Queer; past gay.
What do I mean when I say “queer”?
4 min readJan 29, 2021
Queer: shorthand for some subset of LGBTQIA+ or to describe someone who isn’t cisgender (cis) or heterosexual (het). Also a 16th century way of saying ‘odd’.
And, in some cases, a slur.
In the early 1990s, a leaflet, QUEERS READ THIS, offered one of the earliest justifications for the reclamation of ‘queer’ in the contemporary sense, as a term of power, rather than a tool for homophobes. It reads:
