Everyone's Queer

When I was growing up, one of my Quaker mother's favorite expressions was “Everyone's queer except thee and me, and sometimes I think thee is a little queer, too.” Even as a child, I loved both the sentiment and the language, and then later I got a special kick out of the possibilities of the word “queer.” But until I sat down to write this piece, I had never thought about how appropriate the saying is to a consideration of the history of sexuality. For the most striking thing about the literature is that the vast majority of what we know about sexuality in the past is about what is “queer,” in the sense of nonnormative. We assume that “normative” describes most of what happened sexually in the past, but we know very little about that. Except what the history of nonnormative sexuality—same-sex, commercial, non- or extra-marital, or in some other way deemed inappropriate—can tell us. And that, it turns out, is quite a lot

Epistemology · Human sexuality · Normative · Queer · Queer theory · Sociology · European history and politics · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Psychology · Gender Studies · Philosophy

• I Don't Like Passing as a Straight Woman

  C A Pfeffer•American Journal of Sociology•2014

  Add to list

• Interzones

  Kevin J Mumford•Interzones•1997

  Add to list

• Travesti

  D Kulick•Travesti•1998

  Add to list