What does the term queer mean

«DI edit my song at the entire queer community, love each other freely: you can do itthe”. The words of the rapper BigMama at the end of his performance on the Sanremo stage last night they did not go unheard: today the word “queer” was in fact among the most searched for on Google.

BigMama and her rotisserie in Sanremo: «I love cooking, my plan A»

“Queer revolution” is also what the 23-year-old wrote Marianna Mammone (this is the artist’s real name) she showed off red tights that completed the dark nun look, the outfit chosen to perform her song on stage Anger is not enough for you: a hymn to face the many obstacles in life, as happened to her.

«I’m a woman, fat, rapper and queer: I have them all»

«I come from rap and I’m used to writing very sharp phrases, I hope it won’t be misunderstood. I don’t just talk to fat peoplebut in how much queer woman, who comes from a small provincial town.” The artist was born in San Michele di Serino, in the province of Avellino.

Openly bisexual and engaged to Maria Lodovica Lazzerinico-writer of her song, BigMama revealed that she had to undergo treatment sessions chemotherapy for a tumor to have suffered a sexual violence at 16 and being the victim of body shaming. «This song is my revenge» she said. «I come from a family that is not at all wealthy, I am woman, fat, rapper and queer: I have them all.”

Queer: from a discriminatory word to a symbol of a community

But what does queer mean and since when is it used? Closed and a little hidden in the acronym LGBTQA+, a common acronym to indicate the large community of those who do not recognize themselves in classic male-female sexualitythe term “queer” refers to an orientation that does not align with any otherwhich does not recognize itself in “eternormality”.

Initially used with a negative and derogatory meaning towards the effeminate male homosexual world, the English word literally translated means “eccentric, unusual, bizarre”. The first time it appears in an academic conference is in 1990, when Teresa de Lauretis holds a conference at the University of California at Santa Cruz, entitled Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities. Subsequently she was the American philosopher Judith Butler to consolidate the field of queer theory.

In a’interview on the national anti-discrimination LGBT portal, the philosopher Cristian Loiacono explains that today «the term queer identifies a broad field of study and interdisciplinary on issues related to sexual orientation and gender identitybut also at their intersection with other possible identity positionings such as social class, geographical origin, disability”.

In a certain sense, explains the philosopher «queer has come to replace the term “homosexual”, but also “gay”, “lesbian”, “transsexual”, “transgender”, when one wants to use a term to designate the break with heterosexual norm”. Its meaning “reminds us how articulated and complex the different aspects that make up identities are”

Michela Murgia’s queer family

In Italy the term has become “famous” above all thanks to writer Michela Murgiawho passed away on August 10th, who on social media had told of her queer family “where there is no one who has not heard the term husband/bride addressed in recent years”.

The wedding day of the activist writer Michela Murgia, last August 10th.

In his posthumous book, Giving life (Rizzoli), the author has condensed her reflections on familial queerness, a reality that must be addressed as “a political necessity”. The essay is at the top of the sales charts, also for its original content on the topic of different models of motherhoodon how this can be done give life without generating biologically. A pamphlet resulting from years of study on how soul ties can add to blood ties.

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