle child safeguarding norms, regardless of how it is rationalised & marketed. We see you. 13/