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Michelle Walks University of Ottawa
There is no doubt that the use of the term queer will raise the hair on the back of people's necks as well as some eyebrows. The word queer has a history of being derogatory and confrontational. Drawing on Graham (1998), Tom Boellstorff notes that, in fact, "many anthropologists and others do not like the term queer 'because it reminds them so strongly of homophobia and oppression'" (2007:18). Despite this history, queer has been reclaimed in an effort to bring people of non-normative genders and sexual practices and identities together. While the word has Anglo Euro-American origins, individuals and communities in a variety of countries worldwide embrace and identify with the term queer. This, of course, is not universal and the word remains problematic and still considered by many to be confrontational. In fact, the tensions and discomfort associated with the term are part of what some people appreciate in identifying with the term. That said, identities and practices change over time; it is quite likely that in the future a different term will be used to refer to the topic at the heart of this thematic issue.
Sexuality has served as an "intellectual concern of the anthropological tradition since the Age of Enlightenment" (Lyons and Lyons 2006:153; similarly noted by Boellstorff 2007:17), and yet the anthropological interest in studies of gender and sexuality have ebbed and flowed over the years. Moreover, as Kath Weston notes,
Before ethnographers could set out to remap the globe along the contours of transgendered practices and same-sex sexuality, homosexuality had to become a legitimate object of anthropological inquiry. One prerequisite was the redefinition of homosexuality from a matter of individual pathology (the medical model) to a cultural construct. [Weston 1998:149)
The particulars of the focus on sexuality (or sexualities) and the theoretical interpretations applied to them have varied over time, in part due to the cultural changes surrounding the historical and geographic contexts of the ethnographers, as well as their personal and professional interests. In addition, anthropologists have queried, defined and redefined "what counts" as samesex relations and transgendered practices cross-culturally (Weston 1998; Boellstorff 2007; Lewin and Leap 1996).
The historical context has generally affected what has been considered sexuality, same-sex sexuality,...