Editing Queer (section)

=== Early 20th-century queer identity ===
[[File:Drag_Ball_in_Webster_Hall--1920s.jpg|thumb|265x265px|[[Drag ball|Drag Ball]] in [[Webster Hall]], {{circa}} 1920s. Many queer-identifying men distanced themselves from the "flagrant" public image of gay men as effeminate "fairies".{{r|Chauncey|pp=16, 298}}]]
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ''queer'', ''[[fairy (gay slang)|fairy]]'', ''[[Trade (gay slang)|trade]]'', and ''gay'' signified distinct social categories within the gay male subculture. In his book ''Gay New York'', Chauncey noted that ''queer'' was used as a within-community identity term by men who were stereotypically masculine.<ref name="Barrett">{{cite book|last= Barrett |first= R. |date= 2009 |editor-last= Mey |editor-first= Jacob L. |title= Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics |publisher= Elsevier |pages=821 |chapter=Queer Talk |isbn=978-0080962986}}: "In the early 20th century in the United States, the term queer was used as a term of self-reference (or identity category) for homosexual men who adopted masculine behavior (Chauncey, 1994: 16-18)."</ref> Many queer-identified men at the time were, according to Chauncey, "repelled by the style of the ''fairy'' and his loss of manly status, and almost all were careful to distinguish themselves from such men", especially because the dominant straight culture did not acknowledge such distinctions. ''Trade'' referred to straight men who would engage in same-sex activity; Chauncey describes trade as "the 'normal men' [queers] claimed to be."<ref name="Chauncey" />

In contrast to the terms used within the subculture, medical practitioners and police officers tended to use medicalized or pathological terms like "invert", "pervert", "degenerate", and "homosexual".<ref name="Chauncey" />

None of the terms, whether inside or outside of the subculture, equated to the general concept of a homosexual identity, which only emerged with the ascension of a binary (heterosexual/homosexual) understanding of sexual orientation in the 1930s and 1940s. As this binary became embedded into the social fabric, ''queer'' began to decline as an acceptable identity in the subculture.<ref name="Chauncey" />

Similar to the earlier use of ''queer'', ''gay'' was adopted by many U.S. [[Cultural assimilation|assimilationist]] men in the mid-20th century as a means of asserting their normative status and rejecting any associations with [[effeminacy]]. The idea that ''queer'' was a pejorative term became more prevalent among younger gay men following [[World War II]]. As the gay identity became more widely adopted in the community, some men who preferred to identify as ''gay'' began chastising older men who still referred to themselves as ''queer'' by the late 1940s:

<blockquote>In calling themselves gay, a new generation of men insisted on the right to name themselves, to claim their status as men, and to reject the "effeminate" styles of the older generation. [...] Younger men found it easier to forget the origins of gay in the campy banter of the very queens whom they wished to reject.{{r|Chauncey|p=19-20}}</blockquote>In other parts of the world, particularly England, ''queer'' continued to be the dominant term used by the community well into the mid-twentieth century, as noted by historical sociologist Jeffrey Weeks:<blockquote>By the 1950s and 1960s to say "I am queer" was to tell of who and what you were, and how you positioned yourself in relation to the dominant, "normal" society. … It signaled the general perception of same-sex desire as something eccentric, strange, abnormal, and perverse.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Weeks |first=Jeffrey |date=2012 |title=Queer(y)ing the "Modern Homosexual" |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23265593 |journal=Journal of British Studies |volume=51 |issue=3 |pages=523–539 |doi=10.1086/664956 |jstor=23265593 |s2cid=143022465 |issn=0021-9371}}</ref></blockquote>