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• 1 media/new-pride-flag-01.jpg 2020-10-04T00:33:02+00:00 A Note on Terms 13 What's the difference between "queer" and "LGBTQ+?" plain 2021-08-23T16:22:47+00:00 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. 
  
  Political scientist and activist Cathy Cohen additionally raises an essential intervention in the academic conceptualization of queerness in her essay “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens.” Lamenting the overuse of solely queerness in political organizing and theorizing in leftist circles, Cohen (echoing legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw) argues that “identities and communities, while important to this strategy, must be complicated and destabilized through a recognition of the multiple social positions and relations to dominant power found within anyone category or identity.” This destabilization of social categories, an essential feature of queer politics and theory, means that discussions of gender and sexuality must necessarily include discussions of race, class, disability, and geography. My understanding of queer Appalachian people and cultures, while not always touching on every aspect of identity, is nevertheless indebted to this intersectional understanding of queerness. Moreover, all present and future research and political work in Appalachia, in order to be ethical and precise, must similarly include such intersectional analyses. By using “queer” and “LGBTQ+” interchangeably and with an understanding of their intersectionality, I hope to reflect the slipperiness of all such umbrella designations and open the rhetorical space for complex identities to emerge.