Queer is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) communities as being oppressive or assimilationist.
This term is controversial because it was reappropriated only to an extent two decades ago from its use as an anti-gay epithet. Furthermore, some LGBT people disapprove of using queer as a catch-all because they consider it offensive, derisive or self-deprecating given its continuous use as a form of hate speech. Other LGBT people may avoid queer because they associate it with political radicalism, or simply because they perceive it as the faddish slang of a "younger generation."
Read more about Queer: Inclusivity and Scope
Famous quotes containing the word queer:
“They’re a queer lot;Main’t they,—the sort of people one meets about in the world?”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“When every Sunday afternoon
On the Green Lands I walk
And wear a coat in fashion,
Memories of the talk
Of hen wives and of queer old men
Brace me and make me strong....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Oh dear, oh dear. I have a queer feeling there’s going to be a strange face in heaven in the morning.”
—Dudley Nichols (1895–1960)