What does QUEERING stand for? 

Queering

Queering is the verb form of the word queer and comes from the shortened version of the phrase queer reading. It is a technique that came out of queer theory in the late 1980s through the 1990s and is used as a way to challenge heteronormativity by analyzing places in a text that utilize heterosexuality or identity binaries. Queering is a method that can be applied to literature as well as film to look for places where things such as gender, sexuality, masculinity, and femininity can be challenged and questioned. Originally the method of queering dealt more strictly with gender and sexuality, but quickly expanded to become more of an umbrella term for addressing identity as well as a range of systems of oppression and identity politics. Even the term queer itself can be queered, because much of queer theory involves working to fight against normalization even in the field itself. In the context of queer theory, "queering is something we do, rather than something we are (or are not)." An example of "queering" would be to reexamine the primary sources from the life of King Richard I of England, to search for evidence that he exhibited homosexual behavior or attitudes. Queering, as a tool of historical analysis, does not necessarily mean an attempt to determine if historical figure actually engaged in homosexual behaviors. It embraces a more fluid spectrum of gender attitudes which may have been entirely emotional, i.e. if celibate monks who wrote letters of intimate affection could be said to be exhibiting a form of romantic love, even if they never engaged in intimate physical behavior, or even consciously considered their behavior to be a parallel of romantic physical relationships. Queering has drawn some criticism from contemporary scholarship for projecting modern biases backwards onto historical figures (presentism), or seeing only what researchers want to see. Conversely, other scholarship has argued that it is a useful tool for challenging previously held assumptions that the concepts of gender behavior held by peoples in different historical eras were exactly like modern conceptions. To turn to the example of Richard the Lionheart, early 20th century scholarship barely questioned that he might have taken part in homosexual behavior. At the other extreme, later scholarship reexamined the evidence and concluded that he was a "homosexual" in the modern sense. These two extremes were debated and refined, with a general consensus emerging that Richard probably engaged in sexual activity with both men and women at different times in his life, but that Richard's self-conception wasn't necessarily an exact equivalent to the modern sense of homosexual identity.

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