The Queer Queen: An Analysis of Power and Privilege within Queer Scholarship 

Abstract: Queer Scholarship lives within a paradox in both the academy and real world activism; its focus on marginalized groups due to sexualities allow it to transcend race, class, gender, but scholarship around it seems to reinforce all hegemonic oppressions that the very discourse looks to dismantle. This paper uses a few prominent Queer Theorists to discuss the power and privilege that manifest within queer studies, theorizing new ways for one to imagine queer activism and studies. My research entailed close readings of scholarship that has been published within the last few years, which lead to this paper being more of an analysis and theoretical piece on the emerging field of Queer Studies. I hope to contribute to the development of queer studies as a discourse within academia, and also help introduce this subject matter to broader audiences within academic communities. 

The term, Queen, has evolved into a term whose usage is as multiple as the term queer. Queen roots itself within an Old English and Germanic history, deriving from the word cwene, meaning, “woman, female, female serf”. As time progressed the term transformed from serf to prostitute, to eventually being co-opted by English dialect into its royal usage. However, it kept evolving and turned into a slang term used within LGBT communities for a male who performs a “bitchy” or “effeminate” quality. Within LGBT communities there has even been a development of variations of the term queen, usually racialized, relying heavily on inappropriate stereotypes, terms such as rice queen, bean queen, or hummus queen[2].

When people hear the term “queer”, they most commonly associate it as a derogatory term linked to the LGBT community, which has been homogenized within mainstream media as a community represented by white gay men. Just like the queen, queer is located within a white narrative of history, allowing for levels of power and privilege to flourish within it usage, not so much in its function, but more in its ability to erase the marginal communities it fails to represent in its raw form. Like the term queen, we must add terms such as “queer person of color” to demonstrate differentiations between the assumed white queer and the racial queer. 

There is a light though, in this tunnel, and the term queen can be reclaimed and reshaped into a tool of empowerment; or at least a site of naming a queer project that can serve as productive in the movement for social justice. Queer theorist Cathy Cohen, imagines a famous queen who can serve as a queer subject, whose location within society will allow for a queer project to develop that calls into question the many notions of power and privilege that queer originally leaves out. Cohen theorizes a Welfare Queen, whose postionality to the state and “abnormal” sexuality allows for her to be a site located within normal identities, but yet truly subversive. The Welfare Queen not only challenges notions of sexuality, race, class, and gender in ways that the white gay male does not, but she also allows for a space, “to develop political analyses and political strategies effective in confronting the linked yet varied sites of power in this country.”[3]

The Welfare Queen is socially positioned on the margins of the un-marginal[4] in terms of her sexuality. This draws upon a key problem with queer and its overemphasis on sexuality as a site for working towards equality. When one views oppression through a monolithic lens of sexuality, in this case, we allow for the erasure of many other forms of oppression. During this erasure the voices of Black lesbian women or Latino drag queens (for example), are hushed under the breath of the homonormative[5] subject. While the Welfare Queen allows for the recognition of the power and privilege in regards to naming, her discursive power stops there. For scholars to utilize the Welfare Queen within a queer project, I suggest a discussion on the ways in which a Welfare Queen may be able to disidentify[6] within her location. 

Royal Queer Subjects

Disidentification is a theory in which I will draw heavily on while discussing how the Welfare Queen, and the other queens I will go on to mention, can become queer subjects. Jose Esteban Munoz defines disidentification as a “performative mode of tactical recognition that various minoritarian subjects employ in an effort to resist the oppressive and normalizing discourse of dominant ideology”[7] To disidentify, one must locate themselves along the margins of society, becoming minoritarian much like the welfare queen - using this location as the site for resistance. Allowing for a static position as marginalized does not necessarily trace one to a queer project, but many times, a subject’s complacency and assimilation with dominate ideologies pushes the supposed queer subject into the realm of homonormativety. An example of the homonormatizing of a queer subject is within the construction of the commercial drag queen, whose glamorization and high level of social consumption showcases a “queer” subject who is sanitized. Munoz expounds upon the construction of a drag queen by stating:

“Commercial drag presents a sanitized and desexualized queer subject for mass consumption. Such drag represents a certain strand of integrationist liberal pluralism. The sanitized queen is meant to be enjoyed as an entertainer who will hopefully lead to social understanding and tolerance.”[8]

Pointing to Munoz’s depiction of the commercial drag queen, we can begin to understand the levels of power and privilege associated within presumably queer subjects. The drag queen is a constructed subject who relies on homonormative suggestions around gender, camp, and sexuality - allowing for a commercial consumption. The drag queens location within dominant culture does not allow for a queer project to become active, nor does it truly challenge heteropatriarchal notions around gender expression and sexuality.

                    Like the welfare queen, the drag queen most utilizes the space in which she is situated to disidentify; indeed Munoz suggests a renaming of the queen, herself. Munoz introduces a new concept called “terrorist drag” which “enables subjects to imagine a way of ‘break[ing] away from the restraint of the ‘social body.’”[9] The Terrorist Drag Queen sits upon her politicized throne in order to disrupt social fabrics and ideals around the drag body, and occupies a space of fluidity in order to fit and “accommodate scripts on gay liberation.”[10] The terrorist drag queen is not complacent nor does she assimilate into dominant ideologies. She literally terrorizes these spaces, invoking uneasiness in dominant structures. This allows for a truly subversive queer project to be developed that doesn’t devolve into the neoliberalist and homonormative notions attached to the commercial drag queen.

So, why is it important to not only a queer project, but also a social justice project, to not co-opt figures such as the commercial drag queen? The answer to this, I believe, is imbedded in the notion of neoliberalism and its ties to homonormativity. When operating under a framework of neoliberalism one must consider that, borrowing from Lisa Duggan, “Neoliberal advocacy, of course, is defined as the nonpolitical exclusion of ‘issue of class, race and gender.”(Duggan, 55) Neoliberalism in this sense draws close parallels between itself and queer, both erasing other forms of identity and oppression that fall outside the “normal” scope of mainstream society. When subscribing to notions such as neoliberalism, one is allowing for oppression to continue unchecked. By divorcing drag queens from neoliberalist tendencies, one can move the drag queen, with the help of the terrorist drag queen, beyond its homonormative boundaries and toward the articulation of a productive queer project.

The King and I

The queer and queen, as I have discussed, are both terms with similar backgrounds and even find themselves located within the LGBT community as common features in both the political and personal lives of queer folks. Though I praise Cathy Cohen’s development of the Welfare Queen as the site for a queer project, I will however, rename this site as The Queer Queen. The Queer Queen encompasses the three queens I mentioned through out this short essay: Welfare, Drag, and Terrorist. The terms queer and queen, when situated together, represent the “colonizer/colonized” mechanism that Munoz’s hypridity points below, highlighting the oxymoronic and cohesive qualities of these terms together. This Queer Queen is birthed from Munoz’s concept of hypridity, in where the Queer Queen shows the “asymmetries of power and the workings of the colonizer/colonized mechanism.”[11] The Queer Queen, I find, is productive, because this trope allows for the welfare queen to be used as a site for disidentification and a queer project, but also allows for the acknowledgement of the commercial drag queen as a potential subversive queer subject with the help of the terrorist drag queen.

In conclusion, queer theory will continue to operate under its current locations of power and privilege unless reshaped into a project like The Queer Queen.  Using this framework we see the Welfare Queen locate the project, the Terrorist Drag queen shows us a framework to disidentify through our homonormative subjects, in ways that are impact and allow for levels of “radicalism” to be showcased once again, and finally the commercial drag queen shows the antithesis and potential of the Queer Queen.

My usage of the queen through this essay was due to an interest I have in drawing parallels between the ideals on queen and queer. The ways these two terms can and will interact are infinite, but I find one-way to be the most interesting. A problem that has been reoccurring with queer theory is its inaccessibility to people outside certain locations of privilege, which Cohen points out throughout her essay “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?”[12] Queer is continually being written by theorist such as: Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Michael Warner, Michel Foucault and others, all of whom require high levels of academic training to understand. Coincidentally, academia has continually been metaphorically defined as “an ivory tower”, representing a sort of elitism that draws upon royal imagery that is in itself similarly inaccessible. This interacts perfectly with the term queen, as the ivory towers are her home, locating her identity within the royal histories. 

Within this ivory tower I see the Queer Queen placed upon her royal throne. Far above her subjects, inaccessible to many, and trapped within her tower- with all the good intentions one can hope for. She is continually referred to in relation to the King, much like queer’s continually juxtaposition to heterosexuality, making one ponder - Can queer ever move past its consistent need to place itself in opposition to heterosexuality? Or will queer and the queen forever be married to the King (heterosexuality), unable to descend from the ivory towers, to live once again within her etymological root as the “women, female, or female serf”, no longer inaccessible to all.