Scholars associated with the development of queer theory are French post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault, and American feminist authors Gloria Anzaldúa, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Judith Butler.
Informal use of the term "queer theory" began with Gloria Anzaldúa and other scholars in the 1990s, themselves influenced by the work of French post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault,[6] who viewed sexuality as socially constructed and rejected identity politics.
The term "queer" itself intentionally remains loosely defined in order to encompass the difficult-to-categorize spectrum of gender, sexuality and romantic attraction.
Warner stated that while many thinkers had been theorising sexuality from a non-heterosexual perspective for perhaps a century, queerness represented a distinctive contribution to social theory for precisely this reason.
[18] Foucault's work is particularly important to queer theory in that he describes sexuality as a phenomenon that "must not be thought of as a kind of natural given which power tries to hold in check" but rather "a historical construct.
[20] While proponents argue that this flexibility allows for the constant readjustment of queer theory to accommodate the experiences of people who face marginalisation and discrimination on account of their sexuality and gender,[21] critics allege that such a 'subjectless critique', as it is often called,[22] runs the risk of abstracting cultural forms from their social structure, political organization, and historical context, reducing social theory to a mere 'textual idealism'.
The standard work of Andreas Frank, Committed Sensations,[24] highlights comprehensively the life situation of coming out, homosexuality and same-sex communities to the millennium.
As Chevrette writes, "Queering family communication requires challenging ideas frequently taken for granted and thinking about sexual identities as more than check marks.
"[28] Chevrette describes four ways that scholars can "queer" family communication: (1) revealing the biases and heteronormative assumptions in family communication; (2) challenging the treatment of sexuality and queerness as a personal and sensitive topic reserved for the private sphere rather than the public; (3) interpreting identity as a socially constructed phenomenon and sexuality as being fluid in order to expose the ways gender roles and stereotypes are reinforced by notions of identity and sexuality as being fixed; and (4) emphasizing intersectionality and the importance of studying different identity markers in connection with each other.
[29] Queer theory is the lens used to explore and challenge how scholars, activists, artistic texts, and the media perpetrate gender- and sex-based binaries, and its goal is to undo hierarchies and fight against social inequalities.
[40] Specifically, Jones found that happiness was often used as a reward for performance of intersectional normativity; those who were lesbian and yet also cisgender and mothers were more likely to experience euphoric moments even in discriminatory settings.
He argues that for instance the lesbians documented in Cherry Grove, Fire Island[41] chose to identify specifically as either "ladies", "dykes" or "postfeminists" for generational, ethnic and class reasons.
While they have a shared sexuality, flattening their diversity of identity, culture and expression to "the lesbian community" might be undue and hide the social contigencies that queer theory purports to foreground (race, class, ethnicity, gender).
[42] A recurring criticism of queer theory, which often employs sociological jargon, is that it is written, according to Brent Pickett, by a "small ideologically oriented elite" and possesses an evident social class bias.
Perreau sheds new light on events around gay marriage in France, where opponents to the 2013 law saw queer theory as a threat to French family.
By examining mutual influences across the Atlantic, he seeks to reflect on changes in the idea of national identity in France and the United States, offering insight on recent attempts to theorize the notion of "community" in the wake of Maurice Blanchot's work.
Perreau offers in his book a theory of minority politics that considers an ongoing critique of norms as the foundation of citizenship, in which a feeling of belonging arises from regular reexamination of it.
[47] In their work Cynical Theories, scholars Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay characterize the largely unscientific view on biology and objective reality as an intentional feature.
Thus, according to them, queer theory knowingly misrepresents biological facts and research, especially on intersex people, to conflate them with completely unrelated issues concerning constructed gender identities such as transgender.