Queer movement: history, future, theory and activism

Résumé du document

"Queer focuses on mismatches between sex, gender and desire. For most, queer has prominently been associated with simply those who identify as lesbian and gay. Unknown to many, queer is in association with more than just gay and lesbian, but also cross-dressing, hermaphroditism, gender ambiguity and gender-corrective surgery." (Jagose, 1996).

Queer is a movement, a theory, an activism, a sexual orientation, that focused on gender and sexual construction, and tend to legitimate all the sexual orientation and practices that were considered as "deviants". The central components of the queer perspective are, for Jan Wickman, queer theory and especially poststructuralist scholarship on gender and sexuality, radical activism in the AIDS crisis context, and roots in gay and lesbian politics. We will study when, how and why the queer movements appeared in the early nineties, how it redefined gender identity and sexual orientation, and how it mobilized people during the AIDS crisis.

Extraits

[...] This eighties feminism was also very heterocentred, and based an essentialist vision of “the woman” as a mother, which excluded lesbians. The queer movement was born against this eighties feminism. It was very critic about the “woman” identity that was promoted as an ideal and as a political subject. This critic did not only target the second wave in the US, but also the French feminine essentialist feminism of Psych and Po, and the materialist feminism based on a Marxist inspiration. [...]

[...] Queer movement is also very linked with altermondialist movements. The pink blocks in international anti-summit were a place of experimentations of new way of protesting and organizing collective movements. But the queer way of perceiving gender makes the organization of a social movement difficult. In fact, for Lynn Stephen, a mobilization requires essentialized identities (mothers, blacks, Indians), an illusion of “sameness” and an identity that is understandable for the state. [16]. For example, the men's right movement is structured around the collective identity of fatherhood. [...]

[...] The queer movement was a rupture with this hegemonic, exclusive and normative gay identity. Queer has been associated to lesbians, gays and bisexuals subjects, but its analytic framework is very inclusive and can be used for all the identities perceived as “deviant” by the society. It is commonly used to describe a sexual orientation, a gender identity or a gender expression that does not conform to the heteronormative society: gay, lesbian, transsexual, intersexual, transgendered, genderqueer, asexual, autosexual people It is also used to qualify gender normative heterosexuals with sexual practices that are considered as deviants, like BDSM or polyamory. [...]

[...] The queer movement in the nineties permitted to rehabilitate a lot of sexual practices and sexual orientations which where perceived as deviants. It took model on social movements that were fighting against racism or colonialism, like the Black Feminism, which had already deconstructed the “woman” subject, criticizing the fact that it only concerned the WASP women.[12] The queer movement also deconstructed the heterosexual identity and the way this identity is constructing his opposite deviant, the homosexuality. It also challenged the sexual difference and the straight mind in general. [...]

[...] The queer movement can be considered as a form of post-modernism, or as a product of the third- wave feminism. II. Queer theory: redefining identities Queer theory is a field of Gender Studies that emerged in the begging of the nineties. Authors like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and other deconstructionists heavily influenced it. Queer theorists challenged the heteronormative discourse and focused on non-heteronormative sexualities and sexual practices. Queer theory tries to deconstruct gender and social norms, and to understand how these norms were established and why. [...]