Background of the Queer Theory
Webster-merriam.com defines queer as differing in some odd way from what is usual or normal. Littlejohn and Foss describe the word as something strange or unusual and has become an academic subdiscipline which is called Queer Theory.
The phrase “queer theory” is attributed to the title of the conference coordinated by Teresa de Lauretis in 1990 to deliberately disrupt the complacency of gay and lesbian studies. Its mission is to shake up the meanings, categories and identities around gender and sexuality (Littlejohn and Foss).
Judith Butler has been influential in establishing the ways in categorizing sexuality and identity by continually questioning the existing discursive constructions on it (Littlejohn
and Foss).
David Halperin expanded the theory by not being limited on the categories alone. He describes Queer as “whatever is odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant” (Littlejohn and Foss), thereby being parallel to the main definition of the word itself.
For Butler and most of the queer theorists, construction of gender and sexuality is fluctuating, and are open for a different and a more fluid construction to emerge (Littlejohn and Foss).
Introduction
Initially, there were only two terms to describe the phenomenon of going beyond the normal and accepted biological gender, those are being “gay” and being a “lesbian”. For some scholars, the term “gay” includes in its umbrella the lesbians, bisexuals and transgender. As time flies by, a lot of new terms have been introduced to define preferences, identity, and “being gay”. Initially, it was only gays and lesbians, but they are now called as the LGBT Community, others use LBGT Community, this is an acronym for Lesbians, Bisexuals, Gays, and Transsexuals /Transgender. For uniformity, this paper will use LGBT to describe the community.
It is imperative indeed to define some new terms being used in the LGBT before we
proceed with discussing the details of the paper. These are some of the new terms being used to describe a gay and a lesbian:
- Transsexual/ Transgender – term to describegays, particularly the male gay, who have already changed their biological gender through medical operation.
- Transvestites – gays who prefers to wear the other gender’s clothing and appearance, e.g. gays who has breast implants,taking hormones through pills or injection. Some call themselves as “effeme”from the French word femme
- Stag – a gay who goes to party alone (www.merriam-webster.com)
- Bi – an abbreviated term for bisexual, gays who are attracted to both sexes.
- Downe – a new term not yet included in any dictionary, US. Reinvented into the word”DownE” with a capital “E”, expressed during the hype ofthe raving/ecstasy scene which began to popularize in the early 90’s (www.urbandictionary.com).derived from the definition of “downlow” which was taken from theAfrican-American Community. Brought in by the Filipino/Asian-American Male & Female LGBT community in the US. Reinvented into the word “DownE” with a capital “E”, expressed during the hype ofthe raving/ecstasy scene which began to popularize in the early 90’s (www.urbandictionary.com).
- Purple/femme- woman who act and dress according to the norms of the society but is attracted to a lesbian.
- Soft Butch – lesbians who act as male but can still feel and sometimes act in a feminine way.
- Hard Butch – Lesbians, who act, pretend, dress, and feel as if they were born as a man.
- Butch gay – admits openly of being a gay but prefers to use the clothing of a guy. Some calls them “Discreet”.
Although these terms are too western in nature, usage of some of these terms are also being adapted in the Philippines like purple, bisexual, transvestite, gay and lesbian. However, a major modification has been made to describe a bisexual and a gay. Some of the gays preferred to be called “bisexual” regardless of their preference that they are still attracted to male only. Clearly there is a disparity between the definition and the usage.
Methodology
An ad- hoc Guys4men account has been created to attain knowledge on how the labels are
being used in its chat room. Guys4men.com has been selected as a sample network since the network ranks number 6 as to site traffic worldwide since March 17, 2007 on The Weekly Market Share of Visits Rankings Philippines– mostly in Metro Manila region Gay and Lesbian Category (Dawley 2007). Guys4men has about 370000 members and about 97000 of these are in the Philippines – mostly in Metro Manila region (Rios 2007). For the protection of the respondent, the ad – hoc account created and his account will not be named, but themessages have been recorded. Profane words were also deleted.
To understand more of this, let us look at the transcription of chat messages exchanged between the ad- hoc account and the recipient:
(ad- hoc account): can we chat?
(Recipient):sure
(ad- hoc account): are you male or female?
(Recipient): bi
(ad- hoc account):do you mean you are attracted to both male and female?
(Recipient): No,only to male.
(ad- hoc account): so are you gay?
(Recipient): No,bi!
To know the rationale behind this usage of labeling, a thread has been created in a yahoo
group for bisexuals named pinoybis (http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/pinoybis), an online group for bisexual Filipinos. The question posted was about labeling on Filipino gays. Several answers has been posted and to summarize it, most of the gays prefers to be called as bisexuals because of stereotyping that term “bisexual” entails masculinity, as most of the gays prefers a partner who is more discreet and acts “manly”. They further discussed that, this can also be a manifestation of their frustration that their partner is still a straight guy since majority of the gays in the Philippines prefers a straight guy as a partner.
Thus, it is important to note that labeling is not standard and we can not establish a universal
fact basing on the definitions of terms that one is not expected to follow the definition to be considered acting within the norms. We can create labels to categorize gender basing on preference and liquidity. Labels indeed are culture based, created by the groups to describe themselves.
Conclusion and
Recommendation
Queer Theory opens itself to liquidity with regards to categorizing gender and identity since the labels changes constantly through time to suit the need of a particular culture. In the local context, we have adapted the terms but modified it to suit the need of the members.Further studies may also focus on exploring the reason why gays prefers a more masculine partner; this issue is not included in this thesis.
References
Dawley, H. (March 27, 2007). Retrieved July 27, 2008, from http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_11038.asp.
Downe (2005). Retrieved August 21, 2008, from http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=downe.
Littlejohn, S. & Foss, K. (2008) . Theories of Communication (9th ed.).USA: Lyn Uhl.
Queer. (2008). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved August 21, 2008, from
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/queer
Rios, J. R. (2007). The World For Men. Icon, 2, 68 – 73.
