Queer Theory

Queer theory initially drew ironically on the pejorative queer to draw attention to the labels we use to describe genders and sexualities in different historical and cultural contexts. Queer theorists have also mounted critiques of essentialism (the belief in a true or authentic self) within scholarship on gender, sex, and sexuality. Consequently, binaries such as manwoman, femininemasculine, heterosexualhomosexual are perceived as powerful regulatory fictions that have been troubled in order to highlight the incoherence in sex/gender/desire. A critique of antidemocratic lesbian and gay political movements, drawing on notions of homonormativity and homonationalism, has also been attempted by queer theorists in order to draw attention to the failure of research on sex, sexuality, and gender to attend to disability, class, race and gender, and nationalism. Two key figures associated with queer theory are Judith Butler and Michel Foucault.