Sexuality, normality and intelligence. What is queer theory up against?

Abstract

I engage queer theory and the history of the intelligence quotient (IQ) movement in the United States here to re-imagine the critical nature of both projects. Early IQ researchers, such as Terman and Goddard, hypothesised that IQ was necessary for sexual morality and tested the hypothesis that prostitutes had lower IQ than other women. Terman was further concerned that gifted children not be 'queer' and appealed to a Freudian logic of sublimation to explain why children whom he deemed gifted sometimes engaged in homosexual acts. Intelligence testing is not simply a 'disciplinary' form of power/knowledge of the sort described by Foucault in Discipline and Punish; it is not oriented towards normalising 'gifted' people that it individualises. Rather, gifted people are made visible within a strategy of changing government to accommodate their difference from typical intelligence. This analysis of power suggests new ways of thinking about the intersectional politics of conservative rhetoric that relies on IQ testing, such as the book The Bell Curve.

A queer-theoretical approach to community health psychology

“…There have been multiple calls for the inclusion and utilisation of queer theory in psychology (Hegarty, 2011a; Minton, 1997). Queer theory has been increasingly drawn upon in relation to: psychological re-theorisation, for example, anti-homosexual privilege (Hegarty and Massey, 2006) and white privilege (Riggs, 2007); psychological conceptualisation, for example, histories of intelligence testing (Hegarty, 2011b); psychological practice, for example, remapping key considerations in therapeutic practice towards enabling ‘empowered, viable, gender variant possibilities, rather than representing gender variant youth as incoherent subjects’ (Roen, 2011: 58). Moreover, queer theory has provided a useful resource for working with diverse issues, in conjunction and sometimes integrated with other theoretical approaches.…”

Good to Bad or Bad to Bad? What is the relationship between valence and the trait content of the Big Two?

“…It may be argued, nevertheless, that competence is a beta‐trait. This is suggested by historical records revealing that intellectual giftedness used to be perceived as leading to morally deviant behavior (Hegarty, ), or by the existence of the “nerd” stereotype, which blends task‐oriented competence with social inability.…”

Scoping Bullying and Cyberbullying Victimisation Among a Sample of Gifted Adolescents in Ireland

“…It is particularly noticeable that LGBTI + adolescents represented a sizable 43.1% of the study participants in this convenient sample. Though it is possible that some degree of sampling error could explain the higher LGBTI + demographic in this study, theoretically this is perhaps not surprising as it has been known that gifted adolescents are more likely to self-identify as LGBTI + due to their introspective behaviour (Hegarty, 2011;Wexelbaum & Hoover, 2014). The study findings are supportive of known research about LGBTI + adolescents more generally who often report higher problem mental health issues (Abreu & Kenny, 2018).…”

“…specific learning difficulty (Baldwin et al, 2015). It has been argued that gifted adolescents can often identify as LGBTI + due to their questioning and exploratory nature (Hegarty, 2011;Wexelbaum & Hoover, 2014).…”