queer

I use queer as an adjective to describe that which differs from the usual or conventional. Thus, as synonyms, I might employ nonconforming when describing voluntary human behaviors and actions, or nonconformative when describing involuntary human responses.

I also use queer as shorthand descriptive to replace variations on the commonplace and often misleading series of static identity labels used to describe groups, institutions, and ideas organized around non-conforming sexuality. Thus, I sometimes use queer instead of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning (LGBTQ,) or other variations thereon, and I may even use queer instead of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB). I avoid the use of these series or their abbreviations whenever possible because I consider them clumsy and inexact, and I reserve the option to apply queer or gay instead.

I use queerkind as a collective noun to short-hand queer humankind.

Although, I have certainly used queer as a noun to describe myself, others, and groups who, according to our own or conventional viewpoints, actualized queerness, and although I will no doubt do so in pages to come, the question of whether any categorical labels of static identity comport to a queer conscience remains an open one in these pages.

I use queerness as a noun to denote the quality of differing from the usual or conventional.

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