Queer Politics

Queer politics are based on a reclaiming of the term queer from its original derogatory form, first recorded in the Los Angeles Times in 1914. This political reclamation of the term emerged through specific grassroots activist organizations emerging in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States, Canada, and Europe, such as ACT UP, OutRage, the Pink Panthers, Gay Shame, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, Queer Nation, and Queeruption.

Activists radicalized the predecessor lesbian and gay political movements in three theoretical ways. First, they deconstructed or destabilized the male–female gender binary, asserting a genderqueer identity, adopting gender-neutral pronouns such as they. Second, they deconstructed the heterosexual–homosexual binary, advocating a more fluid understanding of sexual diversities. Third, they critiqued the assimilationism of lesbians and gays who attempted to ...