Popingay

Oh, how queer it is

It is that time of year again, that wondrous time of year when Calgary’s Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival regales us with filmic delights so numerous that by its conclusion it hurts to sit down. Hear that, Fairy Tales? You’re so good that an ass rendered numb for days is a pleasant result.

It seems this year there has been a very minor flurry of controversy regarding the use of the word, “queer”. This isn’t the first time that this word has caused kerfuffle, and it will likely not be the last. Whether this word appears in academic work, pop culture, or even queer community events themselves, few other near-slurs create such discomfort and ire. I take it upon myself to therefore elucidate on this wonderful little word’s colourful history and present.

To be honest, I am an undergraduate English student whose interests fall mainly in literary theory. My academic background is not in linguistics, etymology, or philology, but my vested interest in queer studies, and passion for anything that sends me wading through the ever-magical Oxford English Dictionary (and desire to avoid sleep like the plague it is) renders me unable to resist assembling the mini-project below. That, and a spring semester of finance class makes my brain crave English-related stimulation.

The word “queer” is colloquially known best as one of two possibilities: an oft-British-used word meaning “odd”, or a slur for GLBT(etc.)-perceived things or people. In recent history, though, the word has become an umbrella term for all members of the GLBTQQITTTTAAF(etc., etc.) communities. This transition hasn’t been smooth; “queer” exists in modern usage in all three common usages: innocuous synonym for “odd”, GLBT slur, and reclaimed umbrella term. It is therefore understandable that there exists confusion, and resistance to its use as an affirming, or positive, descriptor for our community, especially in light of its historical and present conflation of uses.

To understand any word in the English language, our first stop is to the nearly-infallible Oxford English Dictionary. This is no ordinary dictionary, and I’m going to use the OED’s self-description stand for itself:

 

The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.
[…]
As the OED is a historical dictionary, its entry structure is very different from that of a dictionary of current English, in which only present-day senses are covered, and in which the most common meanings or senses are described first. For each word in the OED, the various groupings of senses are dealt with in chronological order according to the quotation evidence, i.e. the senses with the earliest quotations appear first, and the senses which have developed more recently appear further down the entry. In a complex entry with many strands, the development over time can be seen in a structure with several ‘branches’. (OED, http://oed.com/about/) [It’s probably a good idea to mention now that I’m not going to follow any particular method of citation for this blog entry. Why? I’m lazy (primarily), it’s not an academic work, my access to OED entries is given by the school, and so the link won’t work for you, and if you have a questions about my sources, ask me.]

The OED is therefore an extra-special dictionary in that it traces word usages and consequent definitions across time and from specific evidence. Thus, when we look up the word, “queer” we’re given a ton of information from which I would like to highlight some key points.

The earliest usage I find of the word “queer” is actually as a verb, found in 1390, in the sense, “To ask, inquire; to question” (OED, queer, v.1). Now, this is pretty irrelevant to what we’re looking at, but the point I’m making is that our ever-evolving language creates varied usages, some of which never caught on, some of which did and then became obsolete, and some of which remain to this day. Regardless, as you’ll note, words have different meanings at different times, and used by different people for different purposes. 

Closer to our case, under the entries for “queer” as an adjective, we find: “strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character; suspicious, dubious” (OED, queer, adj.1, def.1.a.) with a first example in 1513. Much closer. This is the definition of the word most common when considered without socio-cultural context: queer=weird. Not necessarily pejorative, just a synonym.

We have to roll much further in history to find the entry, “colloq. (orig. U.S.). Of a person: homosexual. Hence: of or relating to homosexuals or homosexuality” (OED, queer, adj.1, def.3.) first appearing in 1914 in the Los Angeles Times. This entry has an interesting note attached to it:

Although originally chiefly derogatory (and still widely considered offensive, esp. when used by heterosexual people), from the late 1980s it began to be used as a neutral or positive term (originally of self-reference, by some homosexuals; cf. QUEER NATION n.) in place of gay or homosexual, without regard to, or in implicit denial of, its negative connotations. In some academic contexts it is the preferred adjective in the study of issues relating to homosexuality (cf. queer theory n. at Special uses 2); it is also sometimes used of sexual lifestyles that do not conform to conventional heterosexual behaviour, such as bisexuality or transgenderism.

There you are, sneaky little definition. In our North American (Canadian & US) Anglo-culture we are familiar with “queer” used as a derogatory slur for GLBT-perceived people and things, the part about “sexual lifestyles that do not conform to conventional heterosexual behaviour” being probably the best example of that definition. However, that’s not entirely the whole story. As you’ll note, above, its self-referential use is as a reclaimed word, and in an academic sense is used with respect to queer theory (more on reclaimed words in a bit, but first…):

queer theory n. (also with capital initials) orig. U.S. an approach to social and cultural study which seeks to challenge or deconstruct traditional ideas of sexuality and gender, esp. the acceptance of heterosexuality as normative and the perception of a rigid dichotomy of male and female traits.

Not hardly the realm of virulent homophobes, now, is it? Queer as a community term, positive word, and academic school of thought, finds itself wrapped around some pretty positive ideas.

But wait, wait, wait, you say. Enough of this academic nonsense. I acknowledge that although I can happily spend an entire Saturday poking around the OED in search of fun new historical tidbits about words, most people would rather have me committed or at the very least checked for some sort of personality disorder (of which I’m sure I have many—come check!).

The average person (and myself when I don’t have a lot of time or energy) turn to tried-and-true basic sources dictionary.com and Wikipedia. Not exactly the bastion of academic work, but it’s the night before a paper’s due, or a few minutes before you yell at a well-intentioned film organization, and it’s important that you have some misguided evidence to back it up!

Firstly, dictionary.com. Not a particularly good dictionary, but good enough for most purposes. When we look up “queer”, we find:

Queer

 adjective,-er, -est, verb, noun
–adjective
1.strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different; singular: a queer notion of justice.
2.of a questionable nature or character; suspicious; shady:Something queer about the language of the prospectus kept investors away.
3.not feeling physically right or well; giddy, faint, or qualmish:to feel queer.
4.mentally unbalanced or deranged.
5.Slang: Disparaging and Offensive.
a.homosexual.
b.effeminate; unmanly.
6.Slang. bad, worthless, or counterfeit.

Not exactly the bastion of positive definitions, now, is it? And none of these definitions are wrong (less detailed than that holy grail, the OED) but the evidence is seemingly damning. Well, not really. Let’s keep reading, shall we? After all, you don’t stop looking at only a cursory glance and declare something bad. Or maybe we do. Snap judgements won’t do, now. Dictionary.com later on the page includes their own special note:

Usage Note: A reclaimed word is a word that was formerly used solely as a slur but that has been semantically overturned by members of the maligned group, who use it as a term of defiant pride. Queer is an example of a word undergoing this process. For decades queer was used solely as a derogatory adjective for gays and lesbians, but in the 1980s the term began to be used by gay and lesbian activists as a term of self-identification. Eventually, it came to be used as an umbrella term that included gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people. Nevertheless, a sizable percentage of people to whom this term might apply still hold queer to be a hateful insult, and its use by heterosexuals is often considered offensive. Similarly, other reclaimed words are usually offensive to the in-group when used by outsiders, so extreme caution must be taken concerning their use when one is not a member of the group.

Ta-da! Not so bad after all, but not perfect. After all, “queer” is still a slur used in a derogatory manner to offend and hurt members of the queer community. And what’s all this about reclaimed words and it being okay for use by and within the community, but being offensive elsewhere, and oh my god the craziness! Won’t somebody please think of the children?!

Reclaimed words are a bit of a tenuous subject. The idea is essentially a conscious rewriting of a definition; in effect, it takes back the power of a word by reusing and reframing it in a way to affirm and empower the people or persons whom it originally disenfranchised. In the case of sexuality and sexuality-based slurs, Foucault said it best in his History of Sexuality:

There is no question that the appearance in the nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature of a whole series of discourses on the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and “psychic hermaphroditism” made possibly a strong advance of social controls in this area of “perversity”; but it also made possible the formation of a “reverse” discourse: homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or “naturality” be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified (from Queer Theory/Sociology ed. Steven Seidman).

What Foucault was getting at was that the same words used to disempower a group can be recaptured as this “reverse discourse” and repurposed to dismantle disempowerment through empowerment. Not everyone agrees with this particular concept though, and often I will hear comments about “the master’s tools” (look it up if you’re curious), but I agree that its premise appears sound and seems to effectively work to empower our community as a united group.

Regardless of your personal feelings about the word, there is an element of context when considering its ramifications in use. Fairy Tales undoubtedly uses queerness as a means to include and bridge the gap between members of various GLBT(etc.) communities and unite under a powerful, reclaimed banner. Still, the pejorative sense remains, and confusion as use of a word both past and present meet, creates problematic deployment of such a word.

What I want you to get out of this rambling, rather disorganized journey is not that I remain any authoritative source on the word “queer”, nor that there is any singular, “right” way to interpret the word and it’s use, but I want you to recognize the complexity of language, and the importance of its socio-cultural context.

Hopefully you’ll join us under the queer banner and work with organizations such as Fairy Tales, but even if you disagree, I hope that you’ll agree that “queer” isn’t such a bad word after all, and like many supposedly bad things is simply misunderstood. Buy it a muffin and some coffee, sit down and chat with it, and I’m sure you’ll find it lovelier than its sometimes prickly outsides suggest.