Before [WWII], many men had been content to call themselves ‘queer’ because they regarded themselves as self-evidently different from the men they usually called ‘normal.’ Some of them were unhappy with this state of affairs, but others saw themselves as ‘special’—more sophisticated, more knowing—and took pleasure in being different from the mass. The term gay began to catch on in the 1930s, and its primacy was consolidated during the war. By the late 1940s, younger gay men were chastising older men who still used queer, which the younger men now regarded as demeaning. As Will Finch, who came out into the gay world of Times Square in the 1930s, noted in his diary in 1951, ‘The word ‘queer’ is becoming [or coming to be regarded as] more and more derogatory and [is] less and less used by hustlers and trade and the homosexual, especially the younger ones, and the term ‘gay’ [is] taking its place. I loathe the word, and stick to ‘queer,’ but am constantly being reproved, especially in so denominating myself.’
George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. 19.
well that certainly shakes up my assumption that ‘queer’ began as a slur and was then appropriated as positive. i don’t back every argument or linguistic decision in this book, fyi. but the evidence chauncey uncovered about the history of the word ‘queer’ is interesting.
(via fauxmosexualtranstrender)
Really interesting, especially in light of the radical feminist backlash against queerness.
(via blue-author)