The term "queer" is like marmite: some members of the LGBTQ+ community love it while others hate it.
It has been long used as a slur against the community but more recently, particularly millennials and those from the Gen-Z generation, have been "taking back the narrative and ownership" of the controversial phrase by self-identifying as queer. Despite this, other members of the community have emphasised the importance of remembering the history of the word and the context it was used in.
The first recorded written example of queer being used as a slur dates back to 1984 when reportedly, John Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, discovered his son was in a relationship with Oscar Wilde. Wanting to prosecute the author in any way possible, Douglas launched a court case against the playwright arguing that he was a sodomy-obsessed man who lured prostitutes into a “lifestyle of degeneracy”. Throughout the trial is when the phrase first surfaced as Douglas referred to gay men as “snob queers” and in doing so established it as a derogatory descriptor for gay men. American newspapers are said to have picked up the term almost immediately using it to highlight the fact that homosexuality, at the time, was seen as “strange and abnormal". Then, and even now, it was used mostly to target effeminate gay men.
