Editing Queer (section)

== Origins and early use ==
Entering the English language in the [[{{ordinal|16}} century]], ''queer'' originally meant {{gloss|strange}}, {{gloss|odd}}, {{gloss|peculiar}}, or {{gloss|eccentric}}. It might refer to something suspicious or "not quite right", or to a person with mild derangement or who exhibits socially inappropriate behaviour.<ref name="oed"/><ref name="mw">{{cite encyclopedia | year = 2014 | title = queer | encyclopedia = Merriam-Webster | publisher = Encyclopædia Britannica | url = http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/queer | access-date = 2014-01-31 | archive-date = 2017-10-03 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20171003084434/https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/queer | url-status = live }}</ref> The [[English language in Northern England|Northern English]] expression "[[wikt:there's nowt so queer as folk|there's nowt so queer as folk]]", meaning "there is nothing as strange as people", employs this meaning.<ref>{{cite web|title=there's nowt so queer as folk|url=http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/there-s-nowt-so-queer-as-folk|work=Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary and Thesaurus (via Cambridge Dictionaries Online)|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|access-date=2 November 2015}}</ref> Related meanings of ''queer'' include a feeling of unwellness or something that is questionable or suspicious.<ref name="oed"/><ref name="mw"/> In the 1922 comic [[monologue]] "[[My Word, You Do Look Queer]]", the word is taken to mean "unwell".<ref>[https://www.monologues.co.uk/Stanley-Holloway/You-Do-Look-Queer.htm "My Word, You Do Look Queer", ''Monologues.co.uk''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210128050801/https://www.monologues.co.uk/Stanley-Holloway/You-Do-Look-Queer.htm |date=2021-01-28 }}. Retrieved 17 January 2021</ref> The expression "in [[Queer street]]" is used in the United Kingdom for someone in financial trouble. Over time, ''queer'' acquired a number of meanings related to sexuality and gender, from narrowly meaning "gay or lesbian"<ref name="AHD-queer">{{Cite American Heritage Dictionary|queer}}</ref> to referring to those who are "not heterosexual" to referring to those who are either not heterosexual or not cisgender (those who are [[LGBTQ+]]).<ref name="AHD-queer"/><ref>Jodi O'Brien, ''Encyclopedia of Gender and Society'' (2009), volume 1.</ref> The term is still widely used in [[Hiberno-English]] with its original meaning as well as to provide adverbial emphasis (very, extremely).<ref name="Dolan1">{{cite book |last1=Dolan |first1=Terence Patrick |author1-link=Terence Dolan |title=A Dictionary of Hiberno English: The Irish Use of English |date=2006 |publisher=[[Gill Books]] |location=[[Dublin]] |isbn=978-0717190201 |pages=187 |edition=2nd |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofhibe0000dola/page/186/ |access-date=6 June 2023 |language=en-IE |chapter=Q}}</ref>

=== Early pejorative use ===
By the late 19th century, ''queer'' was beginning to gain a connotation of sexual deviance, used to refer to feminine men or men who were thought to have engaged in same-sex relationships. An early recorded usage of the word in this sense was in an 1894 letter by [[John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry]], as read aloud at the trial of [[Oscar Wilde#Trials|Oscar Wilde]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Foldy |first=Michael S. |title=The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Deviance, Morality, and Late-Victorian Society |publisher=Yale University Press |year=1997 |isbn=9780300071122 |pages=22–23}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Robb |first=Graham |title=Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |year=2005 |isbn=9780393326499 |pages=262}}</ref>

''Queer'' was used in mainstream society by the early 20th century, along with ''fairy'' and ''faggot'', as a pejorative term to refer to men who were perceived as flamboyant. This was, as historian [[George Chauncey]] notes, "the predominant image of ''all'' queers within the straight mind".<ref name="Chauncey">{{Cite book|title=Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940|last=Chauncey|first=George|publisher=Basic Books|year=1995|isbn=9780465026210|pages=[https://archive.org/details/gaynewyork00geor/page/13 13–16]|url=https://archive.org/details/gaynewyork00geor/page/13}}</ref>

Starting in the underground gay bar scene in the 1950s,<ref name=GrahnGay>{{cite book |title=Another Mother Tongue - Gay Words, Gay Worlds |last=Grahn |first=Judy |author-link=Judy Grahn |publisher=Beacon Press |year=1984 |isbn=0-8070-7911-1 |location=Boston, MA |pages=[https://archive.org/details/anothermotherto000grah/page/30 30–33] |url=https://archive.org/details/anothermotherto000grah/page/30 }}</ref> then moving more into the open in the 1960s and 1970s, the [[homophile]] identity was gradually displaced by a more radicalized ''[[gay]]'' identity. At that time ''gay'' was generally an umbrella term including [[lesbian]]s, as well as gay-identified [[bisexuality|bisexuals]] and [[transsexual]]s; [[gender nonconformity]], which had always been an indicator of gayness,<ref name=GrahnGay/> also became more open during this time. During the [[endonym]]ic shifts from ''invert'' to ''homophile'' to ''gay'', ''queer'' was usually pejoratively applied to men who were believed to engage in receptive or passive [[Anal sex|anal]] or [[oral sex]] with other men<ref>{{cite journal|last=Robertson|first=Stephen|year=2002|title=A Tale of Two Sexual Revolutions|journal=Australasian Journal of American Studies|publisher=Australia and New Zealand American Studies Association|volume=21|issue=1|jstor=41053896|pages=103|quote=The most striking addition to the picture offered by D'Emilio and Freedman is a working-class sexual culture in which only those men who took the passive or feminine role were considered 'queer.' A man who took the 'active role,' who inserted his penis into another man, remained a 'straight' man, even when he had an on-going relationship with a man who took the passive role.}}</ref> as well as those who exhibited non-normative gender expressions.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Czyzselska|first=Jane|year=1996|title=untitled|journal=Pride 1996 Magazine|location=London|publisher=Pride Trust & Gay Times|page=15}}</ref>

=== Early 20th-century queer identity ===
[[File:Drag_Ball_in_Webster_Hall--1920s.jpg|thumb|265x265px|[[Drag ball|Drag Ball]] in [[Webster Hall]], {{circa}} 1920s. Many queer-identifying men distanced themselves from the "flagrant" public image of gay men as effeminate "fairies".{{r|Chauncey|pp=16, 298}}]]
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ''queer'', ''[[fairy (gay slang)|fairy]]'', ''[[Trade (gay slang)|trade]]'', and ''gay'' signified distinct social categories within the gay male subculture. In his book ''Gay New York'', Chauncey noted that ''queer'' was used as a within-community identity term by men who were stereotypically masculine.<ref name="Barrett">{{cite book|last= Barrett |first= R. |date= 2009 |editor-last= Mey |editor-first= Jacob L. |title= Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics |publisher= Elsevier |pages=821 |chapter=Queer Talk |isbn=978-0080962986}}: "In the early 20th century in the United States, the term queer was used as a term of self-reference (or identity category) for homosexual men who adopted masculine behavior (Chauncey, 1994: 16-18)."</ref> Many queer-identified men at the time were, according to Chauncey, "repelled by the style of the ''fairy'' and his loss of manly status, and almost all were careful to distinguish themselves from such men", especially because the dominant straight culture did not acknowledge such distinctions. ''Trade'' referred to straight men who would engage in same-sex activity; Chauncey describes trade as "the 'normal men' [queers] claimed to be."<ref name="Chauncey" />

In contrast to the terms used within the subculture, medical practitioners and police officers tended to use medicalized or pathological terms like "invert", "pervert", "degenerate", and "homosexual".<ref name="Chauncey" />

None of the terms, whether inside or outside of the subculture, equated to the general concept of a homosexual identity, which only emerged with the ascension of a binary (heterosexual/homosexual) understanding of sexual orientation in the 1930s and 1940s. As this binary became embedded into the social fabric, ''queer'' began to decline as an acceptable identity in the subculture.<ref name="Chauncey" />

Similar to the earlier use of ''queer'', ''gay'' was adopted by many U.S. [[Cultural assimilation|assimilationist]] men in the mid-20th century as a means of asserting their normative status and rejecting any associations with [[effeminacy]]. The idea that ''queer'' was a pejorative term became more prevalent among younger gay men following [[World War II]]. As the gay identity became more widely adopted in the community, some men who preferred to identify as ''gay'' began chastising older men who still referred to themselves as ''queer'' by the late 1940s:

<blockquote>In calling themselves gay, a new generation of men insisted on the right to name themselves, to claim their status as men, and to reject the "effeminate" styles of the older generation. [...] Younger men found it easier to forget the origins of gay in the campy banter of the very queens whom they wished to reject.{{r|Chauncey|p=19-20}}</blockquote>In other parts of the world, particularly England, ''queer'' continued to be the dominant term used by the community well into the mid-twentieth century, as noted by historical sociologist Jeffrey Weeks:<blockquote>By the 1950s and 1960s to say "I am queer" was to tell of who and what you were, and how you positioned yourself in relation to the dominant, "normal" society. … It signaled the general perception of same-sex desire as something eccentric, strange, abnormal, and perverse.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Weeks |first=Jeffrey |date=2012 |title=Queer(y)ing the "Modern Homosexual" |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23265593 |journal=Journal of British Studies |volume=51 |issue=3 |pages=523–539 |doi=10.1086/664956 |jstor=23265593 |s2cid=143022465 |issn=0021-9371|url-access=subscription }}</ref></blockquote>