So, What the Hell Does "Queer" Mean, Anyway?

On the ever changing face of Pride

As June comes to an end, so too ends secular Ramadan. Or, as it’s also known: pride month. Pride month is a celebration of the LGBT community and culture with events ranging from drag shows, highlighting LGBT artists and films, every corporation changing its logo to a pride flag (except for in countries where that would hurt the bottom line) and all coming to a rainbow-colored climax with the pride parade. This is a parade where LGBT people of all stripes march through town with floats, signs and everyone wearing their best, gayest outfit.

In 2017, I found myself marching in one such parade. I marched with a small group that represented my city’s bisexual organization. At first, I felt elated. Partly because it’s impossible to march in a parade where everyone is clapping and cheering for you and not get an ego boost, but partly because it was a validation of my identity as a bisexual male. Well, almost everyone was clapping and cheering. When we passed a group of elderly lesbians, we got some boos and one of them even flipped us off. Picture the old hag from “The Princess Bride” who boos Princess Buttercup, but with the build and fashion sensibilities of the singer from Smashmouth. We kept marching and everyone else was supportive and the cheers resumed. But something about that woman stuck with me the same way it stuck with Buttercup. Perhaps it’s because old women seem to have a maternal way of shaming us that borders on the supernatural, but partly because she was reflecting my own sense of self-doubt and imposter syndrome back at me. Did I really belong here? Was I gay enough to march in a pride parade?

Nope, I didn’t, and I wasn’t. Thanks for reading, don’t forget to like and subscribe. There has been much discourse in the LGBT community if bisexuals belong at pride and there is not a consensus even in those spaces. But this brings up the question of why I and many like me felt the draw to the big tent revival that the modern LGBT movement has become. Technically, I’m a “B” even if I don’t identify that way with a capital “I”. In my early 20s, I fucked a few guys and spent some time in gay bars. But for me, as someone who has been in a heterosexual relationship for a decade, calling myself bisexual was ultimately inauthentic - like Jay-Z making a career out of rapping about the few years he was a drug dealer when he’s been a millionaire for over two decades. “Riding a horse once or twice don’t make you a cowboy” as my grandaddy used to say. Although admittedly, he was referring to something else.

This isn’t about bisexuals, broadly speaking, though. I knew that deep down, I wasn’t gay. But it was 2017 and the coalition that opposed Trump was at its most unified and focused- almost like the years after 9/11 were, but for liberals. It was almost like a call of return to the fatherland- have you ever sucked cock? Into dudes and chicks? A girl with a short haircut? Well, come to Pride, we’re mustering our forces. Around this time was when I heard a new term start to be used more to describe the LGBT community- “queer.” In a way, this wasn’t a new term. “Queer” has been used as a slur for gays, lesbians, transgender people and pretty much anyone who doesn’t conform to gender norms for a long time. Basically, anything but straight. But some in the LGBT community have opted to reclaim the term and repurpose it for an all-encompassing label. Perhaps because “the queer community” rolls off the tongue better than remembering all of the letters that have been added to “LGBTQIAPB&J++” or whatever we’re up to now. But in some ways, this reflects not merely a change in language, but in ideology. “LGBT” meant something specific- lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender- but “queer” can mean so much more.

So, what the hell does “queer” mean, anyway? Let’s take a brief look at the history of the term and some of the thinkers who have come to define its modern usage. As I mentioned, “queer” had historically been a slur- hell, I used to play a game on the playground called “smear the queer” where we would arbitrarily pick one boy to beat the shit out of and he would try to run away. Pretty fun, actually, until it was your turn to be the queer. Such is adolescent male bonding, I suppose. I played that game as a child before I even knew what sex was- much less it was something two dudes could do together. But like with that game, there was an implied value judgment- whatever “queer” was, it was something you didn’t want to be. So, there is a good place to start the discussion. Throughout history, different cultures have had different attitudes towards homosexuality at different times, ranging from outright prohibition, grudging tolerance at the fringes of society to open acceptance. But in the modern context, I think the best place to start is the early 20th century.

The serious study of homosexuality which would later come to be known as “Queer Studies” began in Weimar Germany. After the defeat in World War I, hyper-inflation, and the culture of desperation lead to a disregard of old social norms and acceptance of hedonism that challenged the values of traditional German culture. In Berlin at this time, cabaret and sex clubs were a way for people to escape the difficulties of living in an impoverished, defeated country. There was an explosion of art, theatre and literature that allowed groups of people who had previously been excluded from society to flourish. There was a darker side, as well, however. In these spaces, drug use, alcoholism, and prostitution (even of children) was also common. This was the environment in which attitudes towards homosexuality and gender also started to change.

This period saw one of the first recorded sex change operations and authors like Magnus Hirshfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, which was one of the first organizations to advocate for gay rights. Hirschfeld also established the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin in 1919, which became a hub for research on sexuality and gender. Other notable figures were Anita Berber (An actress and writer notable for her flamboyant lifestyle and open bisexuality as well as provocative performances that explored sexuality and androgyny), Klaus Mann (an openly gay writer who wrote about his experiences as a gay man in Weimar Germany) and Ruth Margarete Roellig (A journalist and writer who wrote one of the first detailed accounts of lesbian life in Berlin during the 1920s). The libertine environment was not to last, however, as the rise of the Nazi party had one of their first enemies in what they saw as the degeneracy of the Berlin vaudeville scene. These writers were amongst some of those targeted for Nazi book burnings and homosexuals were one of the many groups persecuted in the Holocaust.

In the post-war period, gays and lesbians largely went back underground and were not seen as socially acceptable in the more conservative culture. There were artists and writers such as Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, and Patricia Highsmith who openly wrote about homosexuality in the 40s and 50s, but they were largely a countercultural fringe. This was the height of McCarthy’s Red Scare attempting to purge the US government of communist spies that had a subsequent “Lavender Scare” which aimed to do the same of homosexuals who were viewed as inherently less loyal. This culture of repression came to a head with President Eisenhower’s executive order 10450 which explicitly banned homosexuality in federal service, labeling it as “sexual perversion”. These policies reflected a broader attitude of intolerance of homosexuality in the culture at large. Many individuals lost their jobs, faced public humiliation, and suffered personal and professional ruin during the Lavender Scare.

But as the 1960s and the social changes that accompanied them gained speed, so too did the sexual revolution. While the sexual revolution was initially a movement for middle class heterosexual hippies to partake in casual sex free of the social commitments of previous generations, so too did the burgeoning LGBT community use the movement to advocate for their own rights. One of the turning points in the history of gay rights activism were the Stonewall riots.

The Stonewall Riots began on June 28, 1969, when police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village. The patrons, tired of constant harassment, fought back against the police. The riots sparked several days of protests and are widely regarded as the catalyst for the modern LGBT rights movement. Following the Stonewall Riots, activists formed the Gay Liberation Front to advocate for the rights of LGBT individuals. The GLF emphasized radical action and sought to challenge societal norms and fight for broader social acceptance. Over this period, LGBT activists won hard fought victories such as the removal of homosexuality as a mental illness from the DSM, working to pass anti-discrimination laws and decriminalization of homosexuality.

In the 1980s, The gay subculture was thriving in cities like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. They were hubs of LGBT life, featuring a lively nightlife scene with bars, clubs, and bathhouses. While homosexuality was still not accepted by the mainstream, there was a thriving countercultural community where gay men could exist freely at the margins of society. However, these communities were not without their problems. The first cases of what would later be known as AIDS were reported in the early 1980s. Due to the fringe, counterculture lifestyles of the gay subculture at the time which involved promiscuous sex and drug use, gay men were at a much higher risk for AIDS. Subsequently, The AIDS crisis had a catastrophic impact on the gay community, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of individuals. The epidemic destroyed entire social communities and left a profound emotional and psychological toll.

In the 1990s and 2000s, however, the tide began to turn. The AIDS crisis came to a close through a combination of public health campaigns that encouraged practice of safe sex and discouraging sharing of needles as well as advances in medical technology. As time went on, homosexuality became more accepted and more mainstream cultural figures came out as gay or gained wider popularity where they may not have in generations before. Television programs such as Will and Grace or films like Blue is the Warmest Color or The Birdcage found mainstream appeal and homosexuality was becoming more socially acceptable. This change in attitude came to a head with the federal legalization of gay marriage in 2015 in the United States.

The pattern emerges that gay culture is something born of oppression and being othered. Unable to exist in polite society, gay people who did not stay in the closet often formed parallel societies and their own subcultures. These spaces are where many of the cultural affectations we see in the gay community arose. There is often an emphasis on theatricality and self-expression as exemplified in performance art like drag shows. After all, if you had to spend a good portion of your life hiding who you really are, wouldn’t you want to shout it from the rooftops once you were free to?

That brings us back to the modern day. During the 2024 Eurovision contest, Irish singer Bambi Thug shook things up with a performance of her song “Doomsday Blue” laden with occult imagery inspiring both pearl-clutching from cultural conservatives and seal-clapping from cultural liberals. In an interview after her performance, she was asked the question “What makes you special?” Bambi Thug smirks smugly, gesturing to her appearance like a Hot Topic Vanna White- she was proudly sporting the trans flag, an outfit and makeup that looked like it was straight out of a 2003 era Marilyn Manson video- and replied “Do you know what makes me special? I’m a queer, and I’m a WIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH!!!!”

As her shriek faded, I found myself asking once again: “so, what the hell does queer mean, anyway?” This somewhat cringey display spoke to another faction of the queer community. I looked up this singer, and Bambi Thug, born Bambi Ray Robinson, is not a trans woman. Robinson identifies as non-binary- for the uninitiated, that means rejecting the gender binary and believing one’s expression of gender is more than just male or female. This often goes along with the use of they/them pronouns which I will do out of politeness for the remainder of this article. Well, technically they use fae/faer pronouns, but I just can’t bring myself to take that shit seriously.

There has been much written about the concept of gender identity in the modern era and the use of alternate pronouns, but I won’t do more than touch on that conversation in this article. Partly, because I think it is a nuanced topic. Partly because I don’t want to be a part of a culture war on an issue I don’t feel particularly strongly about, but mostly because it’s a done to death topic I don’t have much to contribute to and I don’t find that very interesting.

What I do find interesting, however, is why people identify that way in the first place. Theatrical gender bending outside the binary is nothing new. In fact, it’s pretty old hat. As I mentioned, Bambi Thug looks like they could be an extra in a “Mechanical Animals” era Marilyn Manson video, but even when Manson was doing this goth vaudeville schtick over 20 years ago it was a bit passé. He was ripping off artists like Alice Cooper, W.A.S.P, Motley Crue and Ozzy Osbourne who were causing moral majority monocle-popping back in the Regan administration. Hell, if you are a real music dork like me you could even site Arthur Brown, Screaming Lord Sutch or Screamin’ Jay Hawkins who were doing shock rock in the 50’s and 60’s. But if you really want the gold standard, you need go no further than the thin white duke himself. After all, growing up is realizing pretty much everything cool about Marilyn Manson was ripped off of David Bowie.

David Bowie made waves in 1972 when he came out as gay, although he later walked the statement back saying he was only bisexual. Bowie was cagey over the years and gave conflicting accounts on the subject of his sexuality ranging from saying “I’m gay and always have been” to “I am a closet heterosexual” to coming out being “the biggest mistake I ever made” to “it was the best thing that ever happened to me”.

Look, I am not trying to do a post-mortem on the sexuality of a dead rock star, it’s ultimately not very important. But there is no denying that Bowie (by his own admission) used the image of being gay very deftly over the years as an artist. I am not even going to fault him for that- full disclosure, David Bowie is one of my favorite artists and “Hunky Dory” is one of my desert island albums. That said, to me Bowie’s performative queerness seemed to me more like an affectation of rebellion rather than a reflection of homosexuality in the material sense. Despite that, however, Bowie is still considered to be a queer icon. But can you be queer without being gay?

Conventional wisdom would say you can’t be a lesbian and date men any more than you can be a vegetarian who eats meat, but for an increasing number of women, that’s not always the case. In her article “Lesbians who only date men”, Substack author

Katherine Dee

addresses this very contradiction. There is a trend, especially for millennial and Gen Z women, to identify as lesbian not as a reflection of sexual attraction, but cultural preference. To many of these women, being queer represents not material reality, but an “internal essence” that reflects an emotional truth. Much in the same way, Gen Z is the most queer-identified generation, but they are also having the least sex. How do you square that circle? Can you be gay without sex? Are asexuals queer? What about bisexuals in a straight relationship? Non-binary people who are gender conforming? Trans people who don’t medically or socially transition? Is “queer,” a term that can mean anything you want it to used by over dramatic theatre kids like Bambi Thug who just want to feel “special”?

So, one last time, I find myself asking: “so, what the hell does ‘queer’ mean, anyway?” To address this, let’s look at some of the modern thinkers who defined queer theory as it is understood today. Michelle Foucault was a foundational thinker in this school of thought. Foucault was a writer who saw all interactions as relationships of power. Foucault also applied this idea to queerness as a form of resistance within the power structures that seek to regulate and control sexual identities and behaviors.

Another writer who built on the works of Foucault was feminist author Judith Butler. Butler builds on Foucault’s notion of power, arguing that identities are constructed through repeated performances within a regulatory framework. She emphasizes subversion from within these constructions. Butler’s understanding of queerness aligns with a form of resistance to normative structures. Queerness challenges and disrupts fixed categories and norms. In her 2009 essay Imitation and Gender Insubordination, Butler says the following on the meaning of queer:

“Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence." -Judith Butler

Huh. So, that’s what “queer” means. Both Butler and Foucault emphasize power dynamics as well as deconstruction of social norms as liberation. There seems to be a philosophical difference between the gay rights activists of the past and queer theorists. I’m no academic or anything, but it seems that the biggest distinction between gay liberation and queer theorists is that the former advocates for eliminating oppression based on characteristics like sexual orientation or gender and the latter sees these qualities as inherently oppressive in and of themselves. Where the former seeks equality by acknowledging and respecting difference, the latter seeks equality by destroying distinction.

Well, Butler and Foucault would be proud because in 2024, that distinction is the most blurred it has ever been. In popular culture, being queer comes with a certain punk rock edge. Far from the days of “smear the queer” when I was a kid, in some circles it’s now cool to be gay and being straight seems to be seen as boring. Musicians like David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, Nirvana, Katy Perry or Lady Gaga all played with gender expression as an edgy affectation to tweak the nose of the cultural right even if their connections to actually being homosexual are dubious. As such, the lines between the material conditions of homosexuality and the fringe, artistic culture associated with it become further blurred.

As such, we are seeing more examples of gay liberation activists and queer theory clashing. Many gay liberation activists and feminists fought hard for rights based on the gender and sexuality distinctions the queer theorists dismiss and don’t want to throw away what they see as hard-fought gains. One of the leading voices in this school of thought is feminist author Camille Paglia. Paglia has critiqued queer theory for being too theoretical and removed from the lived realities and historical experiences of sexual minorities. She argues that queer theory's focus on deconstructing identity categories can sometimes obscure the practical and political struggles of gay and lesbian individuals.

Obviously, gay liberation activists are not the only critics of what the modern queer movement has become. After steadily increasing since the 90s, acceptance of LGBT individuals has been dropping in recent years. Between 2021 and 2023 alone, the rate at which Americans support LGBT rights dropped from 71% to 66%.

There are many factors, such as increased polarization, the controversial centering of trans issues by LGBT activist groups and economic woes that are often accompanied by culture becoming more conservative, but that’s not the only factor. Many people had no problem with gay people but had a problem with the trans/queer ideology. After all, there is a material difference between “gays are equal and should be able to get married no matter what their gender is” and “gender is an oppressive ideology that must be abolished and you’re a bigot if you don’t agree.” Like it or not, people can only accept so much change so fast, and the queer ideology is becoming broadly unpopular outside of academic circles and media elites. This is triggering a broader backlash against the LGBT community at large.

This becomes even more complicated when you factor in that Pride™ has become both a cultural phenomenon as well as big business. Gay culture and pride have left the underground and everyone from Hollywood to your HR department have gotten in on it. June and pride have slowly become a marketing behemoth rivaled only by the December holidays and it’s become just as commercialized. Trendy, previously heterosexual actors now sport alternative pronouns in interviews the same way they would swear on the importance of a vegan diet years before. Increasingly, “queer” seems like a pointless term co-opted by narcissists and those in society with the most power who use it (at best) as a trendy affectation or (at worse) a way for the already privileged to claim victim status to shield themselves from criticism. It’s the current meta to leverage marginalized identity, real or perceived, for social or material gain, but what if that changes? We are already starting to see the culture shift right again. Those who are already powerful will just move on to the next thing leaving the gay community behind to live in the resentment that the elites who highjacked the movement created.

I don’t think it’s as simple as “real gay” vs “fake gay”, however. With the exception of some Hollywood celebrities, famous musicians and HR departments, I don’t think most people are using queer identity cynically for attention or for social status. I think in many cases, the desire to be in queer communities speaks to something deeper. Modernity has destroyed many traditional forms of community, social bonds, and connection It is still fairly common for gay people to lose their home, family, community and culture just for coming out and being who they were. In that way, perhaps gay people were just ahead of the curve.

That’s why I was drawn to the gay community years ago even if I was only tangentially bisexual. I grew up in the church, but for a lot of complicated reasons that I won’t get into (in this article), I left in my teens. However, I spent the next fifteen years or so of my life trying to recapture the sense of community, belonging and ritual that came with the church. With religion and traditional community on the decline across the western world, the hole in people's hearts for meaning still needs to be filled. There is a desire for purpose and belonging, and people are looking to have that fulfilled any way they can.

I’m not sure what the solution will be, but I think I caught a glimpse of what it may look like on that same day in 2017 when I was booed for marching in the pride parade. It was a Sunday afternoon after the festivities ended and my friends and I found ourselves at a small diner to grab a late lunch. We sat down, talked, laughed and reminisced about the days events. As I ate my greasy spoon fare, I looked around the diner to take in the other patrons. I saw many others who were in their rainbow regalia who had obviously come from the pride parade as well. People of all ages, ethnicities and genders were all taking part in the same ritual as we were- engaged in a slightly tired, but satisfied conversation and enjoying a simple meal together. I noticed another demographic there, however, who seemed out of place on the surface.

There were also a good deal of families with young children also dressed up, but in their Sunday best. These families must have come from church and were getting a customary meal afterwards much like I did as a child. They were having the same types of conversations with the same relaxed, tired but joyous demeanor. When we got up to leave, we passed another group of people coming in. It was a group of older lesbians- they had the same look as the group that booed us- and I tensed up for a moment. But a woman in the group took us in, and with a small smile she said “happy pride” before moving past us to find her own seat. As I took one last look over the diner before leaving, I saw the same golden light of late afternoon wash over all of us- rainbow colored and strait-laced alike- and I felt there was a moment of connection between all of us. We were all looking for the same thing, even if we found it in different places. We all just wanted somewhere to belong.