Queer

What do you think of when you hear the word “Queer?” To some this word is bitter. It carries hate and pain and hurt. To some it is foreign. I grew up never hearing the word used in a negative way or a positive way. To some, like Eli Clare, it carries a sense of pride. It feels like home. Queer means resistance, love, and freedom. According to the OED, the colloquial definition of queer is “Of a person: homosexual. Hence: of or relating to homosexuals or homosexuality.” ("Queer," def. adj.1). In Exile and Pride, as well as in the world today, queer has a much larger range than this definition. The Urban Dictionary gives the more modern definition of queer as “Originally pejorative for gay, now being reclaimed by some gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons as a self-affirming umbrella term.” ("Queer," def. 1). Queer is a word that has been used in the past to inflict pain and hatred on others. Now, it is an extremely important word to many people who identify in some way other than cisgendered and heterosexual. Clare’s use of the word queer to describe himself and people like him is an act of claiming a personal space and a denial of oppressors.

Queer has a history of being a slur. It originally meant something strange or out of the ordinary, but became a derogatory term for homosexuals. This is linked in how society views homosexuality as different from the norm, something distinctly weird and unusual. It has been a word thrown at LGBT people with hatred. It has been a word meant to put down and oppress those who didn’t fit within society’s norms of gender. Many LGBT people have been attacked with and hurt by the word queer. The word queer has been a marker of shame. To Eli, queer is a word of pride. He knows the history of the word, and acknowledges that there are many people like him who aren’t comfortable claiming queer for themselves. “For some, claiming that word with affection and humor rejects a certain kind of pain and humiliation, but for others, it simply reinforces those same feelings. The ugly words...come highly charged with emotional and social history. Which of us can use these words to name our pride?” (Clare, 109). Clare realizes and draws attention to the fact that pride doesn’t come easy when one has been made to feel lesser for something that is a large part of who they are. He talks about the desire to cast away the part of yourself that makes you different and rejects it. “I need to stare down the self who wants to be “normal”...I can feel slivers of shame, silence, and isolation still imbedded deep in my body” (clare, 110). When Queer is a word that  unmistakably marks a difference, a negative one at that, it is hard to accept as a central part of your identity. However, to let society’s definition of normal and acceptable deny your existence is to allow hatred to defeat you.

What must be done to survive in a world that punishes the different is to refuse to be made ashamed for who you are. You must turn the hatred away and surround yourself with a sense of pride and acceptance. Clare says “Pride works in direct opposition to internalized oppression...to transform self-hatred into pride is a fundamental act of resistance...sometimes the words of hatred and violence can be neutralized or even turned into words of pride.” (Clare 109). This isn’t by any means an easy thing to do. To change the meaning of a word takes time and struggle. However, it is a necessary struggle. Reclaiming queer is an act of resistance against those who want to harm you. “Queer names a reality. Yes, we are different; we are outsiders; we do not fit the dominant culture’s definition of normal. Queer celebrates that difference rather than hiding or denying it. By making queer our own...we take a weapon away from the homophobes” (Clare, 113). The queer community’s work to reclaim this word has taken a word of hatred and transformed it into a word of pride and love and acceptance. Their fight against homophobia and their insistence on self love has allowed queer to become the word it is today. It is free to use by those who identify as bisexual, lesbian, gay, transgender. It can be used by those who don’t want to label their identity. It can be used by those who know who they are but don’t feel they owe anyone a neat definition of their identity. Because of their work, people can even choose not to use queer to describe themselves if they don’t feel comfortable with it. Today, queer carries less impact than it did then. Queer gives a voice to those who have previously been deprived the right to speak openly about who they are. Queer grants visibility to a community that had been obscured out of fear. It has been reclaimed by the queer community. It belongs to them now.

 

"Queer." Def. 1. Urban Dictionary. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Urban Dictionary. Web. 26

    Sept. 2014. <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=queer>.

"Queer." Def. adj.1. OED. OED Online. Web. 26 Sept. 2014. <http://www.oed.com/

    view/Entry/156236?rskey=IsgtPY&result=2&isAdvanced=false#eid>.

Clare, Eli. Exile and Pride. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999. Print.