Maybe I should have studied some queer theory before I wrote that SpongeBob piece. Queer theory comes from the 1980s and is an offshoot of feminist theory. Where feminist theory said that gender was a social construction, queer theory goes a step further and says sexuality is a social construction. Human sexuality is not informed by "biology" or anything scientific, since

human sexuality looks very little like animal sexuality in any regard. We are (I think, and correct me if I'm wrong) the only species that can copulate more or less at will, without regard to fertility or hormonal cycles, and that alone separates sexual behavior from reproduction for human beings. We also have an enormous repertoire of sexual behaviors and activities, only some of which are linked to reproduction, which further separates the two categories. And--most importantly--human sexual behavior is about pleasure, and about pleasure mediated by all kinds of cultural categories.

We used to insist that gender was informed by science, that male and female roles were immutable. Dad went to work. Mom stayed home. Rinse, repeat. Feminist theorists, in the 1970s, challenged the assertion that women "should" act a particular way and men "should" act a particular way. Gender, then, "was a social construct, something designed and implemented and perpetuated by social organizations and structures, rather than something merely 'true,' something innate to the ways bodies worked on a biological level." When we speak of "gender," we speak of gender roles and the signs that go along with them.

Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was a French linguist and the founder of semiotics. His text, Course in General Linguistics, was published posthumously by his students, but it nonetheless made him the Founding Father of literary and cultural theory in the twentieth century. Every literary theory to develop after World War I is informed by Saussure, either as a support or a critique. Other fields, like feminist theory, use Saussure's notion of the sign.

Saussure saw language as the most important institution for human beings. Language (langue) was divided into signs. Signs represent abstract ideas, concepts, or things in a language. A sign is made of two components: the signifier (the sound pattern used to describe the concept) and the signified (the concepts being described). Thus the word "table" is composed of the pattern of sounds composing the word "table" and the concept of "table." Something to notice is that a sign is a level removed from the thing it describes. It is not the thing it describes. Saussure understood this gap of meaning between the sign and the signified, but never really addressed it, since we couldn't do anything about it. It is an inherent flaw of language.

On to queer theory!

Queer theory looks at, and studies, and has a political critique of, anything that falls into normative and deviant categories, particularly sexual activities and identities. The word "queer", as it appears in the dictionary, has a primary meaning of "odd," "peculiar," "out of the ordinary." Queer theory concerns itself with any and all forms of sexuality that are "queer" in this sense--and then, by extension, with the normative behaviors and identities which define what is "queer" (by being their binary opposites). Thus queer theory expands the scope of its analysis to all kinds of behaviors, including those which are gender-bending as well as those which involve "queer" non-normative forms of sexuality. Queer theory insists that all sexual behaviors, all concepts linking sexual behaviors to sexual identities, and all categories of normative and deviant sexualities, are social constructs, sets of signifiers which create certain types of social meaning. Queer theory follows feminist theory and gay/lesbian studies in rejecting the idea that sexuality is an essentialist category, something determined by biology or judged by eternal standards of morality and truth. For queer theorists, sexuality is a complex array of social codes and forces, forms of individual activity and institutional power, which interact to shape the ideas of what is normative and what is deviant at any particular moment, and which then operate under the rubric of what is "natural," "essential," "biological," or "god-given."

Our culture uses language as shorthand to describe behaviors as well as physical characteristics. The word "male" signifies not only male genitalia, but also a male role. The word "female" signifies a female role and female genitalia. Feminist theory called into question the first part of those signs, but not the second part. Queer theory suggests that our genitalia do not determine our gender. Our culture assigns us a gender based upon those genitalia, but that may not be how we feel about that gender.

Sexuality, though, is not a social construction. Our sexuality -- homosexual, heterosexual, or in-between -- is biological. The concepts of these sexualities, however, are socially constructed in that we give signifiers to different sexual orientations.

It's back to the drawing board on the SpongeBob theory.

(Source: Mary Klages, "Queer Theory," U of Colorado at Boulder, 29 October 1997 .)