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For an example of how queer gets used in a derogatory sense (illustrating why using queer as a slur is so hurtful), look no further than the schoolyard game Smear the Queer, a variation of dodgeball where one student is the queer who gets “stoned” with balls. It was even rebooted in 2018 on Netflix as Queer Eye.įor some in the LGBTQ community, queer is still offensive because some people still use queer as an anti-gay or anti-trans slur.
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In 2003, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a reality TV show where gay men give straight men a makeover, became a huge hit too. In 1999, the TV show Queer as Folk aired in the UK and portrayed the everyday life of gay men-the American version was a hit across the pond the following year. In 1991, Queer Theory-a subset of gender and culture studies-made its academic debut. The term queer to refer to non- cishet people has spread since the 1990s- reaffirming if used as a self-identifier among queer people but extremely offensive if used against them. GenderPAC founder Riki Anne Wilchins defined the term in a transgender newsletter in spring 1995: “It’s about all of us who are genderqueer: diesel dykes and stone butches, leatherqueens and radical fairies, nelly fags, crossdressers, intersexed, transsexuals…and those of us whose gender expressions are so complex they haven’t even been named yet.” Later in the 1990s, those not only with alternative sexual orientations but also alternative gender orientations began to refer to themselves as genderqueer. The queer movement was especially focused on rejecting the so-called assimilationist stances of many white folks in the gay community, criticized for their desire to be fully included in mainstream institutions like the army and marriage. Queer was seen as a way to refer to gay and lesbian people without being gender- essentialist or causing divisions within the community. In 1990, this effort focused on queer as a collective term for gay and lesbian people. In the late 1980s, writers, scholars, and activists in the LGBT community began advocating for a re-appropriation of the word queer.
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One example comes from a letter written in 1894 from the Marquess of Queensberry to his son, Lord Alfred Douglas, in which he insults Lord Roseberry, the presumed lover of his late son Francis, as a “snob queer.” The Marquess’s homophobia ultimately led to the prosecution and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde, as well.Įarly on, queer was being used as a modifier as well, seen in a 1914 Los Angeles Times article that described a club as where “the ‘queer’ people have a good time.” Queer is recorded in Scottish in the 16th century, when it meant “strange” or “ eccentric,” possibly related to the German quer (“perverse” or “odd”).Īt least by the late 1800s, queer was deployed as a derogatory term for an effeminate or gay men. A person identifying as queer can be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, genderqueer, gender-fluid, etc., and the use of queer allows for the expression of LGBTQ community membership without requiring any specific label. The term has more recently come to include any person whose sexuality or gender identity falls outside the heterosexual norm or the gender binary.
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Queer is also a term used by activists and academics: queer politics scholars of queer literature. In-group vocabulary is not always appropriate for use by others. So the label queer can be offensive and painful or embraced and affirming-it all depends on the speaker’s identity, relationship to the subject, and the context of use. However, the term is not universally accepted within the LGBT community, and might still be viewed by some as degrading. Since the 1980s, queer has increasingly been adopted especially among younger members of the gay and lesbian community as a positive term of self-reference. Since the early 20th century, queer has had the meaning “gay or lesbian,” and for much of the time has been used with disparaging intent and perceived as insulting.