‘Queering Babies’: A Disturbing Case Study in Academic Decline

A new peer-reviewed paper on “queer babies” sexualizes infants and exposes the ideological rot in academia.

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About the Author

Dr. Colin Wright is the CEO/Editor-in-Chief of Reality’s Last Stand, an evolutionary biology PhD, and Manhattan Institute Fellow. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, the New York Post, Newsweek, City Journal, Quillette, Queer Majority, and other major news outlets and peer-reviewed journals.

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In the surreal landscape of modern academia, it seems there is no idea too outlandish to be wrapped in the veneer of intellectualism and published in a peer-reviewed journal. Enter Balázs Boross’ paper, “Queering babies: (Auto)ethnographic reflections from a gay parent through surrogacy,” published in Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, a journal under the reputable Springer Nature banner. The paper masquerades as scholarship while offering little more than the author’s subjective musings dressed up in the jargon of postmodern theory. As its title suggests, the paper relies heavily on “autoethnography,” a method that is essentially a diary entry trying to pass as rigorous analysis.

At its core, the essay’s premise—that surrogate babies are “queer creatures by default” and that perhaps all babies are inherently queer—stretches the boundaries of logic, coherence, and decency. While there is room for innovative ideas in academia, this paper raises serious questions about the standards of peer review.

The Central Absurdity: Are Babies “Queer”?

At the heart of Boross’ essay lies a claim so outlandish it borders on self-parody: that surrogate babies, by virtue of their prenatal history, are “queer creatures by default,” and that perhaps all babies share in this queerness. He writes:

Given their prenatal history, surrogate babies are queer creatures by default: their becoming and existence have to be negotiated through a set of institutionally defined normativities.

This statement, cloaked in academic jargon, is detached from any empirical or logical foundation. Boross conflates the logistical complexities of surrogacy with a nebulous concept of queerness, defined as a kind of existential strangeness. This vague and malleable definition allows him to project it onto any situation he deems “non-normative,” including the mere existence of babies born through surrogacy.