Eight short monologues in response to the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act.
Status: To Be Determined
Runtime: 20 minutes
Queers - Queer - Netflix
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning “strange” or “peculiar”, queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer scholars and activists began to reclaim the word to establish community and assert an identity distinct from the gay identity. People who reject traditional gender identities and seek a broader and deliberately ambiguous alternative to the label LGBT may describe themselves as queer. Queer is also increasingly used to describe non-normative (i.e. anti-heteronormative and anti-homonormative) identities and politics. Academic disciplines such as queer theory and queer studies share a general opposition to binarism, normativity, and a perceived lack of intersectionality within the mainstream LGBT movement. Queer arts, queer cultural groups, and queer political groups are examples of expressions of queer identities. Critics of the use of the term include members of the LGBT community and others who associate the term more with its colloquial usage as a derogatory insult or who wish to dissociate themselves from queer radicalism.
Queers - Reclamation - Netflix
Ah, do we really have to use that word? It's trouble. Every gay person has his or her own take on it. For some it means strange and eccentric and kind of mysterious [...] And for others “queer” conjures up those awful memories of adolescent suffering [...] Well, yes, “gay” is great. It has its place. But when a lot of lesbians and gay men wake up in the morning we feel angry and disgusted, not gay. So we've chosen to call ourselves queer. Using “queer” is a way of reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the world.
Queer people, particularly queer people of color, began to reclaim queer in response to a perceived shift in the gay community toward liberal conservatism, catalyzed by Andrew Sullivan's 1989 piece in The New Republic, titled Here Comes the Groom: The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage. The queer movement rejected causes viewed as assimilationist, such as marriage, military inclusion and adoption. The term may be capitalized when referring to an identity or community, rather than as an objective fact describing a person's desires, in a construction similar to the capitalized use of Deaf. The “hip and iconic abbreviation 'Q'” has developed from common usage of queer, particularly in the United States.
Queers - References - Netflix