Literally, queer means “odd” or “strange”. The term was – and continues to be - used as a slur in the United States for persons with same-sex sexual desires, much like the current slur “fag”. “Queer” was first reclaimed in the late eighties and nineties through the politics of the activist groups Act Up (the AIDS Coalition to unleash Power) and Queer Nation, whose main struggle was to push the U.S. government to address the AIDS crisis in the gay community(1). The political strategy was not only to claim queerness as part of life, but also to challenge “normativity” including exposing heteronormativity as a system that is taken for granted in the workings of daily life.
The term was brought to the academic sphere by the very activists involved in the reclamatory politics, and was further developed into “queer theory”(2) which drew on post-structuralist theories and now forms a central field in Gay and Lesbian Studies. The theory’s main premise is that identities are not fixed categories that determine the social condition, but they are rather fluid, mutable, and multiple. Thus, the theory calls on “identity politics” to reconsider its role in maintaining essentialist notions of gender and sexuality(3). Contrary to common misunderstandings however, queer theory and identity politics are not mutually exclusive(4). Indeed, queer politics acknowledge the need for identity politics. While identity politics fights heteronormativity, and while LGBT identity politics often fight for inclusion as normative identities, queer theory and politics challenge the very system that produces identity categories and normativity itself(5).
As the politics and theory progressed, “Queer” was added to the LGBTQ acronym which drew attention to the question whether Queer can actually function as an identity category. Mostly, “queer” remains used as a general label for “non-normative” sexualities. The term is also used for gender identities (not only sexual identities), wherein “gender-queer” now denotes a person who does not identify with either end of the gender binary (not as a man or a woman) and actively seeks to challenge this binary through their gender presentation and performance. Academically, queer theory is increasingly critiqued for appearing universalist and/or for maintaining Western theoretical assumptions(6), and is molded by new interventions from post- and de-colonial academic thinking(7).
The term’s use in Lebanon has been mostly among Beirut-based gender and sexuality activist circles(8) that have access to queer theory’s academic debates, academic publishing on queer sexuality in the region(9), and who negotiate reclamatory sexual politics locally(10). Campaigns such as “ana shath”, conducted by the local group Helem in 2010 as part of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, reflect the basic premise of reclamatory politics that seek to give unapologetic visibility to the commonly perceived “non-normative” and challenge the very quest for normativity(11). Other campaigns explicitly linked queer activism to a fight against sectarianism and for secularism in protests such as “Laique Pride”(12). Many in the sexual rights activism sphere have resorted to using “queer” instead of “LGBT” given the latter term’s firm association with donor agendas, NGOization, and European and/or American governments’ funding. The term is often transliterated into Arabic as “kweer”, and is used in blog writings and public graffiti.
