Queer Theory

Definition:

“An approach to literary and cultural study that rejects traditional categories of gender
and sexuality”

Queer theory is a set of ideas based around the idea that identities are not fixed and do
not determine who we are. It suggests that it is meaningless to talk in general about
'women' or any other group, as identities consist of so many elements that to assume
that people can be seen collectively on the basis of one shared characteristic is wrong
as related by Annamarie Jagose in her book, Queer Theory: An Introduction. Indeed, it
proposes that we deliberately challenge all notions of fixed identity, in varied and non-
predictable ways.

Origin:

Queer Theory originated in Judith Butler's 1990 book Gender Trouble and was first
described with the term in Case (1971).The immediate effect of Queer Theory is to
destabilize all other notions of gender and sexuality. Even various forms which are
commonly seen as perversion may be framed as temporary destinations.

Butler was influenced by Michel Foucault, who argued that homosexuality was
a subject position within culture, rather than a personality type per se. He argued that
this position developed within the 19th century psychological sciences.

To understand queer theory, one must first understand what is meant by queer and
bisexual. Each of these terms denotes a history that is at once political and academic.
Further, both words are difficult to pin down as both lack singular or simple definition.

Queer Prerogative:

Queer can be, and is, used in multiple different ways, in academia and in Western
culture. Most obviously, it can be used as a derogatory noun or adjective for
homosexuality or effeminacy. Relatedly, it can also be used to describe something that
is somehow out of the ordinary or not quite right. In the late 1980s and early 1990s,
queer was “taken back” by activists concerned with gender and sexual freedom and
became a word that described a particular type of politics. Groups like Queer Nation
practiced a “politics of provocation, one in which the limits of liberal tolerance [were]
constantly pushed”

Gender Studies Leading to Queer Theory:

Butler is one of the most important figures in queer theory. Queer theory emerged from
gay/ lesbian studies, which in turn emerged from gender studies, in the 1980s. Until the
1980s, the term “queer” had a derogatory connotation, meaning “odd” or “peculiar” or
“out of the ordinary.” However, queer theorists, including Butler, appropriated this term,
insisting that all sexual behaviors, all concepts linking sexual behaviors to sexual
identities and all categories of normative and deviant sexualities are social constructs,
which create certain types of social meaning.

In short, “sex is a norm”. Thus, the undergirding emphasis in all these projects
(gay/lesbian, queer, feminist) is that the categories of normative and deviant sexual
behavior are not biologically but rather socially constructed. In contrast to those who
see sexuality as biological and gender as a social construction, Butler sees sex as no
more a natural category than gender. She conceptualizes gender norms as structuring
biology and not the reverse, which informs the more conventional view.

Redefining Sexuality against Heterosexual Matrix:

Butler does not deny certain kinds of biological differences, but she seeks to explain the
discursive and institutional conditions under which certain arbitrary biological differences
become salient characteristics of sex. She emphasizes that sexuality is a complex array
of individual activity and institutional power, of social codes and forces, which interact
to shape the ideas of what is normative and what is deviant at any particular moment,
and which then result in categories as to “natural,” “essential,” “biological,” or “god-
given.”

She seeks to show how a norm can actually materialize a body—that is, how the body
is not only invested with a norm, but also in some sense animated by a norm or
contoured by a norm. Specifically, Butler describes a heterosexual matrix in which
“proper men” and “proper women” are identified as heterosexual.

Identifying Gender:

The essential unity between biological sex, gender identification, and heterosexuality is
not dictated by nature; indeed, this unity is an illusion mediated through cultural systems
of meaning that underlies our understanding of material, and anatomical differences.
According to Butler, heterosexual normativity “ought not to order gender”. The
subversion of gender performances (e.g., drag performances) indicates nothing about
sexuality or sexual practice. “Gender can be rendered ambiguous without disturbing or
reorientation normative sexuality at all”

Thus, for instance, Butler points out that discrimination against gays is a function not of
their sexuality, but rather of their failure to perform heterosexual gender norms.
Because heterosexuality is based on a binary difference between male and female (a
person is either one or the other), there is a socially constructed gender in which
heterosexuality is central, which informs our understanding of biology. Interestingly,
then, akin to Harold Garfinkel’s “breaching” experiments, which exposed taken-for-
granted normative expectations, cross-dressing, “kiss-ins,” gender parodies, and so on
can be used to transgress and rebel against existing sexual categories.

In short, queer politics seeks to explicitly challenge gender norms to show their lack of
naturalness and inevitability and to celebrate transgressions from them, while
postmodern queer theorists seek to upend and “resignify” our gender expectations.

Conclusion:

To conclude, Queer theory focuses on "mismatches" between sex, gender and desire.
Queer has been associated most prominently with bisexual, lesbian and gay subjects,
but its analytic framework also includes such topics as cross-dressing, intersex, gender
ambiguity and gender-corrective surgery.

Queer theory's attempted debunking of stable (and correlated) sexes, genders, and
sexualities develops out of the specifically lesbian and gay reworking of the post-
structuralism figuring of identity as a constellation of multiple and unstable positions.
Queer theory examines the constitutive discourses of homosexuality developed in the
last century in order to place "queer" in its historical context explained by William
Benjamin in his book, A Genealogy of Queer Theory; and surveys contemporary
arguments both for and against this latest terminology.