Originally meaning'strange' or'peculiar',queer came to be usedpejoratively againstLGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began toreclaim the word as a neutral or positive self-description.[4][12][13]
In the 21st century,queer became increasingly used to describe a broad spectrum of non-heteronormative sexual or gender identities and politics.[3] Academic disciplines such asqueer theory andqueer studies have emerged to examine a wide variety of issues, either informed by this type of perspective, or to examine the lives of LGBTQ people. These share a general opposition tobinarism,normativity, and a perceived lack ofintersectionality, some of them connected only tangentially to the LGBTQ movement. Queer arts, queer cultural groups, and queer political groups are examples of modern expressions of queer identities.
Critics includeLGBTQ community members who associate the term more with its colloquial, derogatory usage;[14] those who wish to dissociate themselves fromqueer radicalism;[15] and those who see it as too amorphous or trendy.[16] Supporters of the term include those who use it to contrast with a moreassimilationist part of the gay rights movement, and to signify greater willingness to defysocietal norms in pursuit of gender and sexual identity liberation. They may associate it with the advancement of radical perspectives that were also present within pastgay liberation movements, such asanti-consumerism oranti-imperialism, or with events such as theStonewall rebellion.[17][12]
Queer is sometimes expanded to include any non-normative sexuality expression, including cisgenderqueer heterosexuality, although some LGBTQ people view this use of the term asappropriation.[18] Some non-heterosexual and/or non-cisgender individuals self-describe themselves asqueer for the relative ambiguity and rejection of explicit categorization this provides compared to labels such aslesbian andgay.[19][20]PFLAG states that as such a personal identity,queer is "valued by some for its defiance, by some because it can be inclusive of the entire community, and by others who find it to be an appropriate term to describe their more fluid identities."[21] Recent studies have found that 5–20% of non-heterosexuals and 21–36% of trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people identify as queer.[22]
Origins and early use
Entering the English language in the16th century,queer originally meant'strange','odd','peculiar', or'eccentric'. It might refer to something suspicious or "not quite right", or to a person with mild derangement or who exhibits socially inappropriate behaviour.[3][1] TheNorthern English expression "there's nowt so queer as folk", meaning "there is nothing as strange as people", employs this meaning.[23] Related meanings ofqueer include a feeling of unwellness or something that is questionable or suspicious.[3][1] In the 1922 comicmonologue "My Word, You Do Look Queer", the word is taken to mean "unwell".[24] The expression "inQueer street" is used in the United Kingdom for someone in financial trouble. Over time,queer acquired a number of meanings related to sexuality and gender, from narrowly meaning "gay or lesbian"[25] to referring to those who are "not heterosexual" to referring to those who are either not heterosexual or not cisgender (those who areLGBTQ+).[25][26] The term is still widely used inHiberno-English with its original meaning as well as to provide adverbial emphasis (very, extremely).[27]
Early pejorative use
By the late 19th century,queer was beginning to gain a connotation of sexual deviance, used to refer to feminine men or men who were thought to have engaged in same-sex relationships. An early recorded usage of the word in this sense was in an 1894 letter byJohn Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, as read aloud at the trial ofOscar Wilde.[28][29]
Queer was used in mainstream society by the early 20th century, along withfairy andfaggot, as a pejorative term to refer to men who were perceived as flamboyant. This was, as historianGeorge Chauncey notes, "the predominant image ofall queers within the straight mind".[30]
Starting in the underground gay bar scene in the 1950s,[31] then moving more into the open in the 1960s and 1970s, thehomophile identity was gradually displaced by a more radicalizedgay identity. At that timegay was generally an umbrella term includinglesbians, as well as gay-identifiedbisexuals andtranssexuals;gender nonconformity, which had always been an indicator of gayness,[31] also became more open during this time. During theendonymic shifts frominvert tohomophile togay,queer was usually pejoratively applied to men who were believed to engage in receptive or passiveanal ororal sex with other men[32] as well as those who exhibited non-normative gender expressions.[33]
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,queer,fairy,trade, andgay signified distinct social categories within the gay male subculture. In his bookGay New York, Chauncey noted thatqueer was used as a within-community identity term by men who were stereotypically masculine.[34] Many queer-identified men at the time were, according to Chauncey, "repelled by the style of thefairy and his loss of manly status, and almost all were careful to distinguish themselves from such men", especially because the dominant straight culture did not acknowledge such distinctions.Trade referred to straight men who would engage in same-sex activity; Chauncey describes trade as "the 'normal men' [queers] claimed to be."[30]
In contrast to the terms used within the subculture, medical practitioners and police officers tended to use medicalized or pathological terms like "invert", "pervert", "degenerate", and "homosexual".[30]
None of the terms, whether inside or outside of the subculture, equated to the general concept of a homosexual identity, which emerged only with the ascension of a binary (heterosexual/homosexual) understanding of sexual orientation in the 1930s and 1940s. As this binary became embedded into the social fabric,queer began to decline as an acceptable identity in the subculture.[30]
Similar to the earlier use ofqueer,gay was adopted by many U.S.assimilationist men in the mid-20th century as a means of asserting their normative status and rejecting any associations witheffeminacy. The idea thatqueer was a pejorative term became more prevalent among younger gay men followingWorld War II. As the gay identity became more widely adopted in the community, some men who preferred to identify asgay began chastising older men who still referred to themselves asqueer by the late 1940s:
In calling themselves gay, a new generation of men insisted on the right to name themselves, to claim their status as men, and to reject the "effeminate" styles of the older generation. [...] Younger men found it easier to forget the origins of gay in the campy banter of the very queens whom they wished to reject.[30]: 19-20
In other parts of the world, particularly England,queer continued to be the dominant term used by the community well into the mid-twentieth century, as noted by historical sociologist Jeffrey Weeks:
By the 1950s and 1960s to say "I am queer" was to tell of who and what you were, and how you positioned yourself in relation to the dominant, "normal" society. … It signaled the general perception of same-sex desire as something eccentric, strange, abnormal, and perverse.[35]
Reclamation
General
Queer resistance banner at a marchThe Taiwan Gender Queer Rights Advocacy Alliance (TGQRAA) held a march inKaohsiung City in 2015
Beginning in the 1980s, the labelqueer began to bereclaimed from its pejorative use as a neutral or positive self-identifier by LGBTQ people.[3] An early example of this usage was by an LGBTQ organisation calledQueer Nation, which was formed in March 1990 and circulated an anonymous flier at theNew York Gay Pride Parade in June 1990 titled "Queers Read This".[4] The flier included a passage explaining their adoption of the label queer:
Ah, do we really have to use that word? It's trouble. Every gay person has his or her own take on it. For some it means strange and eccentric and kind of mysterious [...] And for others "queer" conjures up those awful memories of adolescent suffering [...] Well, yes, "gay" is great. It has its place. But when a lot of lesbians and gay men wake up in the morning we feel angry and disgusted, not gay. So we've chosen to call ourselves queer. [...] It's a way of suggesting we close ranks, and forget (temporarily) our individual differences because we face a more insidious common enemy. Yeah, queer can be a rough word but it is also a sly and ironic weapon we can steal from the homophobe's hands and use against him.[4]
Queer people, particularly queer Black and Brown people, also began to reclaimqueer in response to a perceived shift in the gay community towardliberal conservatism, catalyzed byAndrew Sullivan's 1989 piece inThe New Republic, titledHere Comes the Groom: The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage.[17] By identifying themselves asqueer rather thangay, LGBTQ activists sought to reject causes they viewed asassimilationist, such asmarriage,military inclusion and adoption.[12] This radical stance, including the rejection of U.S. imperialism,[12] continued the tradition of earlier lesbian and gay anti-war activism, and solidarity with a variety of leftist movements, as seen in the positions taken at the first twoNational Marches on Washington in 1979 and1987, the radical direct action of groups likeACT UP, and the historical importance of events like theStonewall riots. The radical queer groups following in this tradition of LGBTQ activism contrasted firmly with "the holy trinity of marriage, military service and adoption [which had] become the central preoccupation of a gay movement centered more on obtaining straight privilege than challenging power."[12] Commentators such as Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore have argued that it was exactly these "revolting queers" (who were now being pushed aside) who had made it safe for the assimilationists to now have the option of assimilation.[12]
This radical political stance has remained embedded in the reclaimed use of the wordqueer. Ever since the early 1990s,queer has been used as both an umbrella term and as a distinct self-identity term by people for whom no other label better describes their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.[6][9][36][5]
As an umbrella term,queer is often used to describe all people who are non-heterosexual and non-cisgender,[1][2] but it is alternately used to describe all people who defy or deviate from sexual and gender norms and share radical anti-assimilationist politics.[5][9][6][37] For many people, the wordqueer is a political identity—one that is characterized by solidarity across sexual, gender, racial, class, and disabled identity lines.[7][8] The Trans Language Primer notes:
While it has gained relatively wide usage in the present, there are still many that maintain that in order to be queer, one must be invested in liberation beyond respectability and assimilation. “We’re here! We’re queer! Get over it!” and “Not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you,” are popular in the queer community precisely because they capture this spirit of radical liberation.[38]
As a distinct self-identity term,queer is defined by a rejection and disruption of binary categories, particularly man/woman and gay/straight,[9][10] and for many people it is an intentionally politicized identity that exists in opposition to identities such as gay, lesbian, and bisexual.[6][11] Recent studies have found that 5–20% of non-heterosexuals identify as queer.[22]Trans andnonbinary people are more likely to identify as queer than cisgender people, with recent studies finding that 21–36% of trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people identify as queer.[22][9][39][40] As a self-identity label,queer can encompass sexuality and/or gender;[36][38] in a 2025 international survey of more than 40,000 nonbinary people, more than half reported that they use the wordqueer as a self-identity term in relation to gender.[41]
Other usage
The term may be capitalized when referring to anidentity or community, in a construction similar to the capitalized use ofDeaf.[42] The 'Q' in extended versions of the LGBTQ acronym, such asLGBTQIA+,[43] is most often considered an abbreviation of queer. It can also stand forquestioning.[44][21]
Reactions
Reclamation and use of the termqueer is controversial; several people and organizations, both LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ, object to some or all uses of the word for various reasons.[45] Some LGBTQ people dislike the use ofqueer as an umbrella term because they associate it with political and social radicalism. SociologistJoshua Gamson argues that the controversy about the word also marks a social and political divide in the LGBTQ community between those (including civil-rights activists) who perceive themselves as "normal" and who wish to be seen as ordinary members of society and those who see themselves as separate, confrontational or not part of the ordinary social order.[15] Other LGBTQ people disapprove of reclaiming or usingqueer because they consider it offensive, in part due to its continued use as a pejorative.[14] Some LGBTQ people avoidqueer because they perceive it as faddish slang or as academic jargon.[16]
Scholars and activists have proposed different ways in which queer identities apply or do not apply tointersex people. SociologistMorgan Holmes and bioethicistsMorgan Carpenter andKatrina Karkazis have documenting a heteronormativity in medical rationales for the surgical normalization of infants and children born with atypical sex development, and Holmes and Carpenter have described intersex bodies asqueer bodies.[46][47][48][49] In "What Can Queer Theory Do for Intersex?"Iain Morland contrasts queer "hedonic activism" with an experience of insensate post-surgical intersex bodies to claim that "queerness is characterized by the sensory interrelation of pleasure and shame".[50]
Emi Koyama describes a move away from a queer identity model within the intersex movement:
Such tactic [of reclaiming labels] was obviously influenced by queer identity politics of the 1980s and 90s that were embodied by such groups as Queer Nation and Lesbian Avengers. But unfortunately, intersex activists quickly discovered that the intersex movement could not succeed under this model. For one thing, there were far fewer intersex people compared to the large and visible presence of LGBTQ people in most urban centers. For another, activists soon realized that most intersex individuals were not interested in building intersex communities or culture; what they sought were professional psychological support to live ordinary lives as ordinary men and women and not the adoption of new, misleading identity. ... To make it worse, the word "intersex" began to attract individuals who are not necessarily intersex, but feel that they might be, because they are queer or trans. ... Fortunately, the intersex movement did not rely solely on queer identity model for its strategies.[51]
Queer is sometimes expanded to include any non-normative sexuality,[52] including (cisgender) "queer heterosexuality". This has been criticized by some LGBTQ people, who argue thatqueer can only be reclaimed by those it has been used to oppress: "A straight person identifying as queer can feel like choosing toappropriate the good bits, the cultural and political cachet, the clothes and the sound of gay culture, without ... theinternalized homophobia of lived gay experience."[53] Many queer people believe that "you don't have to identify as queer if you're on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum, but you do have to be on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum to identify as queer."[18]
In academia, the termqueer (and the related verbqueering) broadly indicate the study of literature, discourse, academic fields, and other social and cultural areas from a non-heterosexual or non-cisgender viewpoint. Though the fields of queer studies and queer theory are broad, such studies often focus on LGBTQ+ lives, and may involve challenging the assumption that being heterosexual and cisgender are the default or "normal". Queer theory, in particular, may embrace ambiguities and fluidity in traditionally "stable" categories such asgay orstraight.[54][55]
Queer theory is a field ofpost-structuralistcritical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of queer studies andwomen's studies. Applications of queer theory includequeer theology andqueer pedagogy. PhilosopherJudith Butler has described queer theory as a site of "collective contestation", referring to its commitment to challenging easy categories and definitions.[56] Critics of queer theory argue that this refusal of straightforward categories can make the discipline overly abstract or detached from reality.[57]
In their research on the queer movements ofIndonesia andMalaysia, scholars Jón Ingvar Kjaran and Mohammad Naeimi have said that the "localization of modern queer identity", rooted in local interpretations of queer theory and "Muslim modernism", has helped queer Indonesians and Malaysians to "promote their self-construction and organize a collective mobilization for their rights". They contrast this with the rhetoric of those conservative Muslim homophobes who portray "gay" or "LGBTQ" identities as a form of Western imperialism, as well as the "Eurocentric discourse", homonationalism andhomonormativity of "LGBTQ politics" in theglobal north.[59]
Other social movements exist as offshoots of queer culture or combinations of queer identity with other views.[59][61][62] Adherents ofqueer nationalism support the notion that the LGBTQ community forms a distinct people due to their unique culture and customs.Queercore (originallyhomocore) is a cultural and social movement that began in the mid-1980s as an offshoot ofpunk expressed in a do-it-yourself style through zines, music, writing, art and film.[63][64]
The termqueer migration is used to describe the movement of LGBTQ people around the world often to escape discrimination or ill treatment due to their orientation or gender expression. Organizations such as theIranian Railroad for Queer Refugees andRainbow Railroad attempt to assist individuals in such relocations.[65]
The labelqueer is often applied to art movements, particularly cinema.New queer cinema was a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s. Modern queer film festivals include theMelbourne Queer Film Festival andMardi Gras Film Festival (run by Queer Screen) in Australia, theMumbai Queer Film Festival in India, theAsian Queer Film Festival in Japan, andQueersicht in Switzerland. Chinese film directorCui Zi'en titled his 2008 documentary about homosexuality in ChinaQueer China, which premiered at the 2009 Beijing Queer Film Festival after previous attempts to hold a queer film festival were shut down by the government.[67]
^abHorner, Evalie (2007). "Queer Identities and Bisexual Identities: What's the Difference". In Firestein, Beth A. (ed.).Becoming Visible: Counseling Bisexuals across the Lifespan. Columbia University Press. pp. 287–296.
^Foldy, Michael S. (1997).The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Deviance, Morality, and Late-Victorian Society. Yale University Press. pp. 22–23.ISBN9780300071122.
^Robb, Graham (2005).Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 262.ISBN9780393326499.
^Robertson, Stephen (2002). "A Tale of Two Sexual Revolutions".Australasian Journal of American Studies.21 (1). Australia and New Zealand American Studies Association: 103.JSTOR41053896.The most striking addition to the picture offered by D'Emilio and Freedman is a working-class sexual culture in which only those men who took the passive or feminine role were considered 'queer.' A man who took the 'active role,' who inserted his penis into another man, remained a 'straight' man, even when he had an on-going relationship with a man who took the passive role.
^Czyzselska, Jane (1996). "untitled".Pride 1996 Magazine. London: Pride Trust & Gay Times: 15.
^Barrett, R. (2009). "Queer Talk". In Mey, Jacob L. (ed.).Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics. Elsevier. p. 821.ISBN978-0080962986.: "In the early 20th century in the United States, the term queer was used as a term of self-reference (or identity category) for homosexual men who adopted masculine behavior (Chauncey, 1994: 16-18)."
^James, S. E.; Herman, J. L.; Rankin, S.; Keisling, M.; Mottet, L.; Anafi, M. (2016).The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey(PDF) (Report). Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality.
^"Home". Archived fromthe original on February 2, 2014. RetrievedJanuary 31, 2014.
^Miskolci, Richard (2019). "Foreword". In Pereira, Pedro Paulo Gomes (ed.).Queer in the tropics: gender and sexuality in the Global South. Springer. p. ix.
Sicurella, Federico Giulio (2016). "The approach that dares speak its name: queer and the problem of 'big nouns' in the language of academia".Gender and Language.10 (1):73–84.doi:10.1558/genl.v10i1.20895.
Tucker, Scott (1990). "Gender, Fucking, and Utopia: An Essay in Response to John Stoltenberg's Refusing to Be a Man".Social Text.27 (27):3–34.doi:10.2307/466305.JSTOR466305.
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