Queer Theory 101: What Does “Queer” Actually Mean?

What does queer mean?

One takeaway from a quick review of—mostly negative—responses to Matthew Vines’s recent post for The New York Times, “I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters” (see also my assessment of it, “I’m a Queer Gay, Not Gay. It Matters“), is that people are very confused about what the term queer means.

That confusion is exactly what troubles Vines. It is one reason he is gay and not queer:

[T]he capaciousness that makes “queer” appealing to some also makes the term remarkably easy for anybody — regardless of orientation — to adopt as a kind of radical chic identity label. Because the word “queer” can describe any departure from social norms, it becomes an open door through which almost anyone can walk. Polyamorous? Queer. Vaguely uncomfortable with gender expectations? Possibly queer, too. . . . But the broader trend of casting the queer net ever wider has muddled a once-clear public message about who gay people are. Being gay begins to look less like an inborn trait and more like a chosen ideology or aesthetic.

As I noted in my response to Vines, gayness, however, is not one thing. Gayness can also refer to a queer reality like gay desire. But what does the word queer mean, specifically? Like gayness, queerness refers to several different things.

Two Broad Meanings of Queer

First, in its non-theoretical or common usage, queer is used to describe a group of sexual minorities, such as lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and so on.

Second, queer is used in academia to describe a way of thinking about sex and gender norms and alternatives to them. Its theoretical usage has been contested ever since the late Teresa de Lauretis coined the term queer theory in the early 1990s (see, e.g., Kent Brintnall, “Once upon a queer theory” for one version of queer history, and see also my summary and initial analysis of it, “Kent Brintnall & Queer Narrative”).

Queer Theory’s Three Attitudes

In its theoretical usage, queer refers to at least three different trends or theoretical attitudes:

1. Queer = Anti-Normal. How To Be Gay, by David Halperin, is an example of queerness as a cultural practice that is not a common, traditional, or normal embodiment of sex and gender protocols. In fact, How To Be Gay is a description of gayness as a form of queerness, a specific practice fashioned by gay men but not essentially about them (see my work on gay desire and gay theology to learn more).

2. Queer = Anti-Specificity/Identity. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, by Lee Edelman, is an example of queerness as anti-specificity or identity. Queerness is akin to the Lacanian death drive. Serving the Real, queerness saps the life out of any definition or specificity. The latter terms, definition and specificity, signify reproductive futurism or reification of the Symbolic, implicating us in the politics of violent sameness.

3. Queer = Anti-Binarism. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, by Judith Butler, is an example of this very popular queer trend. The main point is that binaries are very real social constructs rather than natural realities, and they are inherently unstable. The privileged first term always depends on the secondary or demeaned term. Examples: male/female, straight/gay, White/Black, sex/gender. Gender, Butler contends, produces sex. But it doesn’t do so in an entirely consistent or airtight manner, leading to unexpected deviations from normative expectations.

My outline of queer theory’s three attitudes is obviously overbroad, simplistic, and too neatly schematized. The boundaries between trends in queer theory are very porous. Nonetheless, my outline is offered to help you determine in what sense—if any—you are queer, and whether it makes sense to claim the label.

Are You Queer?

Mind Teaser: Are you queer if you claim to be a respectable gay male, a gay male who is in every way like a straight male (and proud of it), except in that ONE way (you know, the fag way)—but are nonetheless committed to resisting the normies preventing you from taking your place at the normie table?

Hmmmm.