Queer theory and feminism

Abstract

In the academy today, those of us who work on issues and ideas concerning women, gender, sexuality, sexual ethics, or homosexuality are being surrounded by things queer. Books are creeping into the gender studies sections of our bookstores that are about the business of Queering the Renaissance, Queering the Pitch, and Making Things Perfectly Queer. The titles promise to tell us what it means to be Queer in America, or how Queer Looks; the scope of their inquiries is vast, ranging from/4 Queer Romance about queers in popular culture to Queer Words, Queer Images about queer communication theory to Queer Noises about queer musicians to Queer Blood about AIDS to Queer Spirits a queer mythology book to Queer Doings in the Navy. These books tell us we are living in a time of Queer and Pleasant Danger, while admittedly many of our straight neighbors seem to be living in Fear of a Queer Planet. For many of us who came of age in the relatively stable reign of what academics now call cultural feminism, the moves presented by queer theory sometimes seem precarious and disaccommodating. While earlier forms of feminism centered their politics on the transhistorical, transcultural subject of