(Post)Queer microcommunities and microlabels have blossomed with the internet. This includes the advent of new sexualities, genders, pronouns, flags, social movements, and romantic orientations. Conservative backlash to this youth led awakening of queer identity has been largely memetic, warranting critical examination.
Ironic identification with queer microlabels and neopronouns has been a tactic employed by the conservative right to delegitimize these identities and their associated communities and social movements. One example of this backlash can be found with the I sexually identify as an Attack Hellicopter copypasta, which emerged in 2014. It can also be seen in the endless expanse of conservative cisgender people adding fake pronouns and genders into the bio section of their Instagram and Twitter (and even Grindr!) profiles.
Among the sea of conservatives mocking Tumblrite neopronouns and genders one person stands out: Gregory Guevara, better known as Jreg.
Jreg is a Youtuber and comedian who is a self described post-satirist. Jre is most notable for jres web-series Centricide, which features various characters representing different memetic ideologies in a drama- packed comedic conflict. Jre is also currently running for mayor of Ottawa, Ontario, on a secessionist platform.
Unlike most people who employ irony to gender and pronouns, Jreg is not a conservative. Jres political views are complicated, but the gist of it is that Jreg is not “making fun” of neopronouns and gender microlables, but rather incorporating them into jres post-ironic praxis.
In December 2021, Jreg streamed a gender tier list which documented jres thoughts on many gender identities, including Tumblrite microlables. The rankings were made broadly on how “anti-centrist” (or non-normative) the identities seemed. In this stream Jreg also “revealed” that jre are bigender. Specifically, Jreg identified with “anarchogender” and jreggender. During this stream Greg specified that jre likes the pronouns qui/quem but prefers jre/jrem/jres pronouns.
Jreggender is a xenogender proposed by a Twitter user. The earliest archived appearance of Jreggender is from December 9th, 2020. The screenshotted tweet which was reposted by a now removed account reads “!NEW XENOGENDER ALERT! JREGGENDER For those who feel a deep connection to Jreg Jre/Jrem/Jres or Jreg/Jregself.” Gregory quote tweeted this the following day saying “proud.” Greg has since changed jres twitter profile to include jres jre/jrem pronouns. Several articles have been written about jrem using jre/jrem pronouns and jres wiki homepage uses both jre/jrem and quee/qwem pronouns. A user on Reddit has also claimed that jre was assigned Jreggender by Guevara.
Jreggender follows the typical pattern of ironic genders and pronouns used by conservative comedians, but Jreg and jres community have subverted this by using jre/jrem pronouns both unironically and post-ironically.
Although Gregory has stated that one of the genders jre identifies with is “anarchogender,” jre specified that they were not referring to the anarchogender label people in the Tumblrite queer community have created, but rather with the gender that jres character Ancom from the Centricide series identifies with. According to Jreg, this gender is “kept in an ambiguous state, but it exists, and it’s specific.”
Ancom the character can first be seen in Jreg’s most popular video Political Compass Rap, where qui debates with other ideologies. Although it was not revealed that Ancom use qui/quem pronouns until the Centricide series, qui is present in several other videos where jokes are made about pronouns, including A Neo-Nazi With They/Them Pronouns and what happens after a leftist revolution. In these videos, Jreg employs a style of ironically referring to pronouns which is often used by conservatives, but by identifying with the gender that Ancom has, jre disrupts those politics.
It is possible to read what I just put forward and be confused or annoyed. How, specifically, is this significant? Does it actually move beyond bigotry and conservatism, or is it just adding layers to hide transphobia? Isn’t this just a ploy by a cishet white man to gentrify queer identity for clout? These questions are legitimate, but they fail to understand the philosophical moves Jreg is making. Specifically, they don't recognize how his content fits into the post-ironic, post-queer, and post-post-modernist movements.
Modernism includes many disparate things that have some central throughlines: categorization, structure, and meaning. Postmodernism, on the other hand, is interested in how and why modernism placed structure and meaning onto phenomena, and what impacts that has on phenomena. This comes with interacting with methods and phenomena in a way that is less focussed on meaning, but rather on the phenomena itself (most of the contemporary art people say is meaningless is postmodernist).
Another important part of postmodernism is critique about meaning and structure. It is here that we find irony and the queer. Irony disrupts meaning by using structured concepts in ways that subvert expectation. Queerness is about wierdness and giving space to the non-normative (particularly gender and sexualities). By transgressing the boundaries of modernism, they are uniquely postmodern. But what does it mean to move beyond postmodernism, and by extension irony and queerness?
As was previously stated, Jreg is a post-ironic post-satirist. Jre has spoken at length about what this means and how this impacts his life, artistic philosophy, and content creation. Jres video Post-Irony, Meta-Irony, and Post-Truth Satire is a good introduction to the topic for the uninitiated. As a tldr: post-irony can be seen as either moving back to sincerity through irony or as using irony to point to something without taking a stance on whether it is ironic or sincere.
For a specific example of post-irony, let's examine Jreg’s mayoral campaign. In the video I Am Not Running A Joke Campaign Jreg explained that jres post-ironic campaign allows jrem to both push issues jre cares about sincerely and to learn about municipal politics. In the same video, Jreg compared jregself with other ironic campaigns, explaining that jre wants to move beyond mere critique of political institutions. Jreg lends the same post-ironic lens to jres gender and pronouns, which warrants further examination.
In this essay, I want to advance two meanings of post-queer. The first is transgression of traditional queer construction (homonormativity and binary transsexuality) towards construction of all together different gender and sexual structures (or the abolition of sexual structures in whole). The second is blurring lines between the queer and non-queer, moving to analyse both frames as having had meaning mapped onto them for specific goals without the emergence of new incommencerable sexual modalities.
Jreg fits neatly into the first category. By identifying with three Tublrite genders, two xenogenders, and neopronouns, jre is transgressing orthodox queer structure. The second category is where Jreg’s post-irony comes into play. Jreg has, and still somewhat does, identified as a cishet man. Jre holds post-ironic post-queer gender identities at the same time as jres masculine cisgender modernist and hegemonic identity, incorporating the two together in a way which transgresses the constructed division between them.
Jreg is the most pure example of a term I would like to coin: ironiqueer. Although it finds its basis in ironcally idenfying as queer, its potentiality encompasses so much more than that. To be ironiqueer is to dedicate yourself to post-irony, to the post-queer, and to post-postmodernism. Jreg has continuously shown a commitment to post-ironic and post-queer identity, ontology, and praxis. Jre has crossed boundaries never before so thoroughly transgressed. Ironiqueer is a lifestyle, and Jreg embodies it.
I think there is legitimacy to the idea that Jreg is 'gentrifying' the queer movement. I do, however, reject the idea that jre has gained clout for this. If anything, I think it has sown some discontent in jres audience. With that said, there is potentiality for the term to encompass those who have adopted queer identity for personal gain or anti-queer reasons. One such exmaple is the content creator JSchlatt, who ironically claimed a queer identity largely to avoid criticism for, among other things, using homophobic slurs.
When facing the growing threat of conservative backlash against queerness we can't use old tools. Simply offering postmodernist, ironic, and queer critiques of modernism is not enough. We must instead move towards the construction of newly sincere, post-queer, non-hierarchical, and justice based gender and sexual systems, as well as systems of race, class, caste, ethnicity, and ability. If living ironiqueerly means embracing that at such a pivotal political moment, then maybe more should consider it.
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