Tending to borders

Abstract

In this chapter, I shall look at definitions and terminology covering issues such as what the label ‘queer’ actually describes and how women in all their diversity can possibly be defined under one label or banner. I will also consider some of the critiques of feminism which have come from some sections of academic scholarship, such as queer politics and poststructuralist theory; critiques which usually rely on the charge that feminism is essentialist. I will introduce theory from famous scholars such as the philosopher Judith Butler, who has posed questions for feminism and introduced many contemporary activists to queer theory and queer politics. Queer theory is informed by postmodernism and is associated with the academic study of sex, gender and sexuality. Scholar Gayle Rubin (1984) suggests that whereas feminist theory is about the study of gender oppression, queer theory is the study of gender as a whole, including all the different kinds of gendered and sexed identities, identifications, possibilities, sexualities and sex and gender minorities.