queer

queer, in sexual politics, description of sexuality that rejects normative definitions of appropriate feminine and masculine sexual behaviour. More contemporary meanings of queer have been picked up and used by activists and academics to mark movements within sexual identity politics and theoretical frameworks for understanding gender and sexuality. Queer, however, is a contested term: scholars and activists constantly disagree on what queer means and the way in which it should be used.

Queer is often used as an umbrella term to denote sexual identity within a particular community. A queer community may be made up of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and so on. Some find queer an easy way to describe such a large community. Labeling people whose sexual identities fall outside of heterosexuality may create solidarity among people based on commonality, which may in turn encourage them to identify with one another and create a community in which they find support and organize to initiate a political movement.

Besides sexuality, queer is also used to describe a particular gendered community. This is a community made up of people who fall outside society’s prescribed male/female and masculine/feminine dichotomies. Their gender identities and the way they embody and perform gender do not coincide with either the fixed biological notion of sex or societal notions of gender. Queer communities may have political agendas; they may fight to be accepted by heterosexist mainstream society or resist assimilation into the heteronormative culture. Critics argue that such a usage of queer may indeed bring solidarity to a marginalized group, giving them power in numbers. However, these critics warn against ignoring differences among people and groups. That is, lumping everyone who falls outside of social norms under the category of queer ignores the differences between them and thus may misrepresent them as the same. Labeling a group as queer could also reinforce gendered and sexualized dichotomies by creating queer in relationship to and opposition with all others who represent “normal” heteronormative society.

Dismantling binaries

Queer theory argues that academics and activists rely on and reinforce dichotomous notions of sex, gender, and sexuality within their work. These binaries may be male/female, man/woman, masculine/feminine, heterosexual/homosexual. Queer theory problematizes these binaries by arguing that they reify difference and hierarchy and, as a consequence, reinforce the notion of the minority as abnormal and inferior (for example, homosexual desire as inferior to heterosexual desire, acts of femininity as inferior to acts of masculinity). Thus, queer theory is a call to transgress conventional understandings of gender and sexuality and to disrupt the boundary that separates heterosexuality from homosexuality. Instead, queer theorists argue that the heterosexual-homosexual division must be challenged to open space for the multiple identities, embodiments, and discourses that fall outside assumed binaries.

In this light, queer is understood as something that is outside the “normal,” something fluid and unfixed, something not definable by society because it now operates within a dichotomous system of knowledge where one is either a man or a woman. Consequently, much queer theory suggests it is completely “un-queer” to define queer. However, other theorists disagree with the idea that queer should not and cannot be defined. Some argue that if what is queer is not defined but, rather, simply understood as a label of meaning without definition, understood as fluid and ambiguous, then queer theory will become nothing more than an idealistic, politically charged fad that eventually dies out. These theorists suggest that if queer is defined, then it becomes something tangible that can be identified and incorporated into people’s lives and understandings of the world, and only then can queer blur the boundary between what is heterosexual and homosexual, what is masculine and feminine. Whether queer should or should not be defined, the point of queer theory is to challenge and disrupt binaries with the hope that doing so will simultaneously dismantle difference and inequality.

On a transnational level, the term queer has been both used and challenged. Some scholars and activists argue that labeling emerging sexualities and genders as queer in contexts such as Southeast Asia or Latin America, for example, marginalizes and misinterprets how sex, sexuality, and gender are played out in contexts that are not Western. Transnational scholarship therefore calls for more sensitive and nuanced accounts of how queer either assists readings of transnational genders and sexualities or overlooks key issues that queer cannot account for. The historian Peter Jackson, for example, complicates the use of queer in Thailand by arguing that key texts—such as Michel Foucault’s (1978) The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction—that queer theorists use to develop their theories, studies, and scholarship are necessarily based on Western notions and histories of sex, sexuality, and gender. Consequently, although queer has been a useful term and identity marker for those who challenge Western binaries, its application is increasingly approached with caution when these binaries are not taken for granted in other cultural contexts.

Conclusion

At this point in history, queer connotes a new meaning and political commitment. Since the widespread emergence of biological and social notions linked to sexuality and gender, queer has been used to challenge the pervasive inequalities that stem from this recent historical shift in constructions of heterosexuality and homosexuality. Although queer has opened space for resistance, transnational research and debates have also challenged it. Despite these challenges, queer remains a concept, form of activism, and theorizing that continues to push and disrupt established boundaries and binaries.