“Queer.” Throughout history, the word has had many uses. It first entered the English language in the 16th century, used to describe things that were “peculiar” or “eccentric.” In the 19th century, it became a derogatory term for men attracted to the same sex. Today, it has been reclaimed by 2SLGBTQ+ folk as a signifier. To understand the essence of queer culture, a lesser-known usage of the word —“queer” as a verb — is especially instructive. As defined by sexuality expert Charlie Glickman, to “queer” something is to “explore its limits, its biases, and its boundaries,” to “look for places where there’s elasticity” and to “discover ways we can transform it into something new.” As reflected by the word’s original meaning, queer people are forever “peculiar” to our society, forever “eccentric.” Hence, queerness is inherently radical, and it is thus no wonder that queer subcultures have always driven broader cultural innovation.
That being said, we can’t ignore the significance of “queer” as a pejorative. Western capitalist society, which in many ways is inherently conservative, tends to revile and ridicule strange things — unless they can generate profit. From pop culture’s appropriation of the ballroom scene, to the annual inundations of gay-coded products every Pride Month, the cultural expressions of queer communities have been pillaged for profit countless times throughout history. Even today’s apparent progress in global queer acceptance has been coupled with an aestheticization, commodification, and “unqueering” of queerness which poses a profound threat to queer life. Indeed, when acceptance is predicated on a group of people being palatable, de-radicalized, and profit-yielding, it is poor acceptance indeed.
To examine the commodification of queer culture, we must begin with the commodification of Black queer culture. The ballroom scene is one prominent site of such commodification. Ball culture began in the 19th century at the Hamilton Lodge, a Black fraternal organization in Harlem. The balls were originally intended for heterosexual men, but became a place for queer men to experiment with gender expression through cross-dressing and drag. From their inception, drag balls were exploited for mainstream entertainment. The balls were illegal, but drew a wide, culturally diverse audience. This audience included white heterosexual elites who could enjoy the pageantry of the balls without risking legal persecution (unlike the queer Black participants providing the entertainment). Ball culture was initially racially integrated, but in the 1970s, Black drag queen Crystal LaBeija spearheaded ballroom’s evolution into an explicitly Black and Latine space in response to racist biases in competition judgment. Nevertheless, the straight, white appropriation of ball culture abounded, as exemplified by Madonna’s hit single “Vogue”, which was based on the ballroom act of voguing and which has reached triple-platinum status as her most successful record. This appropriation can also be seen in the controversial documentary Paris Is Burning. The documentary is an exploration of ball culture directed by an (albeit queer) white woman, and was panned by bell hooks as an exploitative presentation of the “exotic” world of ball culture to white audiences.
The commodification of ball culture — and Black and queer culture at large — is insidious because it profits from a scene born from oppression without confronting the sources of that oppression. Drag balls were by necessity an underground phenomenon throughout the 20th century as homosexuality was a crime in Canada until 1969 and in the United States until 2003. Yet today, pop culture contains a myriad of ball culture influences, from the successful reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race to the colloquial use of “throwing shade” (a term invented at drag balls). RuPaul’s Drag Race in particular has been called an example of the neoliberalization of ball culture, as it positions each contestant’s queerness as a commodity which can be exchanged for material wealth and fame. Mainstream society has picked and chosen the aspects of Black queer culture that they find entertaining, while upholding the conservative capitalist system which still largely persecutes Black queer folks in a multitude of ways
Over the past few decades, queer acceptance has skyrocketed. Gay marriage is now legal in 40 countries and Gen Z is much more openly queer than previous generations. The explosion of sapphic visibility in the 2020s has led some to announce that we are experiencing a Lesbian Renaissance. But while mainstream, socially-acceptable queerness has grown, the radicalism once essential to queer culture has dwindled. Queers have always been radical, necessitated by their rejection from mainstream society. The famous Stonewall Uprising, credited with turning the tides of queer liberation, was one chapter in a long history of Black resistance against police brutality. Queer liberation has always been connected to radical Black liberation, as seen in the Black Panther Party’s construction of sexual repression as a tool of race and class repression and their alliance with queer causes. Queer culture is also closely entwined with the punk scene, another radical movement which has historically resisted police brutality and welcomed the disenfranchised. But today, queerness seems to be de-radicalizing.
We are experiencing an aestheticization of subcultures, which ignores their radical political basis and prioritizes the “look” of transgression. This is in part due to fast fashion marketing schemes for “alternative” clothing, which bastardizes anti-consumerist (and queer-coded) styles like punk and goth. The rise of social media has also played a role in this aestheticization, as visual platforms like Instagram and TikTok encourage creators to prioritize appearances over substance. Yet another factor in the decline of queer radicalism is the marked shortage of third spaces post-COVID-19 pandemic, which have historically been sites of solidarity-building and community for radical groups. Although queerness is more socially accepted than ever before, social acceptance has come at the cost of political potency. Amidst this crisis of queer radicalism, rainbow capitalism and pinkwashing have furthered the de-politicization of queerness by selling queer-coded products which propagate the
insidious lie that capitalism is a friend of queer folks.
Indeed, under Charlie Glickman’s definition of “queering,” the commodification of queerness by mainstream culture is a process of “unqueering” — of rendering an inherently radical group familiar, orthodox, and therefore benign. We see unqueering in the appropriation of ball culture. We see it in rainbow capitalism, pinkwashing, and the aestheticization of radical subcultures. In a sense, a loss of queer radicalism has been the price of queer acceptance. This is by no means an argument that societal acceptance of queerness is a bad thing. Countless lives have been improved, and saved by the increased availability of trans-affirming care, the legalization of homosexuality and gay marriage, and the diminishing stigma around queerness. But in the face of growing anti-queer (and especially anti-trans) legislation, in the United States as well as Europe and Asia, it is imperative that queer communities maintain their political, radical roots. Our acceptance by mainstream capitalist society is transient, based on our value to the profit-generation machine, and can be revoked at any time. In a time in which organizing the left has been harder than ever, we must nurture our community spaces and maintain our radical roots if we are to persist through the darker times to come.