Queer is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities that are not heterosexual or not cisgender. Originally meaning "strange" or "peculiar", queer came to be deployed pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late-19th century. Beginning in the late-1980s, queer scholars and activists began to reclaim the word to establish community and assert a politicized identity distinct from the gay political identity. Queer identitites may be adopted by those who reject traditional gender identities and seek a broader, less conformist, and deliberately ambiguous alternative to the label LGBT. Queer has become the preferred term to describe certain radical academic disciplines and is gaining use as a descriptor of non-normative (i.e. anti-heteronormativity and anti-homonormativity) identities and politics. Academic disciplines such as queer theory and queer studies share a general opposition to binarism, normativity, and a perceived lack of intersectionality within the mainstream LGBT movement. Queer arts, queer cultural groups, and queer political groups are examples of expressions of queer identities. Critics of queer identities include gay activists who associate the term with its pejorative colloquial usage or who wish to dissociate themselves from queer radicalism.

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