Queer: A Graphic History

People wouldn’t have to come out if heterosexuality wasn’t the assumed norm.

Queer theory is all about breaking down these kinds of binaries, which oversimplify the world into everything being either this or that.

One activist strategy for dealing with racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression has been for people to reclaim the very words that are used against them.

recent shifts in the nature/nurture binary from regarding sexuality as “social” to “biological”, and how the homosexual side of the binary is problematized whichever side of nature/nurture holds sway

The guilt and shame of recognizing that your privilege is founded on the suffering of others and that you’ll have to give some of it up in order to address that, or the inner conflict of trying to deny that this is the case.

POPULAR CULTURE IS A KEY AREA OF ENGAGEMENT WITH QUEER THEORY.
YOU MAY GET IDEAS ABOUT HOW YOU COULD THINK MORE QUEERLY ABOUT THE CULTURAL TEXTS AROUND YOU.

The strain of adhering rigidly to a set of masculine/feminine gender roles, and all the possibilities that closes down.

Sedgwick highlights the inextricable link between binary sexuality and binary gender

that “acceptable” homosexuality is founded on gender conformity through an analysis of the ways in which “effeminate” gay boys and men continue to be stigmatized and pathologized (in the mainstream media, in medicine, and in gay culture).

Coming out as gay risks reinforcing the hierarchical binary structure that underlies heteronormativity and homophobia