Queer Theory

The Meaning of Queer

Historically, queer has been a derogatory term used to diminish sexual-minority persons and assault their integrity and dignity. Including lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-identified, intersex, and two-spirited individuals, queer represents a diverse and at best loosely configured spectral community across sex, sexual, and gender differences. Queers have different histories, identities, identifications, needs, and desires that set them apart not only from heterosexuals, but also from one another. The interwoven historical, social, and cultural thread connecting queers across differences is marginalization. For some, the terms trans-identified, intersex, and two-spirited may be new. Trans-identified describes individuals whose gender identity does not conform to the simplicity of the male-female, two-gender model. Intersex depicts individuals who may possess both male and female biological sex characteristics. Two-spirited is an Aboriginal term used to refer to persons whose bodies are believed to have both a masculine and a feminine spirit.

In terms of its etymology or history as a word, queer has long been used to connote someone odd, curious, different, peculiar, strange, or unusual. Since the early 1990s, beginning with the U.S. grassroots activist group Queer Nation, queer has been reclaimed as a proactive and public term that is more encompassing and expansive than the limited and problematic descriptor gay. Queer is a fluid concept with multiple meanings that collapse identity politics delimited by static understandings of sex, sexuality, and gender—nonconformist heterosexual desiring and acting can also be considered queer. Sexual minorities [Page 719]use queer to describe themselves and their social and cultural geography in terms they set out within a politics of hope and possibility. As part of a language of visibility and representation, the term queer is now linked to empowering those disenfranchised by sex, sexual, and gender differences. As a concept and a way of naming, queer by nature and intention resists the inimical prescription and inscription of sexual-minority characteristics and differences found in heteronormative classification. It exposes heteronorms that limit meanings, positionalities, and possibilities. These countercultural dynamics seek to resignify the concept of queer to proclaim the visibility, vocality, and transgressive politics of those long shamed and silenced by heterosexism, homophobia, and transphobia. The new queer colloquial chant, made popular by Queer Nation, is “We're here. We're queer. Get used to it.”

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