What Does It Mean to Be Queer?

My practice is for queer folks. Who exactly am I talking to? What does it mean to be queer?

Queer by definition is whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant.

Queer is a relational position; it is defined by context… What is queer is defined by what is “normal”. If “normal” is a reflection or translation of power, then queer reflects a lack of power structurally.

Contemporarily, queer relates to sexuality. Thus, generally, queer is sexuality that reflects a lack of structural power.

Disempowered sexualities certainly include LGBQ+ folks. But queer accounts for how sexuality intersects with our other marginalized (disempowered) identities, as well.

So a queer praxis acknowledges and critiques the relationship of sexuality and other dimensions. For example:

• sexuality x gender - violence against trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive folks

• sexuality x race - the masculinization of (especially deeply) melanated women

• sexuality x body - the desexualization of fat and disabled bodies/folks

• sexuality x practices - social and legal prohibitions of kink and non-monogamous relationships

• sexuality x labor - the stigmatization of sex work

Finally, queer is a politic. It’s a rejection of normative definitions of sexuality and its intersections, as well as the institutions and discourses that frame sexuality in a negative light.

Citation

David Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 62. as quoted in: Daring, C. B., Rogue, J., & Shannon, D. Abbey Volcano, eds. 2012. Queering Anarchism: Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire.