Many lesbians, gay men, and those who would increasingly claim the category transgender who had felt the sting of the queer insult were quite surprised, then, to encounter the term’s reemergence in the 1990s, spurred both by a political formation of militant and creative LGBT activists and by a new cadre of academic scholars. In the 1960s and 1970s, a new social movement called for the rejection of labels such as queer and even homosexual (itself seen as pejorative and medicalizing) in favor of proud proclamations like “Gay Is Good.” It was often but not always offered as epithet and ascribed to others rather than claimed for oneself and by the twentieth century it was most commonly used for reasons of perceived sexual or gender non-conformity. Queer carried particular currency in scandal from the lingo of newspaper exposés and gossip columns to private epistolary speculation. Up through the nineteenth century the word was primarily used to mark individuals considered odd or outside social norms. HanhardtĪmong the first lessons instructors teach in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) history classes is about the changing definitions and uses of the word queer. Photo from the Seattle Municipal Archives () under a Creative Commons License 2.0 () Queer History Christina B.
