SOC 0851 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Stonewall Riots, Queer Theory, Age Of Enlightenment
31 May 2018
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Queer Theory
Queer theory pushes to do away with categories of sex and gender
It is an act of empowerment to take a word that has been used as an insult
against a group to which you belong and to claim it for yourself and the
groups
o Used to offend the sensibilities of the general public and to
anticipate its use as a term of abuse
o Dictionary meaning – not usual, eccentric, or suspicious
o A theory that is queer is a strange or unusual theory – a theory
that is different in some important way
Sources of Queer Theory
o Origins in the Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement
▪ Began in the US with the Stonewall riots in NYC in 1969
▪ Beginning of a period of gay affirmative politics lasting into
the 1970s and 1980s
▪ Fought successfully to have homosexuality removed as a
category of mental illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical
manual of Mental Disorders
▪ Faced antigay backlash in the 1980s and 1990s
▪ Argued for rights based on the assumption that they were
fundamentally similar to heterosexuals
▪ Faced internal contradictions having to do with the
necessity of organizing a social movement around a core
identity as opposed to the reality of many different and
sometimes contradictory experiences
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