Queer

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"Queer" is a controversial word, literally meaning unusual, used by and for people whose sexual orientation and/or gender identity are against the normative: a unifying umbrella term for people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, and/or intersex. In this usage, it is usually a synonym of such terms as LGBT or lesbigay. "The term 'queer' itself, as positive nomination rather than hurtful slur" dates from 1990 (Thomas 2000 and Berlant and Warner 1995) and was popularized by the activist group Queer Nation. The term was then used by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1991) in her Epistemology of the Closet and broadened to include contexts, nuances, connections, and potentials in addition to self-identities (Gantz 2000). According to Judith Butler (1993), "'Queer' derives its force precisely through the repeated invocation by which it has become linked to accusation, pathologization, insult. This is an invocation by which a social bond among homophobic communities is formed through time. The interpellation echoes past interpellations, and binds the speakers, as if they spoke in unison across time. In this sense, it is always an imaginary chorus that taunts 'queer'".

The term is often capitalised when referring to an identity or community, rather than merely a sexual fact (compare the capitalized use of Deaf), a usage some regard as pretentious and elitist.

Among homosexuals, more people identify as gay or lesbian than as "queer". Andrew Parker (1994), among others, defines queer as, "a non-gender-specific rubric that defines itself diacritically not against heterosexuality but against the normative," while Michael Warner (1993) defines queer as "resistance to regimes of the normal." Thus, queer is a much more political term and is often used by those who are politically active; by those who strongly reject traditional gender identities; by those who reject sexual identities such as gay, lesbian, bisexual and straight; by those who see themselves as oppressed by the heteronormativity of the larger culture; and/or by heterosexuals whose sexual preferences make them a minority (for example, BDSM practitioners). However, Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner (1995) suggest that participation in "queer publics," is, "more a matter of aspiration than it is the expression of an identity or a history," though this may say more about the possiblity or impossiblity of subverting the normative.

Many people, however, identify primarily as Queer rather than gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or intersex. Some feel that other labels do not adequately describe their sexual identity and preferences. Many LGBT people believe that using the umbrella term queer is a positive way to reclaim a term that was previously used against them, stripping the term of its power to insult. This usage is becoming increasingly common among youth. It is not always capitalized.

Some queer people identify as such because they feel it empowers them to be themselves on a level that goes beyond the rigid limitations of the traditional binary interpretation of sexual orientation (either homosexual or heterosexual, or bisexual in the middle) and gender identity (male or female). For these people, being queer means throwing such labels and their expectations out the window and just embracing the fact that their sexual identity or practices is simply different from the norm in one or more ways.

Leo Bersani (1995) argues against definitions of queer, specifically Warner's, that put "all resisters in the same queer bag--a universalizing move I appreciate but that fails to specify the sexual distinctiveness of the resistance. I find this particularly unfortunate since queer theorists protest, albeit ambiguously, against the exclusion of the sexual from the political."

Also, combinations can occur, like queer tranny fag, genderqueer and others.

Historically, the term was an epithet for gay men, bordering on profanity. Since the term originated, and in many circumstances persists, as a homophobic slur, and because another common meaning of the word is "strange", many members of sexual minorities do not favour its use. An early recorded usage of the word as an attack on a gay man, was in a letter by John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry to his son Lord Alfred Douglas.

Table of contents

Bibliography

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1991). Epistemology of the Closet.
Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories (1991)
Butler, Judith (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex", p.226. New York: Routledge.
Warner, Michael ed. (1993). Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Sources

Thomas, Calvin, ed. (2000). "Introduction: Identification, Appropriation, Proliferation", Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252068130.
- Parker, Andrew (Fall 1994). "Foucault's Tongues", Mediations 18:2: 80.
- Berlant, Lauren and Warner, Michael (May 1995). "What Does Queer Theory Teach Us about X?" PMLA 110:3:343.
- Warner, Michael (1993). "Introduction", Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory, p.xxvii. Ed. Michael Warner. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Leo Bersani (1995). Homos. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
- Butler, Judith (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex", p.226. New York: Routledge.
- Gantz, Katherine (2000). "Not That There's Anything Wrong with That: Reading the Queer in Seinfeld", Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality. Ed. Calvin Thomas. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252068130.