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:
“It is queer to contemplate how many people there are in any community who labor under the hallucination that if one is engaged in any occupation different from their own, that they are just having a good time, with no possible hardships to encounter.”
—Caroline Nichols Churchill (1833–?)
“It is queer how it is always one’s virtues and not one’s vices that precipitate one into disaster.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“They’re a queer lot;Main’t they,—the sort of people one meets about in the world?”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)