A couple of people have expressed interest in learning the definition of queer theory so this is my attempt to (hopefully, in just a few phrases) clarify what it is…I begin by explaining what feminist and race theories are because queer theory draws much of its tenets from these two areas.
Feminist Theory was conceptualized as a field around 1970s and put forth the concept that gender is a social construct placed upon sexed bodies once each of us is born. In so doing, feminist theory established a clear separation between biological sex and social gender and identified gender as nothing inherent but everything performative.
Race Theory, like feminist theory, understands race to be a socially constructed concept placed upon bodies using biological markers and leading to categorization of people into groups that have power and groups that have not. Further, race theory put forth a claim that our justice system as it stands is systemically racist and much about race relations is about othering people and criminalizing them.
Queer theory is the newest branch of such social theoretical speculation and it grew out of gay/lesbian studies in the early 1990s. It follows feminist and race theories in that it works towards reformulating sexuality’s definitions/paradigms away from ‘such and such sexuality is inherent and real and biological’ to ‘these categories have been constructed so that order can be maintained over society’. Queer theory exposes our society’s history in creating normative and deviant sexualities as well as a very real historical process of localizing power/benefits (ahem, marriage, anyone?) within categories of sexualities deemed appropriate by those in power.
Finally, I’d like to point out that the word ‘queer’ has been used in negative ways some decades ago and has now been reclaimed by the community of which I am a part of and is being used as both a political ideology (for some) and a sexual identify (for others) and as a verb/action (to queer a space, for example…to queer a college course…all that it means is to bring attention to queer identities and queer ways of being…queer meaning non-normative, non-supportive of mainstream ways of opearating if those ways are inherently biased, lead to disparities and are implicit in discrimination).