The Queer Agenda was always meant to be called the Queer Agenda instead of the Gay Agenda, the Lesbian Agenda, etc. And trust me, I tried out all the titles before I finally settled on using the word ‘queer.’ Older generations of queer people have such an intense reaction to this word and refuse to say it due to how it was perceived growing up. Younger generations, I’ve noticed, embrace the word with their whole heart because they have not seen it used negatively. I named this blog ‘The Queer Agenda’ because the word “queer” carries as much history as queer people themselves, and I think it’s important to talk about it.
“Queer” originated in 1513, when it first appeared to mean something “not normal, peculiar, or odd.” However, the Oxford English Dictionary says the noun “queer” was not used to describe homosexuals until 1894, when it was first used by the 9th Marquess of Queensbury, John Douglas. In October 1894, Queensbury’s son, Francis Viscount Drumlanrig, died in a suspicious hunting accident, and rumors began circulating that he had a relationship with the Prime Minister, Lord Roseberry, and he had committed suicide. Queensbury accused “Snob Queers like Roseberry” of causing his son’s death. Douglas also left a calling card that read, “For Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite [sic]” at Wilde’s club when making allegations against Wilde for dating his son, Lord Alfred Douglas, in February 1895. During this time, Wilde sued for libel as sodomy was a criminal charge at this time, and this lawsuit led to the arrest and trial of Oscar Wilde.
The trial opened on April 3, 1895, and Queensbury’s lawyers immediately went after Wilde’s character in front of the press and public galleries. One of Queensbury’s lawyers, Edward Carson, painted Wilde as a vicious older man who took advantage of young boys with the promise of gifts and extravagant life that would “lead them” into homosexuality. Wilde was forced to drop the libel charge when Queenbury’s lawyers told the court they intended to call upon several male prostitutes as witnesses to testify that they had sex with Wilde. Queensbury won a counterclaim against Wilde for the money accrued for lawyers and private investigators in organizing evidence. Wilde was subsequently left bankrupt. For one final blow, Queensbury sent the proof that Wilde had essentially paid for to Scotland Yard. Wilde was charged and convicted of gross indecency under the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 and was sentenced to two years of hard labor. Prison ruined his health and reputation, and upon his release in 1897, Wilde never returned to the U.K. Oscar Wilde died on November 30, 1900, at the age of 46, outliving Queensbury by ten months.
After Wilde’s death, Alfred became close friends with Olive Custance, a bisexual heiress, and poet, and they married on March 4, 1902. They had one child, Raymond Wilfred Sholto Douglas, born on November 17, 1902. Custance’s girlfriend, Natalie Barney, was actually named the godmother of Raymond. Alfred and Olive would end up separating in 1913 due to their son’s rocky mental health but never divorced. Olive died on February 12, 1944, at the age of 70, and Alfred on March 20, 1945, at 74.
Nineteen years after the first use of the noun “queer” in a public way, the adjective “queer” began to mean “homosexual” around 1914. The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang notes that it was “derogatory from the outside, not from within,” meaning the word “queer” was embraced as a self-description before 1914. Even though Oscar Wilde was dragged out in public and shamed for being queer, it is possible that he self-identified this way. The 1949 printing of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary lists “queer” as meaning “counterfeit money” since dictionaries shied away from definitions and words that could be considered offensive in order to be used by schoolchildren. The 1965 printing of Webster’s New World Dictionary, College Edition lists the “queer” noun and adjective as slang for homosexual but not offensive slang.
Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition, or the most current one, used by the Associated Press and many news organizations, lists “queer” in these exact words: “[Slang] homosexual: in general usage, still chiefly a slang of contempt or derision, but later used as by some academics and homosexual activists as a descriptive term without negative connotations.” According to the Dictionary of American Slang, in the early 1990s, “queer” was adopted as a non-derogatory term in the spirit of gay pride.
The gay rights movement and the AIDS crisis helped historians trace the first positive adoption of the word “queer” to the group Queer Nation, founded in March 1990 by Tom Blewitt, Alan Klein, Michelangelo Signorile, and Karl Soehnlein as a radical organization to combat violence against homosexuals. Queer Nation was an off-shoot of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), founded in 1987 as a protest group demanding more action to solve the AIDS crisis. Queer Nation was a group of young, queer people who wanted change and were not waiting for it to happen.
Language is complicated, and it always will be, especially when language has turned against a group of people and been used to beat them down. Whether it’s Douglas Queensbury calling Oscar Wilde a “somdomite” [sic] or being called a queer while walking down the hallways of your high school, straight people have consistently used our language against us. In reclaiming this word and proudly identifying as a queer person, we disarm bigots who use queer as a derogatory term. We take back the power when we say queer. If we choose to be afraid of this word, we choose to be afraid of its history.
The word “queer,” for me, feels like home. It feels warm and inviting. It feels like opening a family history book, pointing to the different names and dates, and telling stories about them. It keeps me grounded in my history. It helps me see where I’m going because I’ve seen where we’ve been. However, I acknowledge that the word “queer” is riddled with hate, bullying, and bad memories for some. For them, this word doesn’t feel comfortable. It feels prickly and cold and foreign. Choosing to identify as and say the word “queer” is a personal decision for each one of us. I choose to do both because it makes me feel empowered, something I wish it did for everyone. I hope through this blog you can find empowerment and love in the word “queer.”
Welcome to the Queer Agenda.
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