What Is Queer, Anyway?

The great heterosexual Trojan horse.

When I was nineteen, I got chatting with a middle-aged man wearing a dog mask and fake paws at a fetish exhibition.

He was small and wiry, around his late 50s, and seemed blissfully happy trailing behind his mistress. 

And while there's plenty to say about the specifics of their relationship (he was one of several “puppies” she tended to), how they met (at a wellness convention), and whether their loved ones knew about their lifestyle (hers did, his didn’t, not even his wife), what stuck in my mind was the strange bubble of familiarity we found ourselves in.

Every day, this guy goes to work, buys his groceries, spends time with friends and family, and none of them has any idea about this part of his life. And yet, even though I didn’t know his name or his age or what he did for a living, I knew he liked to dress up as a dog in his spare time. 

There are some things we want to know about the people around us. And others that we only need to know in specific contexts.

In the end, maybe that’s better for all concerned.

---

In 2023, the proper context for queerness appears to be, well...everything.

There’s queer line dancing and queer ecology and queer joy.

People are “queering” death and farming and nuclear weapons.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Joan of Arc, Superman, God, real or imaginary, new or old, everything has been, or urgently needs to be “queered.”

So maybe it's time we asked; what is queer? And why is it so inextricably linked with the LGBT community? Here’s queer theorist, David Halperin, with his take: