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Siobhan B. Somerville Queer - Coggle Diagram
Siobhan B. Somerville Queer
queer
is sometimes used interchangeably with the terms “gay” and “lesbian” or occasionally “transgender” and “bisexual.” an umbrella term
a term that calls into question the stability of any categories of identity based on sexual orientation.
a critique of the tendency to organize political or theoretical questions around sexual orientation per se.
a way to denaturalize categories such as “lesbian” and “gay”
etymology is unknown
the mid-twentieth century - “strange,” “odd,” or “peculiar,” with additional negative connotations that suggested something “bad,” “worthless,” or even “counterfeit.”
the first two decades of the twentieth century - “queer” became linked to sexual practice and identity in the United States, particularly in urban sexual cultures.
from the German word
During the 1910s and 1920s in New York City, for example, men who called themselves “queer” used the term to refer to their sexual interest in other men
not until the 1940s that “queer” began to be used in mainstream U.S. culture primarily to refer to “sexual perverts” or “homosexuals,” most often in a pejorative, stigmatizing way
In the early twenty-first century, “queer” remains a volatile term
The use of “queer” in academic and political con- texts beginning in the late 1980s represented an at- tempt to reclaim this stigmatizing word and to defy those who have wielded it as a weapon.
“‘Queer’ is a rebellion against those posh middle-class business owners who want to define gay- dom as being their right to enjoy all the privileges de- nied them just cos they like cock”
queer theory emerged as an academic field during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
queer theory has focused on the very process of sexual subject formation
the primary axis of queer studies shifted toward the distinction between normative and non-normative sexualities as they have been produced in a range of historical and cultural contexts
key concept - heteronormativity - the institutions, structures of understanding, and practical orientations that make heterosexuality seem not only coherent — that is, organized as a sexuality — but also privileged
the form of power that exerts its effects on both gay and straight individuals, often through unspoken practices and in- stitutional structures
The field of queer studies has increasingly chal- lenged this tendency by using “intersectional” ap- proaches that begin from the assumption that sexuality cannot be separated from other categories of identity and social status.
sexuality and gender can never be completely isolated from one another
If queer theory’s project is characterized, in part, as an attempt to challenge identity categories that are presented as stable, transhistorical, or authentic, then critiques of naturalized racial categories are also crucial to its antinormative project
queer of color critique
the necessity of attending to the relationship between the methods of queer theory and colonial structures of knowledge and power
these class connotations are unsta- ble