ABSTRACT
On first glance, it might seem that queer identities in mainstream pop culture have broken through the idea of sexual deviations and gender roles. The unmistakable images of lesbian and gay representation and queer signs are ubiquitous in many performative spaces, where such displays of otherness often represent a norm that is perceived more as performance than as a connection to sexual preferences. Just over fifteen years ago, to describe a person as “queer” was a blatant term of abuse. Mark Norris Lance and Alessandra Tanesini refer to how being queer, in the old usage, was about being excluded and reviled for not being “proper.” By contrast, nowadays the term queer is commonly employed “to endorse that exclusion and to turn the evaluation on its head” by considering difference as a challenge to all that is considered as proper.3 Despite the range of difficulties encountered in queer theory,4 not least in its tendency to “de-ghettoize” gay and lesbian studies, scholarship in this field has escalated and has been important for aesthetic criticism and deconstructing gender behavior in music. As a consequence, numerous scholars have linked their discussions of queerness to concerns of authenticity, positionality, corporeality, and representation.5
