Queer

From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.

Queer used to just mean strange or odd. In the early 20th century people started using it to mean gay or homosexual. A queer man was another way to say a gay man.

When it was first used, it was an insult. It was usually used to talk about gay men who were effeminate (or who acted feminine.) Starting in the 1960s but even more in the 1990s the meaning changed. Gay men started using the word to talk about themselves. This is called 'claiming' or 'redefining' a word. Sometimes people in minority groups claim or redefine words used to insult them. This takes the power to hurt from an insult and makes it a positive word.

Gay men started to call themselves 'queer' and changed the meaning of the word. Now 'queer' is not an insult, but a word that just means 'gay'. An example of the use of the word queer is the popular TV Show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

Eventually queer came to mean not just gay men. Now queer is also used to describe the whole (acronym) LGBT community. LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender. So a lesbian or a transgender person might also call themselves queer. 'Queer Community' is also sometimes used to talk about the LGBT community.