Category: Queer Theory

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What Does It Mean to Be Human? Why Our Future Might Depend on That Question

Last week, two things caught my attention—both strange in their own ways, and both pointing to how weird our world is getting when it comes to understanding who we are.

1. A “Queer Lectionary”?

The first was a book that’s about to be released: A Queer Lectionary: (Im)proper Readings from the Margins—Year A. Sounds intense, right? Basically, it’s trying to mix queer theory—a field of thought that pushes back against traditional ideas about gender, identity, and how people “should” be—with Christianity.

Now, I’m all for asking hard questions, but here’s the deal: queer theory is about breaking categories apart. It’s intentionally confusing, often uses complicated academic language, and tries to show that things we think are “normal” are actually just made-up power plays. On the flip side, Christianity is built on the idea of stable truths: things like “men and women are made in God’s image,” and that worship shapes people to live a certain way.

So, trying to jam the two together feels like mixing oil and water. If you’re tearing down categories like male and female, but Christianity depends on those categories to tell its story about God, people, and salvation—how does that even work? It’s like trying to build a house while pulling out its foundation.

First ‘Gender-Queer’ Priest in the Church of England

2. A Real-Life Dire Wolf (Sort Of)

On the same day I saw the queer lectionary, I read an article about a company claiming they brought back the dire wolf from extinction. You read that right. Think: science fiction meets real life. The reality’s a bit less dramatic than cloning an ancient beast, but the tech behind it—gene editing—is real. And it’s powerful.

This isn’t just about making cool animals. It’s about humans having the ability to change what’s natural. At first, that might sound awesome—like curing diseases or fixing genetic problems. But it also raises a huge question: What does it even mean to be human?

The Big Picture: The Fight Over Human Nature

These two things—queer theory and gene editing—might seem totally unrelated. One’s from the world of ideas, the other from science labs. But they’re both asking the same big question: Can we change what it means to be human? Should we?

That’s where things get even more complicated.

Take the transgender movement. It’s pushed society to rethink gender in heretofore unthinkable ways—sometimes at the cost of things like women’s sports, private spaces, or parental rights. But it’s not just about LGBTQ+ issues. It’s also part of a much bigger idea called transhumanism—the belief that human limits (like biology) are problems to solve instead of realities to live with.

And who’s driving that idea? People like the “Tech Bros”—the ones behind the world’s biggest companies and boldest inventions. They’ve got money, power, and the tools to change what it means to be human. Think Elon Musk and others like him. Sometimes they say the right things (Musk has spoken against parts of the trans movement), but are they doing it for the right reasons—or just because of personal drama in the family (Musk)?

So, What Now?

We’re living in a time where ideas and tech are coming together in ways no generation before us has faced. And while some of these changes might seem exciting or even helpful, others could erase what makes us, well, us.

Trans activists want to rewrite gender. Scientists want to rewrite DNA. And somewhere in the middle, regular people like you and me are trying to figure out where the line is.

That’s why the question, “What does it mean to be human?” isn’t just for philosophy class. It’s for anyone who cares about the future.

Because if we lose the answer to that… we might lose ourselves.

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When Queer Theory Meets the Cradle

Queering Babies and the Academic Void Where Ethics Should Be

So after marrying shrimp, what’s next? Apparently, queering babies.

In part two of the Citation Needed Podcast pilot, Colin Wright and Brad Polumbo wade into even more disturbing territory: a peer-reviewed paper titled “Queering Babies: Autoethnographic Reflections from a Gay Parent through Surrogacy.”

Let me start by saying this clearly: I don’t toss around accusations lightly. But this paper is deeply inappropriate. Not because it’s about surrogacy, or unconventional family dynamics. But because it tries to sexualize infants under the guise of academic theory—and then gets published in a reputable journal.

What’s the Paper Arguing?

Yes, you read that right. The author, Balazs Boross, attempts to apply queer theory to infants, claiming that because babies defy adult expectations and are not yet “straight,” they are therefore queer.

In short: that babies are inherently queer.

It’s intellectual nonsense—and worse, it veers into incredibly creepy territory.

Autoethnography or Navel-Gazing?

As the podcast explains, the method used here is “autoethnography.” Sounds academic, right? But in practice, it’s just the author journaling his personal feelings and labeling them research.

He reflects on moments like his newborn daughter’s instinctual attempt to nurse from him—an entirely non-sexual, biological behavior—and describes it as “animalistic and perverse.” He says there wasn’t “much intimacy or innocence there.”

Frankly, that’s horrifying. That’s not academic analysis. That’s projecting adult notions of sexuality onto infants, and then publishing it as research.

When Theory Becomes Dangerous

The problem here isn’t just the lack of scholarly rigor. It’s the loss of moral grounding.

Queer theory, as used here, is obsessed with destabilizing boundaries: between man and woman, adult and child, even decency and indecency. In this framework, nothing is off-limits—not even babies.

Colin and Brad hit the nail on the head: this paper doesn’t just explore taboo topics. It removes the taboos entirely, all in the name of challenging “oppressive norms.” That includes norms like age-appropriate sexual boundaries.

If you’re not disturbed by that, you should be.

Why Are Journals Publishing This?

That’s the million-dollar question. Like the brine shrimp paper, this one was published by Springer Nature—a giant in the academic world. The journal? Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society.

So again, this isn’t fringe. This isn’t some Tumblr blog. It’s the academic mainstream.

And as the hosts rightly point out, when peer-reviewed journals accept “research” that cannot be independently evaluated (because it’s just someone’s diary), the entire peer-review process becomes meaningless.

This Is Why People Don’t Trust Academia

When academic journals become playgrounds for ideology and personal confession, they lose their authority.

We’re told to trust experts. But what happens when the experts are publishing manifestos about shrimp weddings and breastfeeding selfies with psychoanalytic commentary? Public trust collapses—and deservedly so.

These aren’t just isolated flukes. They’re symptoms of a deeper sickness in academia: the prioritization of political ideology over empirical evidence, clarity, and basic ethical boundaries.

Where Do We Go from Here?

We need brave voices like Colin Wright and Brad Polumbo to keep pulling back the curtain.

We need academics who are willing to say: No, this isn’t scholarship. No, this doesn’t help anyone understand gender, sexuality, or ecology. No, you don’t get to sexualize infants and call it “research.”

And we need the rest of us—students, readers, citizens—to stop being afraid to say the emperor has no clothes.

[Citation needed podcast]

Check it out for yourself.

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Brine Shrimp, Queer Theory, and the Collapse of Academic Credibility

Have you ever read something so absurd, so off-the-rails bizarre, that you had to double-check whether it was satire?

Well, welcome to the first episode of the Citation Needed Podcast, where Colin Wright and Brad Polumbo do us all the public service of diving headfirst into the bizarre fringes of modern academia. Their pilot episode focuses on a real, peer-reviewed academic paper—published by a major journal, no less—about a queer feminist cyber-wedding between humans and brine shrimp.

No, I’m not making that up. And yes, it’s every bit as surreal as it sounds.

The Paper That Launched a Thousand Facepalms

The paper is titled “Loving the Brine Shrimp: Exploring Queer Feminist Blue Post-Humanities to Reimagine America’s Dead Sea.” Try saying that five times fast. Or once, honestly. It’s the kind of academic Mad Lib that only makes sense in the postmodern humanities world, where ideological signaling has completely replaced intellectual clarity.

Colin calls it “a surrealist love letter to brine shrimp,” which is both hilarious and disturbingly accurate. The author, Ewelina Jarosz (self-described “hydrosexual cyber nymph”—also not satire), writes from within a framework of “blue post-humanities.” If that phrase doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t worry: it was likely invented by the author herself and seems to center on the erotic potential of water.

Yes, really.

What Is This Even About?

As Brad and Colin explain, the paper supposedly critiques ecological damage done to Utah’s Great Salt Lake. But rather than laying out a clear ecological argument, it veers into performance art, eco-sexual activism, and bizarre theoretical jargon.

The central claim? Brine shrimp symbolize queer resilience. Water is a “non-binary, transitional, life-giving substance.” And by marrying shrimp and bathing in the lake, participants in this “cyber wedding” are resisting “settler colonial science” and capitalist commodification.

How is this considered science? That’s the million-dollar question—and the heart of what the podcast is trying to expose.

From Method to Madness

One of the most damning critiques Colin offers is how these papers completely abandon the rigorous structure of scientific research. No hypotheses. No data. No results. Just jargon, performance, and subjective “lived experience.”

This isn’t science. It’s ideological storytelling masquerading as research.

And it’s not harmless. When prestigious journals like Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Ethics—owned by publishing giant Springer Nature—give this stuff a platform, it dilutes the credibility of every legitimate paper they publish.

Why This Matters

We’re living in an age where we’re told to “trust the science.” But when “science” includes cyber weddings to shrimp and eco-sexual manifestos, that trust becomes increasingly fragile. If you want the public to believe in the legitimacy of scientific research, you can’t keep publishing ideological fan-fiction in academic journals.

This paper isn’t just laughable. It’s symptomatic of a broader rot in academia, where political signaling trumps coherence, and where the pretense of progressivism serves as a shield against critique.

The Takeaway

So no, you’re not crazy if you think this is nuts. It is. And thankfully, Colin Wright and Brad Polumbo are calling it out with equal parts humor and clarity.

Their podcast doesn’t just entertain—it shines a much-needed spotlight on how far some corners of academia have drifted from reality. And if we want to restore intellectual seriousness and public trust in research, exposing this madness is the first step.

[Citation needed podcast]

Check it out for yourself.

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