Glossary of terms used within queer theory. Each links to its own page.
Normativity and its enforcement
- heteronormativity — the normative framework organizing social life around heterosexual reproduction and the nuclear family
- homonormativity — the assimilation of queer life into normative structures of domesticity, consumption, and state recognition
- compulsory heterosexuality — the institution through which women’s labor and sexuality are organized for men’s benefit
- gender binary — the classificatory system dividing persons into male/female and treating this division as natural and exhaustive
- normalization — the process by which certain practices are constituted as “normal” through the production of a standard
Identity, performance, and social life
- performativity — the constitution of gender through regulated, repeated acts
- the closet — the epistemological structure organizing secrecy, disclosure, and knowledge around sexuality
- stigma — the social process of discrediting persons through deviation from normative expectations
- intersectionality — the co-constitution of race, gender, sexuality, and class as systems of power
- disidentification — working on and against dominant ideology simultaneously
- queer of color analysis — method for reading the co-constitution of race, sexuality, and political economy
Kinship and relation
- queer kinship — relational structures constituted through care and solidarity outside heteronormative reproduction
- two-spirit — Indigenous gender and sexual identities outside the colonial binary
Politics and assimilation
- assimilation politics — the strategy of securing inclusion within normative institutions rather than challenging the norms
- reproductive futurism — the political logic organized around the figure of the Child
History and crisis
- AIDS crisis — the epidemic that transformed queer politics, kinship, and theory through state abandonment and community response
Futurity and refusal
- queer negativity — the refusal of the terms on which inclusion and futurity are offered