The Politics of Being Queer

He contends that promiscuity breaks social class boundaries[1] and that rigidly exclusive attraction, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is pathological.

[4] The revised edition first appeared in the journal Unmuzzled Ox (1977) and then in Nature Heals, a 1977 collection of Goodman's psychological essays.

[3][1] The essay is credited as a precursor for reclaiming the word "queer", which had been used as a derogatory term for nontraditional gender behavior for the preceding part of the 20th century.

[2] Journalist and civil libertarian Judith Levine described the essay as one of Goodman's most personal and beautiful.

[6] Novelist Kerry Howley wrote that the essay was even more subversive 40 years later, with Goodman's praise of anonymous sex and assertion that teacher–student relationships are inherently erotic.