This project examines how queer-identified individuals construct their identity through language used on blogs. Specifically, it analyzes 4 blogs that discuss queer labels, gender presentation, and identity. The blogs grapple with defining "queer" and navigating heteronormativity. Bloggers explore identity through non-binary gender expressions, rejection of "menswear/womenswear" dichotomies, and redefining terms like "fashionista." They also discuss struggles with labels, passing as cisgender, and presenting queer identity visually. The analysis shows how bloggers use language to perform and understand queer identities that resist mainstream norms.

1. resist the
NORMAL
fight the
BINARY

2. This project examines:
created by
CHERI ELLEFSON
Queer Culture
Language
Labels
Identity
Discourse
Blogs
Presentation
Language and Gender ENG 328 Dr. Mia
Kuha

3. “How does language play a role in
constructing gender through blogs
created and maintained by queeridentified individuals and/or by
individuals who create queeridentity content?”
Language and Gender ENG 328 Dr. Mia
Kuha

4. More specifically….
This project examines the language
utilized in a selection of blogs with
queer identity content to ascertain
how queer-identified individuals
create a counter queer identity
and/or counter queer culture to
mainstream heteronormative
culture.
Language and Gender ENG 328 Dr. Mia
Kuha

5. Community of Practice
Blog Selection Criteria:
 Up-to-date
 Discourse of queer identity, labels,
representation
 Connecting themes
 Created and maintained by individual blogger

6. Community of Practice
Blogs:
 idreamofdapper.com
 exsouthernbelle.tumblr.com
 genderqueerfashionista.tumblr.com
 genderqueerconfessions.tumblr.com

7. But first, a few definitions…
What is QUEER?

8. Queer according to…
Queer Theory, An Introduction, Annamarie
Jagose
“…part of its political efficacy depends
on its resistance to definition.”
“Normalizing queer would be, after all,
its sad finish.”
(Judith Butler)

9. Ultimately, to define „queer‟ is to
normalize it, and queer is a
resistance to what is
normal/normative/heteronormative.

10. Queer according to…
genderqueerconfessions.tumblr.com (FAQ
Page)
“How do I know if I‟m queer?”
You don‟t. There isn‟t a queer test or anything,
it‟s just how we feel in our hears and minds and
bodies. If you feel you genderqueer, then you
are. Simple as that.

11. Queer according to…
genderqueerconfessions.tumblr.com (FAQ
Page)
“What is „genderqueer‟?”
Genderqueer is anything that falls outside the
gender binary. Binary= male/female. Nonbinary
is the spectrum between those two.

12. Why do we need “queer” in our
vocabulary at all?
“…the impoverished vocabulary of
straight culture tells us that that
people should either be husbands
or wives or (nonsexual) friends.”
The Trouble with Normal,
Michael Warner

13. Why do we need “queer” in our
vocabulary at all?
“…even an expanded catalog of
identities can remain blind to the
ways people suffer…from gender
norms…”
The Trouble with Normal,
Michael Warner

14. How is “queer” used today?
“Once the term „queer‟ was, at best,
slang for homosexual, at worst, a term of
homophobic abuse. In recent years
„queer‟ has come to be used differently,
sometimes as an umbrella term for a
coalition of culturally marginalized
sexual self-identifications.”
- Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An

15. But first, a few definitions…
What is
HETERONORMATVIT
Y?

16. Heteronormativity according
to…
Queer Theory, An Introduction, Annamarie
Jagose
“(Heteronormativity) refers to a
system in which heterosexual
identities, relationships, and
practices are seen as the norm
against which all sexuality is
judged.”

17. Why analyze blogs?

18. Why blogs?
The Digital Queer, Julie Rak
“Activity of blogging could be a
potential site for thinking about
queer identity.”

19. blog ideology: unrestricted
expression
The Digital Queer, Julie Rak
“Freedom of expression is
important, particularly when it
occurs outside of institutional
attempts to control the flow of
information.”

20. blog ideology: sexual identity
The Digital Queer, Julie Rak
“Sexuality as an identity therefore
has had the need for confessions
at its core, which based claims of
sexuality on repeating and
narrating experiences that “prove”
what one‟s real identity is.”

21. blog ideology: why blogging is
important
The Digital Queer, Julie Rak
“…blogs set the stage for creating
multiple, shifting identities.”

22. bloggers as part of a community of
practice
The Digital Queer, Julie Rak
“Bloggers are citizens in a
community…by representing
themselves and their ideas as
private people in a public setting.”

23. “Queer” Discourse

24. invisible discourse
New developments in language and gender
research, Coates, J.
“Dominant discourses such as
these appear „natural‟; they are
powerful precisely because they
are able to make invisible the fact
that they are just one among many
discourses.”

25. invisible discourse
Blogs that include „queer‟ discourse
help make the invisible (invisible
because they are not heterosexual,
and therefore not dominant) visible.
However, these blogs do not
represent or generalize ALL queeridentified individuals. At least 3 of the
4 blog writers identify as white,
college-educated, and in their 20s

26. blog: idreamofdapper.com

27. idreamofdapper.com
In addition to the “about” section of the blog, this
writer (and all blog authors in this project) also
identify their blog content as „queer‟ through tags







#menswear inspired
#women in ties
#girls in ties
#queer fashion
#dapper
#dapper wear
#wiwt (What I Wore Today)

28. “What do we do with particular
women…who don‟t speak as they
„ought to‟?”
Sexuality as Identity: Gay and
lesbian language, p. 93

29. idreamofdapper.com
I Dream of Dapper (IDoD) was created to
extinguish the idea of “menswear” or
“womenswear” as an acceptable label for
fashion styles.

30. idreamofdapper.com: identity as female/woman
“As a cis-gender female I can‟t tell you the
amount of times I‟ve found myself looking
through pages of a “womenswear” blog
searching for a woman I can identify with.
This idea of womenswear as skirts, dresses,
flowing blouses, and heels does not
encapsulate the self-expression of all
women.”

31. idreamofdapper.com
“If you identify with this movement know
this, you are not alone and in time we will
prove this binary dysfunctional.”
“Clothing does not make an individual more
of a man; it does not make them less of
woman.”

32. idreamofdapper.com analysis
„Womenswear‟ and „menswear‟ clothing, or
clothing distinctly made for women and
clothing distinctly made for men
exaggerates the differences between men
and women, and keeps their binary and
traditional gender roles as feminine and
masculine intact.
Clothing can work to erase or at least
lessen perceived differences between men

33. idreamofdapper.com analysis
Constructing, deconstructing and
reconstructing gender
“Gender is the very process of creating a
dichotomy by effacing similarity and
elaborating on difference.”
idreamofdapper is a representation of queer
fashion in that it does not “fit” neatly into either
binary category of what it means to be a “man”
or a “woman”

34. exsouthernbelle.tumblr.com

35. exsouthernbelle.tumblr.com: labels
some of these things describe me: activist,
explorer, boigrrl, trans*, queer, activist,
leftist, abolitionist

Is “boigrrrl” „gay‟ language? Could “boigrrrl” be
deployed by non-queer individuals? Is this
language symbolically available to anyone?

36. exsouthernbelle.tumblr.com: labels II
this tumblr/blog is my attempt to create an
assemblage of disparate parts of my lived
experience: feminist and ex-southern
belle identities, fashion and queerness,
queer theory and politics/law. i think that
none of these things are disparate, but they
certainly appear so.

37. exsouthernbelle.tumblr.com tags
#PERSONAL STYLE
#MESNWEAR INSPIRED
#QUEER STYLE
#QUEER FASHION
#GQ FASHION
#MASCULINE OF CENTER
#BUTCH STYLE
#BUTCH FASHION
#TRANS*MASCULINE

38. genderqueerfashionista.tumblr.c
om

39. labels as a queer identity
musings on fashion and identity from a [FAAB, white,
able-bodied] genderqueer lady-gent sometimes
tomboy, sometimes prettyboi, sometimes femme,
often dapper person.
i identify as a female-bodied genderqueer person

40. solidarity

41. “gender knows no boundaries”; „queer‟
meanings
fashionista might be associated with the superfemme
women of our society (think: the devil wears prada,
confessions of a shopaholic, cher from clueless) but
as we know, a love affair with fashion knows no
gender boundaries. i have only seen my love of
dressing fabulously grow as i have come out and am
fully able to flaunt my gender fabulosity. linguistically,
(assuming it were a multilingual word), “fashionista”
would be a gender neutral term since “-ista” in
Spanish is a gender neutral suffix- meaning “person
who does the preceding verb.” gender neutral person

42. genderqueerconfessions.tumblr.
com

43. confessions: do I look queer?
“
I feel like it‟s harder to accept my identity as
genderqueer when I have no idea how to present
myself. Sometimes I warm up to the idea that being
genderqueer has no „look‟ to it, but then I feel like I‟m
appropriating people who „present more genderqueer‟
than I do. It‟s making me really confused and it makes
it harder to accept my identity, I don‟t know what to do.
i often feel like no matter how i present myself, i
always seem to look cisfemale…
”

44. confessions: do I look queer?
“
I hate how I look. But then there are days when I love my
female curves and I feel horrible because then I feel like I‟m
just making up my dysphoria. I want to cut my hair and when I
get older maybe get top surgery. But if I do, then what will
happen on the days I feel like a girl?
I think I give up on trying to appear androgynous. I‟m always
”

45. “Instead there were „queer‟ ways of
using language –ways that
disrupted normative conventions
about expectations about who could
talk about sexuality and how that
talk should be structured and
disseminated.”
Sexuality as Identity: Gay and
lesbian language, 98

46. identity through language: presentation

47. identity through language: presentation
In Constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing
gender, authors Eckert and McConnell-Ginet note that
by high school, it is assumed that everyone
participates in the heterosexual market (27). Dress
and body presentation, then, can be important
markers that an individual is not participating in the
heterosexual market, but is in fact set apart, or queer.

48. identity through language: labels
Queer individuals also grapple with “identity” through
labels.
“
I thought having some words for my experience would
help but it‟s just getting more difficult. I feel I‟m a “girl
who wants to be a boy”, but I‟m AMAB - a male
transboy? This is the first definition I feel I could use,
but thinking about it makes me confused.
”

49. identity through language: labels
Queer individuals also grapple with “identity” through
labels.
“
I hate all this gender stuff so much, it‟s SO confusing
and depressing, I just don‟t know what to do with
myself. It‟s caused me SO much pain and heartbreak.
A world without gender though, that would be my
personal utopia. A place where I‟m free from this
sexist, homophobic/transphobic, judgmental, binary
hell. I can only dream though.
”

50. identity through language: labels
Queer individuals also grapple with “identity” through
labels.
“
I honestly get really mad when people ask me for my gender.
After all, why do they really need to know? How is knowing my
gender going to affect them? Whenever someone wants to
know what my gender is, I just think to myself… “Why do you
need to know what my gender is? So you can pressure me to
be more manly and call me a fag if I act feminine, if you find out
I am male? Well guess what! I am genderqueer and I do NOT
fit into your traditional “straight, masculine man” or “straight,
feminine woman” category; and more importantly, I am me, and
I want to be known for being me, not some gender/sexual

51. Sources






Warner, M. (1999). The Trouble with Normal: Sex,
Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. Harvard
University Press. Cambridge, MA.
Annamarie Jagose. (1997). Queer Theory: An
Introduction. NYU Press, NYC.
“Constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing
gender.” 2003. Eckert, Penelope and Sally
McConnell-Ginet.
“Sexuality as identity: Gay and lesbian language.”
2003. Cameron, Deborah and Dan Kulick.
“The Digital Queer: Weblogs and Internet Identity.”
“New developments in language and gender
research.” 2004. Coates, J. pp.215-221;245