Queer Theory

Damien W. Riggs and

Flinders University, Australia

Gareth J. Treharne,

University of Otago, New Zealand

Introduction to the meanings of ‘queer’

In this chapter we provide an overview of queer theory and share some key examples of how

we and others have applied queer theory in social psychology research. Throughout the

chapter we highlight a differentiation of queer theory and queer research methodologies from

queer studies as an emerging academic discipline and ‘queer’ as an identity category. As has

been noted previously (e.g., Nic Giolla Easpaig, Fryer, Linn, & Humphrey, 2014; Hegarty &

Massey, 2007; Warner, 2004), queer theory has received relatively little attention within

psychology, despite the shared focus on the inherently social nature of identity within both

queer theory and social psychology. As Clarke, Ellis, Peel, and Riggs (2010) suggest, this

relative lack of attention may be a product of 1) the dearth of interdisciplinarity in certain

fields within psychology, 2) the perceived complexity of queer theory, and 3) what has been

seen as the inapplicability of queer theory to psychological methods. These three points draw

attention to the important distinction that we make about our understanding of what is meant

by ‘queer’. Whilst we will discuss this distinction in more detail throughout this chapter, it is

important to signal here in our introduction the differences between i) queer theory, ii) what

This is an Author Accepted version of a chapter published in The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social
Psychology. Copyright Palgrave 2017.
1
are commonly referred to as queer research methodologies, iii) the burgeoning field of queer

studies, and iv) the reclaimed identity category ‘queer’ that clashes with queer theory’s

premise of problematising the construction of identity as category labels and questioning the

seeing of some categories as ‘natural’ or ‘normal’. The research examples we draw upon

provide further clarification of these differentiations as does a focused review of literature

using the term ‘queer’ over the past century.

Queer theory, as we elaborate below, is an oppositional orientation to understanding

how bodies and psyches are produced not through individual intent or experience per se, but

rather through what Butler refers to as “matri[ces] of intelligibility” (1990, p. 17). In terms of

gender and sexuality specifically, Butler describes “the matrix of coherent gender norms”

(1990, p. 24). These kinds of “cultural matri[ces]” (Butler, 1990, p. 24) are a way of thinking

about a coalescence of social norms within which particular modes of being are, at certain

moments in social history and in certain locations, rendered unintelligible and impossible

(e.g., women sexually attracted to women) whilst other modes of being are intelligible and

possible (e.g., women sexually attracted to men) but always tentatively so. These renderings

are far more complex and subtle than quantifying overt hostility towards people who self-

identify with or who are labelled as being within certain identity categories, and queer theory

draws our attention to the ways in which intelligibility polices possibility (Butler, 1993).

More broadly than sex, gender, and sexuality, queer theory suggests that all bodies

and psyches are offered intelligibility through their relationship to a particular set of norms,

ones that privilege the idealised white, heterosexual, middle-class, young, normatively sized

and abled body. Importantly, such a set of norms cannot per se refer to an actual normative

body (though some people will indeed approximate it), but rather a normative fantasy in

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which a particular privileged mode of being could be arrived at, and following this arrival be

unassailable because normativity can never been achieved in finality. In this sense, whilst

queer theory is typically focused on those who are most marginalised by the norms described

above, it does not operate from the principle that other groups of people are always already

within the norm. Rather, it demonstrates how approximation to a norm is always an

approximation, and one that is always at risk of ‘failure’, which Butler (1993) describes as a

haunting by the spectre of the non-normative:

These excluded sites come to bound the “human” as its constitutive outside,

and to haunt those boundaries as the persistent possibility of their disruption

and rearticulation. (xvii)

Butler argues that queer theory speaks to how marginalised groups can gain agency and

recognition as intelligible because “realities to which we thought we were confined are not

written in stone” (Butler, 2004, p. 29).

There is a growing body of social psychological research that has applied the core

premises of queer theory, particularly making use of Butler’s (1990, 1993, 2004) concept of

performativity – the doing of identity that is embedded in daily life that maintains the fantasy

of achieving the normative (e.g., being a good heterosexual) and simultaneously maintains

the related norms (e.g., heterosexuality). Eichler (2012), for example, carried out an

autoethnographic study of “coming out as a queer man [in the US]” (p. 1) in which the

identity of “LGBTQ individuals” (p. 1) is related to performativity through a ‘consumptive

pedagogy’ centred on material goods, gay bars, and online marketplaces for relationships.

Hayfield, Clarke, Halliwell, and Malson (2013) explored the visual identities of bisexual

3
women through semi-structured interviews. The women tended to position themselves as

outside appearance markers of lesbian identity and constructed bisexual visual identity as in

between, or as a blend of, “an implicitly excessive lesbian ‘masculinity’ and an equally

exaggerated heterosexual ‘femininity’” (p. 178) in ways that align with queer theory’s

questioning of identity categories as stable: “I’m not gonna fix myself into a rigid identity

just because it makes somebody else feel comfortable. I am keeping my options open as a

human being so … I’m gonna keep my options open in terms of my appearance as well

(Rose)” (p. 179). Phoenix, Pattman, Croghan, and Griffin (2013) also applied Butler’s

concept of performativity in their research on young people and consumption. Both girls and

boys who took part in focus groups referred to women’s bodies within their descriptions of

consumption as performative of femininity and masculinity. Moreover, female and male

participants discussed sexually revealing female clothing as demarcating “sexualised gender

boundaries” (p. 426), revealing an overarching disparaging of femininity. These findings

demonstrate some ways in which research informed by the key concepts of queer theory can

reveal the naturalisation of certain categories of sex, gender, and sexuality, whilst also

revealing spaces of critical resistance.

Although these research examples demonstrate productive applications of queer

theory, Warner (2004) highlights the problems that researchers may face in attempting to

draw upon queer theory in social psychology research:

Often a queer researcher may eschew offering a clear definition of their

terms, for they do not want to risk essentializing or reducing any of the

categories. Instead they refer the reader to the way the term unfolds in their

research, and in the flow of a given text (p. 326).

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Authors such as Nic Giolla Easpaig and colleagues (2014) have suggested how queer theory

might inform a range of approaches to social psychology research, for example within the

field of community health psychology; however, to a certain degree these approaches are

weighed down by the disciplinary injunction to produce replicable findings. Nic Giolla

Easpaig and colleagues propose that “collective analysis” (p. 121) by community members

might offer one way of avoiding the individualising tendencies of mainstream psychological

research. Whist their proposal has considerable potential, it does not necessarily guarantee a

queer theory-informed method, as it may still result in findings that essentialise a particular

truth about the lives of community members. If anything, texts such as Textuality and

Tectonics by the collective known as Beryl Curt (1994) are arguably closer to a queer theory-

informed psychological ‘methodology’ than most publications that are currently presented as

such. This text presents a range of voices that are never reducible to either the individual or

the collective, and in this sense challenges the imposition of a normative subject upon the

text. More broadly, the work of queering within applications of queer theory functions to

perpetually avoid new forms of normativity becoming inscribed.

These points about the production of queer narratives in research brings us to the third

use of the term ‘queer’ raised above, namely the burgeoning field of queer studies and its

alignment with more established disciplines such as gender studies, women’s studies, gay and

lesbian studies, or LGBT studies. Queer studies, whilst potentially informed by queer theory,

is not automatically so. Instead queer studies, similar to, for example, ‘lesbian studies’,

typically focuses on the lives of people who identify as queer. Several universities offer

courses in ‘queer studies’, and Duke University’s (Durham, North Carolina) Sexualities

Studies website hosts a list of ‘LGBTQI Studies & Sexuality Studies Programs in North

5
America’ (n.d.). Duke University’s own Sexualities Studies programme is (at the time of

writing) incorporated within the Women’s Studies programme (Duke University, 2015).

University of California, Irvine, offers a minor in Queer Studies within the Department of

Gender and Sexuality Studies (University of California, Irvine, n.d.). City College of San

Francisco has a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies programme which was “a

pioneer in the development of the field of queer studies” (City College of San Francisco, n.d.,

¶ 1) and is located within the School of Behavioral Sciences, Social Sciences, and

Multicultural Studies. Humboldt State University (Arcata, California) has a Department of

Critical Race, Gender and Sexuality Studies with an undergraduate programme that integrates

Multicultural Queer Studies with Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies (Humboldt State

University, n.d., ¶ 2). This select description of queer studies programmes is by no means a

genealogy of the field of queer studies and is very much focused on North America where the

discipline is perhaps most established or best marketed and thus does not represent the world

stage of queer studies. A focused search for queer studies programmes based in the UK

revealed a masters programme called Queer Studies and Arts Based Practice at Birmingham

City University (2015) and an interdisciplinary masters programme in Sexuality and Gender

Studies at the University of Birmingham with an explicit focus on queer theory amongst other

critical approaches (University of Birmingham, n.d.). This select information on queer studies

is not intended to be by any means comprehensive but gives an indication of the diverse

identification of academic departments/programmes teaching queer studies and the relatively

scarce existence of queer studies as a specific discipline, particularly compared to the vast

number of universities with psychology departments and programmes.

Beyond our identification of locations where queer theory is explicitly branded as a

part of course curriculum, there are a number of key points to be made about queer studies as

6
an area of academic study. First, as mentioned above, queer studies may not automatically be

representative of queer theory. Whilst this may seem anomalous, we make this suggestion

because the collectivisation of ‘queer people’ may be considered to run against the grain of

queer theory (i.e., by producing a universalising truth beyond that arising from the effects of

demands to intelligibility). It could be argued, following Fuss (1989), that such collectivising

represents a form of strategic essentialism (knowingly deploying the idea that identities are a

‘true’ inner state); however, we would want to be careful about making this claim about all

who are seen to fall under the banner of ‘queer studies’.

Also in regards to queer studies, it is important to acknowledge that not all people

who identify as ‘queer’ will do so through an orientation to a queer theoretical critique.

Whilst many such people may well report an oppositional identification that is informed by

queer theory, many people may use the identity category ‘queer’ as shorthand for ‘non-

heterosexual’, or as a more general critique of normative gender binaries. Our point here is

not to undermine the identity claims of people who identify as queer, but rather to make a

distinction between the various uses of the word ‘queer’. This point about the uses of the

word ‘queer’ in queer studies brings us to a point we take up later in this chapter, namely that

of coercive queering. As Ansara (2010) suggests, the labelling of certain groups (such as

trans people) as ‘queer’ when this is not a label they would use is a form of cisgenderism

(defined as the ideology that delegitimates people’s own understandings of their bodies and

gender identities, see also Riggs, Ansara, & Treharne, 2015). This enforced labelling is an

issue that will be an ongoing concern for queer studies much as it has been for the gay

liberation movements from which it grew in part (Hegarty & Massey, 2007).

7
 In the following sections of this chapter we elaborate in greater detail some of the

points made above with specific focus on the relationship between queer theory and social

psychology. We begin by examining the limited ways in which queer theory has appeared in

leading social psychology journals, demonstrating that there has been little uptake within

mainstream academic outlets. We then outline in some detail what we believe to be the

central arguments of queer theory, before then taking up these arguments with application to

some of our own work. From there we highlight some of the key areas that we believe, into

the future, hold opportunities for the use of queer theory within a critical social psychology.

We conclude by drawing attention to the fraught nature of any attempts at the

institutionalisation of queer theory, in this case within the context of social psychology.

Queer theory as a critique of mainstream social psychology theory and research

Given how queer theory is not premised on equivalency, it is difficult to posit a ‘mainstream’

social psychological equivalent of queer theory. It would potentially serve to unduly

normalise queer theory to place it, for example, on a trajectory that begins with pathologising

anti-gay research, and then proceeds through to what was termed ‘gay affirming’ research,

and then onto the more recently developed ‘LGBT psychology’ (which has at times drawn on

queer theory). In other words, whilst queer theory has been drawn upon by social

psychologists, and indeed offers fruitful directions for critical social psychology, it would be

a disservice to queer theory to simply co-opt it into any form of social psychology through

comparison to other approaches within social psychology that focus on ‘sexuality’ or ‘sexual

orientation’. These categories are themselves called into question in queer theory, as we

explain in the following section. Instead in this section we felt it more productive to examine

how queer theory has been taken up within mainstream social psychology. In order to do this,

8
we undertook a bibliographic analysis of the top 10 social psychology journals, as determined

by Scopus. Table 1 summarises the journals that we examined.

[INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE]

Looking over the past three decades at nine of the journals (and since its inception for

one journal), it is perhaps unsurprising that the word ‘queer’ is only used a total of 53 times

across the 10 journals anywhere in the full text of articles. What is perhaps somewhat

surprising is that queer theory itself is only explicitly mentioned three times. We can

tentatively extend this figure somewhat by including mentions of the word ‘queer’ in journal

articles where it appears in a reference that might be classified as queer theory. This occurred

in nine instances. In only one of the papers, however, was queer theory elaborated in any

detail. This appeared in a paper by Kitzinger (2005), who takes up the work of queer theorists

to suggest that “heterosexuality should be inspected for the ways in which it is produced as a

natural or normal way to be” (p. 233).

Given that of the 53 total uses of the word ‘queer’ only 12 of these were to queer

theory in some form, it is important to examine how the word was used in the other 41

instances. We suggest this may provide us with some further insight as to the state of things

in mainstream social psychology with regard to how ‘queer’ more broadly is understood.

Table 2 indicates how the word ‘queer’ was used in ways other than in reference to queer

theory.

[INSERT TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE]

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 In terms of the first two categories listed in Table 2, we would note that these all

appeared in one journal (Journal of Personality), and all appeared in the years between 1930

and 1969. In 14 instances in this period the word ‘queer’ was used to signify something

unusual, whilst in six instances it was explicitly used in articles focused on psychopathology

(including homosexuality). Moving beyond these somewhat dated uses of the word, there are

two other ways in which it was commonly used in journal articles: to describe an identity

category and as an adjective.

Use of the word ‘queer’ as an identity category, alongside lesbian, gay, bisexual and

trans (LGBT) has been identified as a concern by Chambers (2009) in his discussion of the

problematic appending of the category ‘queer’ onto the acronym ‘LGBT’. In all instances

where this occurred in the social psychology articles examined, this use of the word ‘queer’

was similarly problematic, given it treated as equivalent these differing identities. For

example:

Participants included 202 students who identified as heterosexual, 100 as lesbian or

gay, 40 as bisexual, and 14 as “other” nonheterosexual identities (e.g., “queer”).

Two participants did not identify their sexuality. Given the small numbers of

bisexual and “other” identified participants, we combined the three groups of

nonheterosexual-identified participants into one group and compared them with the

heterosexual-identified students (Konik & Stewart, 2004, p. 823).

10
Equally as problematic was the treatment in one article of ‘gay’ as standing in for ‘queer’:

The study was introduced as a survey concerning gay people’s experiences of

treatment in society. In the introduction, it was stated that the terms gay and gay

people were intended inclusively and were meant to refer to anyone who in some

way identified with that label or community (e.g., through being gay, lesbian,

bisexual, or queer) (Morton & Postmes, 2009, p. 659).

Finally, in reference to queer as an identity category, ‘queer’ is referred to in one article as

appealing to gay men as it offers ‘flexibility’:

Today’s cohort of gay men are increasingly resisting traditional categories of sexual

identity in favor of the more flexible ‘queer’ identity (Hammack, 2008, p. 237).

The word ‘queer’ was also used as an adjective to denote something akin to ‘pertaining to

non-heterosexual people’. Two examples of this are:

There are also a number of studies suggesting that queer work organizations often

intentionally mix the realms of intimacy and work (Anteby & Anderson, 2014, p.

19)

Bisexual women (n = 84) were recruited by contacting college lesbian, gay,

bisexual, and queer organizations and asking that the link to the online survey be

posted in the group’s newsletter, website, or Internet listserv (Conley et al., 2014, p.

82)

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 With only one exception (i.e., Kitzinger, 2005), then, these uses of the word ‘queer’ in

mainstream social psychology journals illustrate the core issues at stake with regard to the use

of queer theory in social psychology. Taking up the points made in the introduction to this

chapter, the use of the word ‘queer’ in the top 10 mainstream social psychology journals

indicates a lack of understanding of the differences between queer theory, queer research

methods, queer studies, and queer identities, instead treating the word as a catch-all for non-

heterosexual identities and as a descriptor for anything that people who occupy such

identities engage in. The following section takes up in more detail why this misapplication of

the word is so problematic in terms of our understanding of queer theory within social

psychology.

Presentation of critical alternatives offered by queer theory

Having presented what we see as the limited uptake of queer theory in a sample of

mainstream social psychology journals, we now turn to outline an understanding of queer

theory. In his discussion of queer theory in the context of the discipline of psychology,

Minton (1997) suggests that:

Resisting the discourse of homophobia, by assuming a de-essentialized identity

that is purely positional, constitutes a queer rather than a gay identity. Unlike a

gay identity, which is grounded in an affirmative choice of homosexuality, a

queer identity has meaning only in terms of its oppositional relation to what is

normative and dominant (p. 338).

At its simplest, then, queer theory is understood as oppositional, as we suggested in the

introduction to this chapter. The question this begs, then, is opposition to what? A simplistic

12
interpretation would be opposition to normative gender binaries, or an opposition to

heterosexual hegemony, or an opposition to white patriarchy (or indeed all of these things

together). A more complex account, however, would emphasise oppositionality to the very

idea of any truth claimed to be the product of inclusive representationality (e.g., trying to

define a comprehensive ‘list’ of sexualities). In other words, queer theory stands in

opposition to any claim that what we think we know stands outside of the ways in which this

knowing is produced. As Warner (2004) suggests with regard to sex and gender, the

relationship between these two descriptors is the product of a claim to an ontological

difference between two presumed categories (male and female, man and woman), one that

trades upon the belief that they are universal and consistent, rather than culturally produced

and contingent. This production of difference, Warner argues, functions to create modes of

intelligibility through which bodies are produced as either intelligible (i.e., those that

approximate particular social norms) or unintelligible. The latter category thus becomes the

site of deviance, of social control, and of social marginalisation and exclusion. Importantly,

as Butler (1990) argues, subjectivity properly (i.e., normatively) constituted is only possible

within matrices of intelligibility – outside of these, intelligibility is denied. Moreover, as

Warner suggests, these matrices of intelligibility are only partially constituted through the

‘facts’ of any given person’s approximation to social norms. There ‘facts’ are perhaps more

properly, Warner argues, constituted through the assumption of approximation, and the ways

in which this is regulated:

Consider this: of all the men you interact with on a daily basis, how many of their

penises have you ever really inspected for biological authenticity? Do we not

usually just presume their existence and move on from there? In practice,

13
 judgements of gender identity are based on public performances, not private parts

(p. 324)

As is oft-repeated in summaries of queer theory, however, these ‘performances’ are not

merely those of actors on a stage. Butler (1993) was at pains to demonstrate that the

performativity of gender is not akin to drag, although drag is a genre that both questions and

reproduces gender. Rather, performativity is a performance so fundamental to subjectivity as

to appear naturalised. As Butler (1993) put it:

performativity must be understood not as a singular or deliberate “act,” but, rather,

as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects

that it names. (p. xii)

The description of queer theory that we have provided above may seem entirely

negative, so much so that some early proponents of queer theory famously disengaged with

the label ‘queer theory’ soon after it rose to popularity in the early 1990s (see Jagose, 1996).

If intelligibility polices possibility (Butler, 1993), then what hope is there for anything but

normative performances of socially condoned modes of subjectivity? The response to this,

from the position of queer theory, is that to ‘queer’ is to highlight the ways in which social

norms are naturalised: How they are reliant upon sets of binary categories that are culturally

contingent. This does not mean that queer theory speaks from a position outside of norms of

intelligibility. As a prime example, Warner (2004)’s above quote about men and penises

makes recourse to cultural knowledge to make a queer theoretical comment on gender from

within norms of intelligibility.

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 In terms of a critical social psychology, Hegarty and Massey (2007) suggest that queer

theory might be useful for the fact that it both critically interrogates social norms, as well as

finding ways to productively live through them from marginal locations. Commenting

specifically on mainstream social psychological attitudinal research and HIV/AIDS, they

suggest that:

Queer theory might suggest how social psychologists could have their attitude

technologies and deconstruct them, too. In the context of HIV/AIDS from which

queer theory largely emerged, it became necessary to critically read the

biomedical discourse through which ‘facts’ about AIDS were being produced and

to develop strategies for living with the virus (p. 61).

For Hegarty and Massey (2007), then, queer theory offers both modes of reading and

modes of living. Such an approach, we would argue, is central to any critical social

psychological project that seeks not only to describe people’s lives, but perhaps more

importantly to explore the ways in which their lives are both proscribed and prescribed, and

from there to make a truly ‘social’ contribution by rendering intelligible alternate ways of

being. In the following section we take these points about description, proscription, and being

and apply them to some of our own research.

Application of critical perspectives/methods to ‘real life’ situations

As we noted above, the use of queer theory within the context of critical social psychology

may allow us to see how people’s lives are proscribed. In this section we first examine an

example from Damien’s survey research where this was potentially the case, and we examine

the ways that the research perpetuated this proscription. In the second section we outline

15
some of Gareth’s research in which he has reflected on how focus group procedures and tick

box questions on demographic questionnaires in his research with lesbian, gay, bisexual,

pansexual, trans, and queer (LGBPTQ) identified research participants have also perpetuated

this proscription and how focus groups also make it possible to explore how identity

categories can be strategically employed but also resisted.

Over a period of two years, Damien and his colleagues have conducted a series of

survey projects focused on the lives of Australian transgender people. Within this research,

Damien and his colleagues intentionally utilised open-ended options for questions about

gender identity, rather than only making available a narrow list of options from which

participants could select. When it came time to analyse the data, however, the requirements

of statistical testing made it necessary to reduce these categories. As Damien and his

colleagues note in one publication:

In terms of self-described gender identity, just over half of the sample (51.5%)

described their gender identity as female, whilst 26.9% described their gender

identity as male, and 21.6% described their gender identity in a range of ways that

for the purposes of the analysis below are grouped as “gender diverse”.

Descriptions included in this latter category include “gender queer”, “non-binary”,

“neutrois”, “agender”, and “gender fluid”. The authors acknowledge that it is

problematic to group these differing gender descriptors into one category, but for

the purposes of statistical analysis, it was necessary to create these categories

(Riggs, von Doussa, & Power, 2015, pp. 248-9).

16
 Once the data had been reduced in this way, no statistically significant findings were

identified that differentiated participants who identified as either male or female from those

who identified with one of the categories grouped under the heading of ‘gender diverse’.

Whilst data reduction for the purpose of analysis is a common phenomenon, and whilst in

regards to Damien’s data set it may not have significantly shaped the reported findings (other

than the finding of no difference between groups), it nonetheless highlights how the

psychological search for differences creates the very differences it seeks to examine. In other

words, by only seeing difference in terms of analysable variables, and when those variables

rely on the narrowing of a broad range of experiences into relatively few categories, then

what disappears are the shades of grey that we suggested above may be important for

challenging normative categories.

This point about the effects of data reduction is especially poignant given other

analyses of data collected in one of the surveys indicated that there were significant

differences between the assigned sex of participants and their gender identity (Riggs & Due,

2013). Specifically, participants who were assigned female at birth were much more likely to

identify as genderqueer than were participants who were assigned male at birth. Whilst this

difference was noted in one publication arising from the data, it was not a focus of

subsequent publications as these group level differences disappeared after data reduction. A

small number of extracts included in the aforementioned publication highlight why these

differences, whilst not statistically significant, might nonetheless be important, as can be seen

from the following descriptions of gender identity provided by three participants who

identified as genderqueer:

• I am both male and female.

17
 • I identify sometimes as a woman but nearly never as a man.

• I identify somewhere between femininely genderqueer and identifying

wholeheartedly as a transgender woman. Slightly genderfluid, but a

definite lean to the feminine side.

As we noted earlier in this chapter, identifying as queer is not the same thing as

engaging with queer theory, so we do not mean to conflate the two here. Rather, our point is

that what disappeared in the above described analysis of Damien’s survey data were precisely

the types of accounts of subjectivity that queer theory might be especially attuned to. Whilst

to a certain degree the publications from the surveys broadly described the lives of

participants, they also served to proscribe the breadth of stories reported by participants, and

thus the potential breadth of challenges to normative gender categories.

The main aim of Gareth’s work that touches on queer theory was to explore the

understandings of health and illness among LGBPTQ communities in Aotearoa/New

Zealand. The project involved a series of 13 focus groups in 2013 and 2014 with 51

participants (see also Graham, Treharne, Ruzibiza, & Nicolson, in press). Three student

volunteers/collaborators have been co-investigators – Katie Graham, Max Nicolson, and

Christian Ruzibiza, all of whom attended multiple focus groups as co-facilitators (running

three groups without Gareth present). Advertising for participants is the first of several ways

in which Gareth’s research was proscriptive of participants’ identities. We initially used

posters with the relatively standard acronym LGBT – leaving off the Q that stands for ‘queer’

(or sometimes ‘questioning’ of identity; e.g., Rankin et al., 2010). Previous research in which

we had emphasised the word ‘queer’ in advertising was picked up by local media in a story

about ‘odd’ summer jobs that students could consider (see Treharne, 2011) and that had not

18
helped recruitment. We initially organised groups for female-identified and male-identified

participants so as to provide a safe and focused space for discussions particularly for women.

This approach was not intended to exclude anyone but likely shaped our sample, of whom

only three participants identified as having non-binary gender identities. One participant who

identified as genderqueer/queer noted that they (their preferred pronoun) were not sure they

could participate in the project based on the advert. Another participant who identified as

bisexual (specifically) and transgender came to a focus group arranged for male-identified

participants at a time before coming out and transitioning to female. The third participant

with a non-binary gender identity identified as “gender fluid” and pansexual and attended a

focus group for female-identified participants. Another important component of recruitment

for the focus groups was that we encouraged participants to invite LGBT friends along to the

same focus group; through this process, participants instigated focus groups that were not

segregated by gender continuing to be dominated by participants with binary gender

identities.

At the start of each of the 13 focus group the facilitators present all introduced their

gender identities and sexualities before asking participants to say something about their

identity – all participants were happy to do so (unsurprising as they knew they were coming

to a focus group for LGBT individuals). This procedure created a space for participants to

discuss how they feel about identity labels and their deployment (or withholding) in daily

life. The researchers going first in discussing our identities could potentially have served to

reinforce the power differential between us and the participants, but our aim was to take the

pressure off from participants and subvert the mainstream idea that researchers’ identities are

outside the realm of research and that awareness of insider/outsider identity status

‘contaminates’ objectivity for researchers and participants. Prior to starting the discussion

19
participants completed a confidential demographics questionnaire. The questions and pre-

defined options potentially contributed to opening up discussions about the diversity of

identifications. Interestingly, although the facilitators always introduced their gender identity

as well as their sexuality, two-thirds of female participants and half of male participants

omitted any mention of their gender in introducing themselves whereas two of the three

participants with non-binary gender identities explained their specific gender identities and

the third, who described their gender identity as “gender fluid” on the questionnaire,

introduced themself simply as pansexual during the focus group and went on to say “Umm I

dunno, I think it [gender identity and sexuality] was a big issue when I was younger, like the

people I was around were not open with anything to do with sexuality let alone gender”. This

omission of a declaration of gender identity by many participants may be a form of protest or

resistance for at least some individuals and raises questions of whether genders or bodies are

considered to speak for themselves among cisgender individuals (whose gender identity

aligns with their body and assigned sex), and particularly when at a focus group of people of

the same gender identity.

A few of the cisgender participants highlighted that they would sometimes list their

gender identity as ‘other’ as a form of protest or solidarity: “when there are gender things, I

quite often tick the ‘other’ even though I’m cisgender”. Participants spoke of strategic use of

identity labels in relation to sexuality (e.g., “depending on who I’m talking to, I’ll say bi or

gay”) but also gender identity simultaneously. For example, the participant who reported

identifying as “gender fluid” noted: “I identify as a pansexual woman, yeah and I like, I don’t

mind when people ask me although I often will say I’m a lesbian because it’s easier whereas

people go ‘What’s pansexual, is that like bisexual?’ and things but I like it because I don’t

like to enforce the gender binary”. Modelling identity as tick boxes was seen as a

20
simplification with some value for communicating strategically but problematic because of

the ways in which female sexuality is comodified by many men: “I hate the word lesbian,

really hate it (laughter). [...] I feel like it’s being used in such a derogatory way, especially in

pornography [...] so I’m just gonna be like a woman who likes women.” Participants also

queried the self-perpetuating attention to differences by gender and sexuality using idealism

such as “In an ideal world we wouldn’t care” and “everybody’s equal”. This position perhaps

connects to one of the most productive premises of queer theory: matrices of intelligibility

that lead people to fear being outside “everybody”. Overall, Gareth’s research on identity

categories sits at the borderline of quantitative demographics and qualitative identity research

that demonstrates the queer complexities of negotiating and resisting gender and sexual

identities.

Current trends

Having outlined some critical applications of queer theory with regard to our own research

projects, in this section we now consider some further trends within academic writing in the

field of psychology that draws on queer theory. As we shall see, some of these trends have

been more recently identified, whilst others represent long-standing concerns that require

ongoing attention.

The first trend, which we referred to in the introduction to this chapter, is that of

coercive queering. Ansara (2010) defines coercive queering as a form of cisgenderism,

which, more broadly, refers to “the ideology that delegitimises people’s own understanding

of their genders and bodies” (Riggs et al., 2015, p. 34). With regard to coercive queering,

then, this occurs when the label ‘queer’ is attributed to someone who does not personally

identify as such. This commonly occurs in regard to people who are transgender or who

21
identify as gender diverse (Riggs et al., 2015). As we discussed above with reference to the

use of the word ‘queer’ as an identity descriptor in mainstream social psychological research,

‘queer’ often becomes a catch-all category to describe all people who are not heterosexual

and/or who are not gender normative. This is a problem, then, when this terminology is not

used by participants themselves: it is coercive in that it attributes the category ‘queer’ when it

may not be used (or may indeed be dispreferred) by participants (Riggs et al., 2015). Given

our coverage in this chapter about the differences between queer theory and queer studies,

then, it will be important into the future that researchers continue to evaluate how the latter at

times co-opts the former in ways that, whilst attempting to be ‘inclusive’, may in fact be

exclusionary. Whist queer theory, as we have noted throughout this chapter, takes an

oppositional approach to understanding sex and gender, this is not the same as dismissing

people’s own understandings of their genders and bodies.

A second trend, which has received increased attention within queer theory across the

past decade, are the operations of race privilege in terms of both the lives of people who

identify as ‘queer’ and in queer theorising itself. Barnard’s (2003) text Queer Race was one

of the first to interrogate how norms of whiteness play out within queer organising, politics,

and theory. Barnard questioned how white people are continually treated as the normative

subject in queer theory, and how this must continue to be examined if the critical potential of

queer theory is to be realised. Damien has drawn upon Barnard’s work and applied it

specifically to the use of queer theory in the field of psychology. Specifically, in Riggs

(2007), Damien suggested four key areas that require attention in relation to race privilege

and the use of queer theory in psychology. These are: 1) a need for greater recognition of the

histories on which queer theory builds, and especially black feminist thought, 2) an

understanding of how racial hierarchies continue to shape normative psychological accounts

22
that rely upon individualising, internalising, and universalising accounts of subjectivity, 3) a

continued focus upon the operations of racialised desire, a topic that has received recent

attention in regards to racism on gay dating sites such as gaydar and on dating apps such as

grindr (e.g., Callendar, Holt, & Newman, 2015), and 4) an investigation of the implication of

critiques of essentialism, specifically with regard to the ways in which they may be Western-

centric and thus dismissive of Indigenous ontologies. A focus on race privilege (and we

might, at the very least, add to this class privilege) is thus a significant area that requires

ongoing consideration when queer theory is applied in the context of social psychology,

especially given the history of psychology as a key discipline used in the service of regulating

race and class.

A third trend is one that has a long history with regard to queer theory, and continues

to shape it and thus warrants our attention. This trend, as Hegarty and Massey (2007) note, is

the use of psychoanalytic theory (and specifically the work of Lacan) as an important

lynchpin in a queer theoretical framework. Whether this be to critique psychoanalytic theory

(as is the case in Butler’s early work), or to utilise Lacan’s work to develop queer theoretical

aims (such as in the chapters in Dean and Lane’s 2001 edited collection), queer theory is

arguably indebted to psychoanalytic thought. Yet Hegarty and Massey suggest that this may

be precisely why there has been so little uptake of queer theory within psychology, given that

a focus on cognition has come to dominate much of the discipline of psychology, with

psychoanalysis relegated to the margins. Whilst this may be true within mainstream

psychology, arguably there are traditions of critical social psychology that have long drawn

upon psychoanalytic thought, such as the seminal text Changing the Subject (Henriques et al.,

1984). In this text psychoanalytic thought was treated as a centrepiece for critical

psychological theories (see Goodwin, this volume).

23
 In his recent work Damien (Riggs, 2015) has drawn on the work of Lacan to argue for

an account of sexuation that repeats many of the central premises of queer theory.

Specifically, Damien has suggested that Lacan’s work is vital to understanding the subject as

rendered intelligible through the ways in which it is formed around the fact of what Lacan

(1998) referred to as the ‘sexual non-relationship’. In his Seminar XX, and across much of

his work, Lacan clearly elaborated an account of sexuation in which neither gender nor

sexuality are the product of biology. Lacan refuted the idea that males and females are paired

opposites, instead suggesting that there is no sexual relationship: there is no psychical rapport

between that which we commonly refer to as ‘the sexes’. Instead, Lacan emphasised an

account of sexuation in which the subject is formed through lack, signified by the desire of

the Other. In his work Damien takes up this argument and applies it to six of Freud’s cases,

arguing that when we restrict ourselves to a presumed relationship between bodies and

identities, we lose sight of the relational ways in which subjects are formed. This account,

then, contributes to a queer theoretical understanding of sex and gender by refusing ‘the

body’ and the modes of intelligibility that are presumed to derive from it, instead

emphasising the role of misreadings and misperceptions in the formation of the sexuated

subject.

Summary

As we have suggested throughout this chapter, there are likely barriers to the uptake of queer

theory within social psychology, primarily in relation to the misunderstandings and

misapplications of it that have occurred to date under the name of psychology, although some

may argue that same about certain elements of our reading of queer theory presented in this

24
chapter. At the same time, however, we have suggested that in a diverse range of ways, the

theoretical framework offered by queer theory has long found its place within critical

approaches to social psychology, with more recent applications extending this to focus on

often overlooked areas (such as race).

Yet despite the possible role for queer theory within critical social psychology, we

would nonetheless suggest the importance of caution in regards to any attempts at the

wholesale importing of queer theory into critical social psychology. Queer theory functions

precisely because it refuses domestication and inclusivity. Given the tendency within

psychology to colonise and institutionalise particular theoretical approaches and to apply

them in a blanket fashion across topics and populations, it is vital that any researchers

engaging with queer theory are mindful that it may often be precisely at the point where

something becomes a norm that it ceases having a critical function. As such, whilst we would

advocate for the utility of queer theory in terms of challenging the established norms of

mainstream social psychology, we would also encourage those who draw upon queer theory

to continue to interrogate how its co-option may at times weaken its analytic strength.

25
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Clarke, V., Ellis, S. J., Peel, E., & Riggs, D. W. (2010). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and

queer psychology: An introduction. Leiden: Cambridge University Press.

Hegarty, P., & Massey, S. (2006). Anti-homosexual prejudice… as opposed to what? Queer

theory and the social psychology of anti-homosexual attitudes. Journal of

Homosexuality, 52(1-2), 47-71.

Riggs, D. W. (2007). Queer theory and its future in psychology: Exploring issues of race

privilege. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 1, 39-52.

Warner, D. N. (2004). Towards a queer research methodology. Qualitative Research in

Psychology, 1(4), 321-337.

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30
Table 1. Mentions of the word ‘queer’ in top 10 social psychology journals

Journal name SJR indicator Number of mentions

Personality and Social Psychology Review 7.447 3

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 5.443 0

Research on Language and Social Interaction 4.396 5

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 4.326 0

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 3.015 3

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 2.717 7

Research in Organizational Behaviour 2.567 2

Journal of Health and Social Behavior 2.502 7

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 2.340 5

Journal of Personality 2.266 21

SJR: Scimago Journal Rank from Scopus

31
Table 2. Uses of the word ‘queer’ other than to refer to queer theory in top 10 social

psychology journals

Use of ‘queer’ Number of mentions

To mean ‘unusual’ 14

To pathologise 6

To describe an identity category 4

As an adjective 3

Reference that included the word 14

32