Queer Theory Questions Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Queer Theory Questions - Assignment Example According to Cathy J. Cohen (438), the advent of queer theory in the early 1990s found its most direct confrontation with the real-life politics of gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgendered activists. Queer activism became perceived as a more confrontational political formation aimed at addressing the invisibility of gay and lesbian members in civil rights political organizations. Queer activism aimed at first recognizing and encouraging the movement and fluidity of people’s sexual lives. Queer activism also aimed at challenging the various practices and power circles that rendered the gay and lesbian community members invisible. What queer activism achieved further in correcting earlier conceptions about the gay and lesbian communities was their readiness to emphasize and exaggerate their own anti-normative characteristics and non-stable behavior (Cohen 438). Queer activism got perceived as a multisite and sustained resistance against the dominant constructions of gender and race. Cohen also admits that queer activism, however, failed in its present form to challenge the systems of oppression and domination. Particularly, queer activism failed to address the normalizing processes that were engrossed in heteronormativity. Heteronormativity had been the main focus of the advent of queer activism. She suggests that queer activism has failed to analyze heterosexuality as it got founded on a simple dichotomy that existed between those who got deemed queer and those deemed as heterosexual (Cohen 440). She suggests that some queer activists have begun to prioritize sexuality as the principal avenue through which they follow their politics. Her disappointment is further engraved in these individuals who continue to pursue their politics by emphasizing on a single characteristic of their identity rather than focus on the multiple diversities that determine our life chances (Cohen 440).  Ã‚