New Title and a Little Queer Reflection

Keeping It Queer
By Erica Chu

New Title and a Little Queer Reflection

After over a year of running this column under the title Feminist Thoughts, I’ve decided to switch it up a little and offer more of an accessible title for all the people who think feminists are just hairy-legged, bra-burning lesbians. (But for the record, though I do have hairy legs and am not currently wearing a bra, if my partner T were a man, transman, bi-, pan-, omni-, or ungendered person, I’d totally be into her/him/hir).

My first article for Gay Chicago Magazine addressed the word “queer,” and since my blog and new column title are both Keeping It Queer, I think it’s fitting we return once again to that term.

A lot of people are offended by the word “queer,” and I don’t blame them. If someone goes around menacingly calling you ugly, it isn’t pleasant when one of your supposed friends calls themself or others ugly. If for you the word queer is tinged with accusations, shame, and pain, I’m sorry. Try though if you can to understand how and why others may choose to reappropriate and use that word.

In its original contexts, “queer” just means different, strange, eccentric, maybe even suspect. It later acquired more negative connotations, leading eventually to its perhaps familiar usage as a derogatory term for homosexuals. My question, and the question a lot of people are asking is What’s wrong with being different, strange, and maybe even suspect?

In this world, gender variant and same gender loving people are despised, and when they are tolerated, they are expected to at least stay out of the way and act as much like straight people as possible. In recent years there has been so much attention on topics like gay marriage and adoption by monogamous gay couples that other kinship structures are ignored and often criticized. LGBT people are normal—that recognition is what we’re fighting for, right?

Choosing to be known as different or strange and aligning oneself with what is suspect is a way of trying to resist the social structures that mark some people as inside the norm and others outside. If all respectable people have good table manners, claiming to be different/strange/suspect means showing up at the table making use of your elbow patches and chewing with your mouth wide open.

In my first article in Gay Chicago Magazine, I used “queer” as an umbrella term for LGBTQAI identities. Over the course of my time writing this column, though, I’ve realized I was wrong.

Queer has so much of its own specific cultural and political meaning. People who identify as queer (not as say “gay” or “bisexual”) tend to understand themselves as relating to a community quite a bit smaller than the larger LGBTQAI crowd. Queer-identified folks tend to spend more time with trans and gender variant folks and many from those subsets consider themselves queer. There are specifically queer dance parties, social groups, blogs, zines, discussion groups, artistic collectives, political organizations and more.

When I identify as queer, I like that saying “I’m queer” allows me the ability to identify the group of people I share political and social kinship with but also the freedom to name myself with as much or little detail as I feel comfortable sharing. I’ve quickly found that to use “queer” as an umbrella term is as insufficient as calling the LGBTQAI-and-all-the-rest community “gay.” It often gets the meaning across, but it’s not really accurate.

I hope to keep the title Keeping It Queer longer than I did Feminist Thoughts. Though I’ll still be writing feminist articles, I write for the unity and encouragement of the LGBTQAI community as a whole and from a distinctly queer perspective. From what I can tell, there isn’t a thing wrong with being different, strange, or eccentric, and if aligning oneself with the suspect can help other disenfranchised folks find commonalities with our communities, well, I hope you too will lend a hand in keeping it queer.


Erica Chu is a student at Loyola University Chicago and is seeking a PhD in English with a concentration in Women Studies and Gender Studies. She manages the blog keepingitqueer.blogspot.com and can be reached at ericachu@msn.com.