Overview of Gay/Queer Criticism

What is a Queer?
o a person who is attracted to multiple genders may identify as queer. Many older LGBT people
feel the word has been hatefully used against them for too long and are reluctant to embrace it.
“Queer” can be used as an umbrella term to refer to all LGBTQI people.
o used to express that sexuality and gender can be complicated, change over time, and might not fit
neatly into either/or identities, like male or female, gay or straight.
What is a Gay?
o (adjective) sexually attracted to people of the same sex and not to people of the opposite sex:

o .Used in some cultural settings to represent men who are attracted to other men in a romantic,
erotic and/or emotional sense.

History of Queer
*Queer Theory -is derived largely from the post structuralist theory, and deconstruction in particular.
1970-a range of authors brought deconstructionist critical approaches to bear on issues of sexual
identity, and especially on that of Heteronormativity - the politics of Inside/Out Fuss asserts that the concept
"coming out" and being visible has been normalized while simultaneously contributing to the disappearance
of queerness.
1980- the theory was also influenced by the political agency, particularly the Anglo-American cultures
in the HIV/AIDS activism.
1990- it is also influenced by contemporary feminism.
*Queer Theory's over arching goal is to be sought out as a lens or tool to deconstruct the existing monolithic
ideals of social norms and taxonomies.
*Feminism and Queer Theory are seen as applicable concepts that provide a framework to explore these issues
rather than as an identity to those in the community.
Queer literary criticism denotes a range of approaches to textual scholarship that analyze and contest
heteronormative structures and relations of meaning
HISTORY OF GAY
Late century
- third gender existed but the term gay has not been used. Karl henrich ulrich used the term "uranian" (urning in
german). In Male urning it has male bodied but its souls belong to female just like in female urning it has
female bodied but its souls belong to men.
1896
- the first issue of der eigene appears in Berlin it is the first gay periodical worldwide.
Der eigene (the unique) was the first gay journal in the world that published from 1896 to 1931 by adolf brand.
Adolf brand contributed many poems and articles.
1897
- scientific humanitarian committee was founded in Berlin on may 14 or 15 1897 to campaign for social
recognition of gay, bisexual and transgender men and women and against their legat age persecution. SHC was
the first lgbt rights organization im history.
1919
- the film differnet from the other is the first fiction film to address a specifically gay audience it was released in
1919. This film produced during the weimar republic
1990
- gay was often used as a shorthand to refer to the entire spectrum of the sexual and gender minorities. The
entire spectrum ( ROYGBIV ) this can be seen in a rainbow.
In 1990 the LGBT was born
Queer and Gay literary criticism denotes a range of approaches to textual scholarship that analyze and
contest heteronormative structures and relations of meaning

Writers Who Follows Queer and Gay literary criticism

Gayle Rubin’s essay “Thinking Sex” is often identified as one of the fundamental texts. Rubin also
argued against the feminist belief that through gender, sexuality was obtained or the belief that
gender and sexuality are the same.
Eve Kosofsky Sedwick Rubin laying the groundwork to start discussion about making a
distinction between gender and sexuality led the way for Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s pioneering
book Epistemology of the Closet.
Judith Butler She argues in her book Gender Trouble that gender, like sexuality, is not an
essential truth obtained from one’s body but something that is acted out and portrayed as
“reality”
Caio Fernando Loureiro de Abreu, best known as Caio Fernando Abreu, is one of the most
influential and original Brazilian writers of the 1970s and 1980s. Caio F., as he habitually signed
his letters, was born in Santiago do Boqueirão in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in 1948, and died
in Porto Alegre in 1996. Made short stories, plays.
Kimball Allen is an American writer, journalist, playwright, and actor. He is the author of two
autobiographical one-man plays: Secrets of a Gay Mormon Felon (2012) and Be Happy Be
Mormon (2014). The latter premiered at Theatre Row in Manhattan on September 24 and 27,
2014, as part of the United Solo Theatre Festival. A playwright, performer, gay activist
Rafael Arévalo Martínez was a Guatemalan writer. He was a novelist, short-story writer, poet,
diplomat, and director of Guatemala’s national library for more than 20 years. Though Arévalo
Martínez’s fame has waned, he is still considered important because of his short stories, and one in
particular: The man who resembled a horse.
Synthesis

References:
1. https://www.vanderbilt.edu/lgbtqi/resources/definitions
2.
3. Plannedparenthood.org
4. Wikipedia.com