The Wildcrafting Our Queerness Project

A Note on Terms

Throughout this project, I refer to gender and sexual identity using a handful of different terms. Where appropriate, I employ the specific term that the oral history narrator uses to refer to themselves—“gay” for Bob Morgan and Dustin Hall and “lesbian” for Raina Rue, for example. When speaking more broadly about how these narrators’ work relates to a range of people and experiences across Appalachia, I use two different umbrella terms largely interchangeably, “queer” and “LGBTQ+.” This is not a perfect system, however, and both umbrella terms can have different connotations for different people and networks that make their use potentially inaccurate. For many LGBTQ+ people, especially those who are older, the word “queer” is unequivocally a pejorative slur, thrown at them by bigots to wound and to marginalize. The acronym, then, is an “imperfect” though dignifying term, providing a means of expressing solidarity with other different, yet related identities in a way that is not harmful.

Still, for others the reclamation and resignification of the slur “queer” embodies the radical resistance to heterosexual and cisgender cultural norms and the political solidarity that emerges from this resistance. “Queer” also refers to the academic fields of “Queer Theory” and “Queer Studies,” which use the word to describe both the intersectionality of sexuality, gender, race, class, and disability as well as the process of rejecting norms surrounding these identity categories in order to construct a more egalitarian future. For those who prefer “queer,” the acronym may not be as effective in describing the political action and intersectionality that upholds marginalized gender and sexual identities. In short, using any one term to describe a large group of people who possess certain identities will be incomplete and will inevitably refer to someone in a way that does not perfectly describe their identity or their approach to visibility. By using both interchangeably in most cases, I aim to reflect the slipperiness of such broad categorizations, embracing the useful similarities of both terms while also leaving room to acknowledge their differences.

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