The War on Norms: Derrick Jensen Traces Anarchism, Queer Theory, and Trans
Environmental philosopher Derrick Jensen traces the intellectual lineage connecting nineteenth-century anarchism to contemporary trans ideology, centering on primary sources most policymakers have never read: Foucault's advocacy for abolishing age-of-consent laws, Gayle Rubin's "Thinking Sex." For European audiences the argument is especially pointed — these are foundational texts of the continental academy, embedded in curricula from Amsterdam to Vienna and in the theoretical frameworks still quietly shaping clinical practice and EU-level gender policy.
Derrick Jensen is an environmental philosopher whose work has long examined how cultures rationalise harm. In this conversation with Stella O'Malley and Dr Bret Alderman, he maps the intellectual path from nineteenth-century anarchism through twentieth-century queer theory to the contemporary movement to medicalise gender-nonconforming children. For European listeners, the analysis carries particular weight: several of the foundational thinkers he examines — above all the French philosopher Michel Foucault — are pillars of the continental academy, taught in universities from Amsterdam to Vienna and cited in the policy documents of EU institutions. Central to the discussion is Foucault's public advocacy, in the late 1970s, for the abolition of age-of-consent laws. Jensen walks through the primary sources rather than relying on hearsay. Foucault's philosophy has shaped generations of European scholars, and his influence runs through cultural studies, gender studies and clinical training across the continent. Confronting this particular strand of his legacy is uncomfortable, but Jensen argues it is essential to understanding how child-protective norms came to be framed, in certain academic circles, as instruments of oppression rather than safeguards. Jensen also takes listeners through Gayle Rubin's 1984 essay "Thinking Sex," a founding text of queer theory that explicitly sought to dismantle what Rubin called the charmed circle of acceptable sexuality, including age-based boundaries. The essay appears on reading lists in gender studies programmes at universities across Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and France. Jensen's point is straightforward: the ideas shaping today's clinical and institutional landscape were written down decades ago, and most people working in policy and practice have never actually read them. The conversation turns to Jensen's own experience of censorship. His book The Culture of Make Believe anticipated the rise of the authoritarian right. When he attempted a companion volume scrutinising the ideological excesses of the left — specifically its embrace of queer theory — his publisher held the manuscript for five years before dropping him entirely. For European observers watching debates about academic freedom and permissible critique, this is a recognisable pattern, replicated in editorial boards, grant committees and university departments across the continent. Jensen introduces several psychological and anthropological frameworks that sharpen the picture. Karen Horney's concept of womb envy — a psychoanalytic counterpoint to Freudian orthodoxy — and Peggy Reeves Sanday's cross-cultural research on sexual violence offer grounded, empirical lenses on the social dynamics queer theory claimed to illuminate. Jensen also explains DARVO — deny, attack, reverse victim and offender — as a diagnostic for how ideological movements respond when their foundational assumptions are challenged. At a moment when EU institutions are reviewing legislation on conversion therapy, youth healthcare and gender recognition, and when clinicians in Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands have already begun reversing course on paediatric gender medicine, understanding the theoretical architecture of this movement matters. What Jensen offers is an unflinching look at the primary sources that have quietly underpinned a generation of European policy and clinical practice.
