Friday, July 1, 2022

'Queer theory' is a dirty word? To whom?

Sometimes you hear cis/het people saying resentfully that being trans/queer is some kind of golden ticket to the publishing industry. It's not, and there are specific barriers faced by trans/queer writers on trans/queer topics.

How's the Digital Closet going? Amazon.com won't let MIT Press categorize the book as "queer theory" because Amazon treats "queer" as a dirty forbidden word.


On 13 Jan 2023, the Guardian published a letter to the editor that said: "I suspect that many of the others, like me, consider the term to be insulting and derogatory, and certainly not “reclaimed”. I am a gay man of 66 years with many friends and acquaintances, and know no one who would refer to themselves as queer. It would seem a small minority of activists has encouraged the media to use the word without considering its offensiveness to many people." (What to make of the ahistorical claims that only a small number of people with diverse, marginalized genders/sexualities have used the word queer and that they are unaware of its potential offensiveness? It is simply incorrect.)

See also: "Does the Title of 'Queer' Still Promise a Radical Book?," a 42-minute read by Kravitz M. on Medium.

black-and-white photo of smiley mustached guy on an old typewriter

Clackety-clackety-bing! photo by Art Hupy, c. 1965 © Creative Commons. University of Washington Libraries, Digital Collections. Flickr.

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