LIVING IN QUEER TIMES

"Queer” is a complex and fluid term. Historically it meant “strange” or “peculiar,” but from the late nineteenth century it came to be used as a slur against people expressing same sex desires. The contemporary usage of queer as an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender began in the 1980s, when LGBT activists (as they were known at the time) began to self-identify as queer. This deliberately provocative reclamation of the word was seen as a radical alternative to the more limiting categories of identity that made up the LGBT acronym. From these