As one of the early but not founding members of Queer Nation in 1990, I can confirm that we were shouting “queer” as both an umbrella term for diverse members of gender and sexual minorities, and as a reclamation of a slur, which was very important in the context of why we were in the streets that summer and for much of the next year or two.
A wave of gay bashing, or queer bashing as we begin to call it, had swept over lower Manhattan in late 1989 and into 1990. Our “safe” neighborhoods of Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and the East Village began to become far less safe as episodes of random street violence against us intensified. (My partner and I were bashed at the end of Christopher Street in 1991.)
The vigilante Guardian Angels founded by Curtis Sliwa weren’t interested in protecting us and were sometimes actually part of the problem. The New York City Police Department treated us with brutal, mocking cruelty. We certainly could not look to them for protection.
Featuring squarely in the center of all of this was the fact that violence was directed disproportionately against people of color and so-called street queens, many of whom today would identify as transgender, though that identity was still in flux and developing at the time.
Act Up had given us a tactical model to emulate. So we took to the streets to declare our intention to bash back at our abusers and to confront the brutally racist NYPD. When we chanted, “we are here, we’re queer, get used to it,” queer took on a deliberately intersectional meaning, not that any of us would have used that terminology then of course. We were gay white men, Puerto Rican street queens, Black women and men suffering from HIV with little access to healthcare, and lesbians sick of sexism and misogyny.
Most of all we were sick of being pariahs, which is why I think “queer” resonated so powerfully with us.
We took to the streets to roar against being hurt for being different. We created the label “queer” because we needed some word that described all of us and that was emotionally powerful enough to transmit our outrage.
We also waived banners saying, “Dykes and Fags Bash Back,” and we chanted that often, but people don’t remember that nearly as vividly today as our “We’re Queer" chant. I think it’s because “queer” worked so much better, both at communicating the intensity of the problem and unifying a diverse group of people who shared important common interests.
