"Queer" means unusual, and is controversial, although commonly used in a non-offensive manner [see below] as an adjective or noun for people whose sexual orientation and/or gender identity are counter to societal norms.
Queer is now used as a unifying umbrella term for people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and also for those who are transgender, transsexual, and/or intersexual (although many transgender, transsexual and intersexual people identify as heterosexual or straight, and/or not queer). It is also commonly used as a term that includes asexual, pansexual and omnisexual people. It is not used of same-sex pedophiles or pederasts. "Queer" in this sense is simply used as a synonym for such terms as LGBT or lesbigay.
The term is sometimes capitalised when referring to an identity or community, rather than merely a sexual fact (compare the capitalized use of Deaf).
Since 1989, many combinations have occurred, like queer tranny fag, genderqueer and others.
Origin
In German, 'quer' can be translated as 'across, at right angle, diagonally or transverse'. 'Sich quer legen' ('to lay quer') is translated with 'to be awkward'.
The term 'queer' itself, as a different nomination rather than hurtful slur, emerged from 1989 in the USA (Crimp 1990, page 100), and in the UK during the summer of 1990 (i-D 1991).
Two different uses seem to have arisen seperately, but at the same time.
The first, rather short-lived, arose initially from an aggressive essentialist seperatism. Initially labelled as the 'New Radicals', this was linked with radical outing and a militant 'black power' style and seperatist approach to sexuality (Katlin, 1991). This meaning of the word quickly evaporated.
The second and even more radical form of the term was popularized by a wave of activist groups in the UK and USA, often working in new forms of performative non-violent street protest (the 'zap') that were developing around HIV/AIDS activism ; such as Queer Nation, ActUp , OutRage!, Subversive Street Queers , and Homocult . This use also arose from an underground queer fanzine scene, primarily in the USA (i-D magazine, 1992) where queer fanzines' inter-communication had been greatly aided by Factsheet Five. There were other currents that also contributed; campaigns in the UK around the age of consent, Stop the Clause , queer bashing , as well as the growing alienation of young 'pro-sex, pro-porn' lesbians from feminism, and a profound disillusionment with socialism and the left. At this time, 'queer' seemed to mean a breaking free from sexual identities and sexual labels, an embracing of a flexible repertoire of acts and emotions. This is shown clearly in the experience of many in ActUp and Queer Nation ...
- "Its an open secret that men and women active in ActUp and Queer Nation are having sex together in unpredictable patterns, with little sexual disorientation." (Tucker 1992, page 33)
There was a rapid search for a queer art to match this 'new queer politics': HIV/AIDS protest graphics; the New Queer Cinema; queer art; even the queer novel (one lonely novel by Dennis Cooper was apparently all that could be identified by the UK's Gay Times in 1992). The New Queer Cinema seemed to be the art form that was most tangible (Swoon, The Living End, Poison) and an ICA conference was held on it in 1992 and a 12-page supplement produced by Sight and Sound magazine.
Inevitably, the radical edge of the 'new queer politics' quickly became blunted. There was something of a retreat into the academy and what became known as Queer Theory...
- "It is as if, unable to formulate political and cultural strategies (in the real world), lesbian and gay academics have invented their own fantasy world (in Queer Theory)." (Watney 1991, p. 12)
Many scholars quickly re-labelled their previous lesbian & gay work as 'queer'. (Fuss 1991). Some, however, such as Gayle Rubin (Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality, 1984 & revised in 1992) could legitimately claim to have had a hand in formenting the idea of the new queer. Thus the term entered the academic world, particularly Cultural Studies, where it was most notably appropriated by theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1991) in her Epistemology of the Closet and broadened by her to include a whole range of contexts, nuances, connections, and potentials in addition to self-identities (Gantz 2000).
While many queers who stayed outside the academy were highly suspicious of 'theory', many academics inside it also argued against this use of queer. Leo Bersani (1995) argued against the wide definitions of queer, specifically Warner's, that he claimed 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."
This move however, was precisely Foucault's advice...
- "He insisted that it was not a question of laying claim to the specificity of their sexuality and the rights pertaining to it, but of breaking from those discourses." (Wood, 1985)
Even in the academy, queer lost impetus. The first known use of the phrase "queer theory" in print was by Teresa de Lauretis. In 1994, however, she criticized queer theory as a marketing ploy that had "quickly become a conceptually vacuous creature of the publishing industry."
Usage and Meaning
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 activists; by those who strongly reject traditional gender identities; by those who reject sexual identities such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, 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).
It should also be noted that this academic use of queer keeps in place the binary of 'normal' & 'perverse', and can thus only posit itself as "against the normative" or resisting the normal. It does not seek to 'queer' this essential binary, either through exposing the perversities that 'the normal' hides within itself (e.g. straight men having gay sex), or visa versa.
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," - although this comment ignores the ways in which dissident sexualities have historically made the 'aspirational imaginary' a place of cultural refuge for themselves and their sensibilities.
Many people, however, identify primarily as Queer rather than using other labels. Some feel that society's labels do not adequately describe their sexual identity and preferences. Many people believe that using the umbrella term of queer is thus 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. But it is an umbrella that only stretches so far; a number of 'troublesome sexualities' (historicially, those that were key elements of same-sex love) are left entirely outside of the current public use of the term, are shown no such solidarity, and are left to the mercies of the law & the state.
Historical Usage
Historically, the term 'queer' has been largely used as a pejorative epithet for effeminate and homosexual males, and others exhibiting non-traditional gender behaviour. Since the term persists as a homophobic slur bordering on profanity, 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.
It was used in the late 1960s by radical writer Paul Goodman in his book The Politics of Being Queer (1969), that had a siginifact effect on the early gay liberation movement in the USA.
According to academic feminist theorist Judith Butler (1993)...
- (the new meaning of) "'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'". This appropriation of the word, and its transformation from an insult used by somebody outside the community to a neutral term used by those inside the community can be seen as similar to the metamorphosis of the word ¨nigger¨ and its adoption by some in the African-American community."
See also
Bibliography
- Butler, Judith (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex", p.226. New York: Routledge.
- Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1991). Epistemology of the Closet.
- Fuss, D. Inside/Out. Routledge (1991).
- Warner, Michael ed. (1993). Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
(It should be noted that the above works are academic works that were subject to severe criticism by queer activists, and queer thinkers outside the academy, in 1991-1994.)
Sources
- Anon. "Queercore". i-D magazine No. 110; the sexuality issue. (1992).
- Berlant, Lauren and Warner, Michael. "What Does Queer Theory Teach Us about X?" PMLA 110:3:343. May 1995.
- Bersani, Leo. Homos. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. (1995).
- Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex", p.226. New York: Routledge. (1993).
- Crimp, D. AIDS DemoGraphics. (1990).
- Gantz, Katherine. "Not That There's Anything Wrong with That: Reading the Queer in Seinfeld" (2000).
- Fuss, D. Inside/Out. Routledge (1991).
- Katlin, T. "Slant: Queer Nation". Artforum, November 1990. pp. 21-23.
- Tucker, S. "Gender, Fucking & Utopia". Social text, Vol.9, No.1. (1992).
- Parker, Andrew. "Foucault's Tongues", Mediations 18:2: 80. (Fall 1994).
- Rubin, Gayle. Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. (1984 & 1992)
- Smyth, C. Lesbians Talk: Queer Notions. Scarlet Press (1992).
- Thomas, Calvin, ed. "Introduction: Identification, Appropriation, Proliferation", Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252068130. (2000)
- Warner, Michael. "Introduction", Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory, p.xxvii. Ed. Michael Warner. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (1993).
- Watney, Simon. Column in Gay Times, December 1991.
- Wood, N. "Foucault on the history of sexuality". Subjectivity and Social Relations (1985)