Queer Theory

Queer theory is a field of post-structuralist critical theory associated with the study and theorization of gender and sexual practices that exist outside heterosexuality and that challenge heteronormativity. Following social constructionist developments in sociology, queer theorists are often critical of essentialist views of sexuality and gender and study those concepts as social and cultural phenomena, often through an analysis of the categories, language and binary oppositions in which they are portrayed. It emerged in the early 1990s out of queer studies and women's studies and was developed by the American feminist scholars Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.