No argument I have encountered is quite as pointless and virulent as the argument about who gets to count as queer. The most virulent subform of this argument is, of course, whether asexuals count as queer. Seriously, fun game: go on a relatively popular feminist/queer forum, ask whether asexuals are queer, watch everyone scream at each other, eat popcorn.
I really do not have a stake in this argument at all, since as far as I can tell the question of whether asexuals are queer makes absolutely no difference to anything in the actual world. Besides, a lot of people seem to have this idea that there is an Objective Real Definition of Queer and if we argue about it enough we will, through rational argument, discover the Platonic Form of Queer. That’s not how words work though. Words just mean what everyone agrees they mean.
Therefore, I have decided to list out every definition of queer that I have heard, with rationale, in the hopes that everyone will agree that they are all equally valid definitions that mark categories which actually exist and we can just pick the one that’s most suitable for whatever conversation we’re in.
Reclaimed Slur: This definition suggests that, since “queer” is a reclaimed slur, it should only be used in a badass “your insults cannot hurt me, I accept who I am” way. The problem with this is that people who use this argument very rarely carry it to its logical conclusion. “Queer,” as a slur, is primarily used against men who have sex with men and trans people who were male assigned at birth. Male crossdressers have more right to reclaim “queer” than I do.
LGBT: This definition says that “queer” refers to lesbians, gay people, bi people, and trans people. Like, maybe you want another word because you’ve been using the word LGBT too much? That can be a thing. “Queer”, in this definition, reflects the shared history of LGBT people and the fact that the oppressions they face (homophobia, transphobia, biphobia) are intimately linked. (Ace hate, on the other hand, is to the best of my knowledge more more closely related to rape culture and compulsory sexuality than to homophobia or transphobia.) This is the definition that most of the people who are on the “no, asexuals cannot say they’re queer” side use.
LGBT and also asexuals and aromantics: This definition says that since asexuals are also a minority sexual orientation, it makes sense to classify them in the same group as LGB people (the other three minority sexual orientations). Therefore, queer means people with a minority gender history or sexual orientation. (Some people include aromantics, who don’t experience romantic attraction to people, under the queer umbrella as well.)
A broader version of LGBT (plus possibly asexuals): This is the definition I like! There are lots of fuzzy edges around LGBT. Straight men who sometimes sleep with guys when they’re drunk. Women who fall in romantic love with people of all genders but only want to have sex with men. People who thought they were trans but ended up detransitioning. The fuzzy edges are in a very different position from those of us who are actually LGBT; however, it’s also important to acknowledge the ways in which we have similar lived experiences. Of course, this definition comes in asexual/aromantic and asexual/aromantic-free versions. (The fuzzy edges of asexuality are demisexuals and gray-asexuals.)
Gender and sexual minority: Everyone who has a minority gender or sexuality! This is really broad, because it includes not just asexuals, aromantics, and the fuzzy edges around LGBT, but kinky people, poly people, butch women, femme men, and basically anyone who takes at least a sentence to explain their gender or sexual orientation. This category can be justified because of the massive overlap between those groups, and because all these groups face people who think that their sexuality or gender is, for some reason, something other people are allowed to have opinions about.
People who are gender-revolutionary and question the gender binary: The queer writer Kate Bornstein has been known to define sex-positive trans-supportive straight people as “queer heterosexuals” and talk about how everyone who admits that their gender is in some way transgressive or ambiguous (as is everyone’s) is queer. I suppose it is indeed nice to have a word for that.
The subgroup of any of the above definitions that views their sexuality as political. Basically, the Kate Bornstein definition of queer, except limited to LGBT people, or LGBT people plus asexuals and aromantics, or gender and sexual minorities, or whatever. Queers are people who view their genders and sexualities as weapons against the cisheteropatriarchy and who probably write a lot of really terrible poetry about the matter. (By this definition, I’m not queer!)
Thing of Things 
(bullying cw) I have had a guy on high school scream queer at me whilst pointing scissors at me and threatening me with them and I am a cis bi girl so I am slightly miffed at the idea that it’s not a word I can reclaim. Then again this has probably happened to a lot of cis straight people who were mistaken for lgbt, so…
LikeLiked by 5 people
One other way I’ve seen it used is to mean “significantly non-conforming in a gender- or sexuality-related way”, so heterosexual cross-dressers would be considered queer but gender-conforming gay men would not be. Roughly, anti-assimilationism.
LikeLiked by 2 people
This post is useful to me, for not quite the intended reason – I’ve never quite been clear on what “queer” was supposed to mean in the first place, and all the explanations seemed to contradict each other to varying degrees, leaving me more confused. So it’s nice to have someone credibly confirm that, yes, there are multiple competing uses of the word.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Remember how, on Sherlock, Irene Adler said she was “queer” and a lot of people assumed that this meant she was a lesbian who had nonetheless been converted by Sherlock’s incredible sexual allure?
I’d like to direct them to this post.
LikeLike
I’ve ranted about this before, but a corollary to several of the definitions you listed is an implied value judgment that I find rancid. When you tie an identity that’s ostensibly value-neutral (what your gender is or who you like to sleep with/fall in love with) with a political identity, you attract people who impose the political identity on the neutral one. No, I’m not interested in hanging out with someone on the grounds that they’re “hella queer,” because the value-neutral aspect (they’re some kind of gender/sexual minority) tells me nothing about them, but the fact that they view it as a political identity makes them obnoxious.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Fuck yeah. I know a guy with a gender studies major who tried to convince me to go to his shitty play about querness by implying that if I am too backwards to leave behind heterocisness itself, I can still “queer up” my hetero sex life (via certain acts, not, say, trans partners). Yeah, because what I seek in sex is political acceptability points, not genuine enjoyment that may fall wherever on the spectrum. Just lie back, close my eyes and think of the revolutionary future!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Stalin was a cutie growing up. I’d lie back and think of him any old evening.
LikeLike
@ ninecarpals
That was surprisingly disturbing to read. Cute or not, he seems to have been a fairly terrible human being. Both his eldest son and his second wife committed suicide.
LikeLike
My apologies. It was a joke.
LikeLike
I think I’ve also seen “queer” used as “of a sexual/romantic orientation other than heteroromantic+heterosexual”. So referring to orientation only, not gender identity.
LikeLike
My first encounter with the word was along the lines of academic Queer Theory, and was explained to me as someone who has an identity/orientation/lifestyle that rejects the idea of gender/sexuality binary. Sorta similar linguistically to pansexual vs bisexual, I’d long been under the impression that it was intended to be more a way to signal an underlying paradigm than a specific set of definitional boundaries. It’s interesting to hear the different ways the word is used though! It gives a set of starting places should confirmation be useful. 🙂
LikeLike
my education on lgbtqiap stuff is 100% from tumblr, i’m an asexual, and i don’t describe myself as queer bc as i understand it the word a slur and it’s not mine to reclaim because i’ve never been oppressed by it. same as i’m jewish and can’t reclaim islamophobic slurs, i guess.
LikeLike
Important thing on the asexual point – the other issue this raises is ‘people who want to have same-gender relationships’ as a category. Like, I’m an ace (and aro spectrum, but not aromantic) woman, and I want to be able to do things like say ‘my girlfriend’ and not ‘my roommate’ or ‘my friend’ without worrying that it’ll get me fired, and to maybe someday marry such a girlfriend.
(Also, as an asexual, I’m going to say that yes, it does make a difference to some things in the actual world, generally access to safe spaces).
LikeLike
To start with, we have prototype theory. Under this scheme, we should pick some central examples of queer. For this, I would suggest a gay or pan person who is rather gender-non-conforming. They are either kinky or at least kink-adjacent. They are polyamorous. If they are trans, they tend to be non-binary. If they are transsexual, they make little effort to pass. Also, they have left-leaning politics which are somehow critical of traditional gender roles and the notions of a “binary.” This one time they tried to read Judith Butler. They have cool hair.
Keep in mind, this is a *central example*, not a boundary.
However, there is another factor. Around this identity a subculture has formed, largely urban, largely young, largely white-middle-class-well-educated. It is punk-adjacent, kink positive, and has much colorful hair. It’s actually a cool scene. The dance parties are fun.
Plus, yeah, there is a political sensibility. But it’s hardly uniform. I know a libertarian trans gal who plays in these spaces. She’s not entirely comfortable there, but in her own way she’s hella queer. Speaking for myself, I’m far more a liberal than a radical. On the other hand, I’m a solid Serano-style feminist, so I guess this puts my politics at least queer-adjacent.
Plus I have awesome hair!
Does queer have boundaries? No more than punk does, or (for that matter) geek.
So does an asexual person count as queer? Well, things are fuzzy. Do they self-identify as queer? Do they have queer friends, go to queer events, try to present themselves as queer? If they say, ”I’m queer” but literally no aspect of their life involves queerness, other than the basic fact they don’t wanna fuck, then what are they even trying to say?
I know plenty of gender-conforming gay dudes who are *not* part of this scene. Often they aren’t aware it exists. On the other hand, I know other gender-conforming gay dudes who are either queer or at least queer-adjacent. They know the right people, go to the right parties, say the right things. So it goes for dykes.
####
tl;dr it’s really a culture question with a dash of politics, but mostly it’s about cool hair.
LikeLiked by 2 people
So it’s all about oppressing bald guys? Not cool!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m fond of defining queer as “anything which falls outside of the Charmed Circle of Sexuality” (a concept coined by Gayle Rubin– it’s basically the Overton Window, but for sexuality and gender identity)
LikeLike
Pingback: On The Phrase ‘Gender Binary’ | Too many thoughts, too little time
You posting this reminded me I had a draft of a post on my blog which I went to go and clean up and post after reading this, so thanks!
(Here’s the post, if anyone’s curious. http://lalaithion.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/on-the-phrase-gender-binary/)
LikeLike
How about this: if your gender-nonconformity inherently involves how you are seen in public, you can count as “queer”. That would include all four letters of LGBT while not really including anyone else.
LikeLike
Now that I think of it, that wouldn’t work because of the case of, for instance, bisexuals who are in opposite sex relationships. How about modifying it: if your gender-nonconformity inherently involves the way that many people like you are seen in public, even if given your circumstances it may not affect you specifically.
LikeLike
It’s also contextual. What ‘public’ are we talking about? The norms in the San Francisco Bay Are are different from the Midwest, for example. A definition that depends on where I’m living strikes me as strange.
LikeLike
I was thinking in terms of whether it’s visible to the public, not whether it’s accepted by the public. Being gay inherently involves public activities such as showing affection to your partner in public, telling you friends about him, etc. (Unless you’re in the closet.) So does being trans or crossdressing. Being into, for instance, BDSM does not because it involves only private activities.
I suppose you could claim that being aromantic is visible, but it’s much harder for the public to see see omissions than to see see actions. Kissing a member of the same sex once in public advertises that you’re gay, but failing to be with one in public once doesn’t advertise that you’re aromantic.
LikeLike
I’m not the biggest fan of this definition because I don’t think public visibility is an inherent part of LGBT-ness, only a possible one. Even if you exclude closeted people.
– As you noted, some bi women date men and vice versa.
– Some people are single.*
– Some people, in general, don’t really do relationships that would involve public visibility. Some people only do hookups, which are pretty private.
– Some trans people who have transitioned are not visibly trans.
– Some e.g. non-binary people are only sort of visibly trans. (e.g. my sibling is non-binary, and they present in a pretty gender-bendy way, but at the same time our parents who see them all the time don’t know they’re non-binary because their presentation is consistent with being an atypical example of the gender my parents think they are.)
And like, of my LGB friends, lots of them I haven’t actually seen with same-gender partners, I just know they’re not straight because of conversations we’ve had. (Just like people who are asexual or into BDSM.)
Also your definition would seem to include poly people.
*This is a particular pet peeve of mine: sometimes people say things like “an easy way to come out in a low-key way is just to mention a past or present boyfriend/girlfriend [not of the expected gender]” and this doesn’t work for me at all because I’m a bi woman who has only dated one person who happened to be a guy, and all the times I was seriously attracted to women were unrequited. Like, not all LGBT people are good at dating or prioritize it much!
LikeLiked by 2 people
You forgot to mention “queer” as a verb. I think academics like to use it that way, with a particularly academic meaning? Like “queering the discourse” or something?
LikeLike
Is this a repost? It’s not clear.
LikeLike
Yes. Everything is a repost unless I specifically say THIS IS NOT A REPOST, until March, when I will have a post that says THE REPOSTS HAVE STOPPED NOW.
LikeLike
Pingback: Linkspam: January 2nd, 2015 | The Asexual Agenda
Pingback: Nachtrag zu “Identität vs. Politik” | Der Torheit Herberge
The definition I’m most used to and personally use:
Queer is an all-inclusive term for people who aren’t cis, heterosexual, allosexual or alloromantic. Used as an alterrnative to LGBT, QUILTBAG, LGBTQPIA+ and other acronyms where people often forget the B stands for bisexual, A for asexual, I for intersex, etc.
I personally hate the LGBT acronym for that reason. LGBT+ is more common here, and QUILTBAG is used by some people, but somehow the main people talked about and accepted are gay or lesbian. I’m pan, aroflux and genderfluid, and I’m sick of the general “LGBT” community erasing my identity because some people think you need to be either gay or straight, alloro or aro, cis or trans. I’ll call it the pride community, I’ll call it the queer community, but fuck calling it the LGBT community. Sexuality and gender are spectrums. The acronym’s had its use, but now it’s outdated and is used to purport discrimination itself.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reblogged this on Autism Candles.
LikeLike