Queer
Queer is an English term originating in the early 16th century to denote strangeness, oddity, or peculiarity, which by the late 19th century had acquired a pejorative connotation referring to homosexual men, particularly those perceived as effeminate, before being reclaimed in the late 1980s and 1990s by activists and scholars as an umbrella descriptor for non-normative sexual orientations, gender identities, and practices that challenge heteronormative and cisnormative assumptions.[1][2][3] The reclamation, spearheaded by groups like Queer Nation, positioned queer as a defiant rejection of assimilationist gay and lesbian politics, emphasizing fluidity and anti-normativity over fixed identities.[2][4] In academic contexts, queer theory emerged in the early 1990s, coined by Teresa de Lauretis at a 1990 conference on lesbian and gay sexualities, drawing on post-structuralist influences from thinkers like Michel Foucault and Judith Butler to deconstruct binary categories of sex, gender, and sexuality as socially constructed rather than biologically determined.[5][6] Key achievements include broadening scholarly inquiry into intersectional identities and power dynamics, though it has faced criticism for relativizing empirical distinctions between male and female biology and for prioritizing theoretical abstraction over lived experiences of same-sex attraction.[7] The term's contemporary usage remains contentious, with surveys indicating that 5 to 20 percent of non-heterosexual individuals self-identify as queer, often among younger generations embracing its inclusivity, yet eliciting discomfort from others due to its historical slur associations and perceived erasure of specific labels like lesbian or gay.[8][9][10] This divide underscores ongoing debates within sexual minority communities about whether queer's vagueness fosters coalition-building or dilutes advocacy for biologically grounded rights based on immutable traits like homosexuality.[11][12]