The term queer functions both as a noun or adjective and as a verb. Queer theory is more preoccupied with the noun and verb role as they are used to categorize, and interpollate certain people for the purpose of generating and continuously perpetuating heteronormativity. One definition found in an online dictionary for queer is "strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different". A definition that presumes to synthesize itself from politically correct terms cannot avoid being involved in politics as it engages in juxtaposing the conventional to the odd in a pair of the male/female, presence/absence type, impregnating a relationship of domination and repression. In Queer Theory, the term queer refers to people of a sexual orientation other from the sanctioned heteronormative one.
Its verb form remains very interesting for it is telling of the interpolative politics that perpetuates the regime of heteronormativity. In the Oxford English Dictionary to queer, the verb is defined as "To ask, inquire; to question". This verb definition is revealing of prosecutive function that "queering" somebody or something plays in an established order. Indeed a non-straight sexual orientation is questioned, analyzed as an anomaly, even pathologized rather than seen as a presence in itself. It is prosecuted. It is made to be seen by the masses as odd and strange.
Lesbian and gay gender identity has been either ignored or stereotyped in film, literature and lived experience. This has led queer studies theorists to research masculinity in women and its connection to real or perceived lesbianism.
Queer theory emphasizes the instability and fluidity of gender and sexual categories and rejects the idea that our identities are somehow fixed or determined by our gender or sexual preference. Judith Butler’s “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” embraces gender and masculinity as undefined; something that is shaped by the individual, not by men or society. This is what makes one masculine or feminine exists independently of sex and gender.
In “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” Butler resists identification as a lesbian. This is not because she is homophobic but because the term is made by homophobic discourse. She engages in lacanian discourse and supports her discussion on Lacan's thoughts about the paradox of identifying with one's sexuality. Sexuality is a drive, and like all drives is an expression of the death drive, an effort to escape the realm of the symbolic and experience the real. Identity on the other hand is a product of the symbolic and can only exist there. Thus a marriage between sexuality and identity would be a marriage between the real and the symbolic, an impossible marriage.
Going back to the fluidity of gender and its lack of agency in determining femininity and masculinity there are psychoanalytic approaches that assume that female masculinity mimics male masculinity. Queer theorists believe femininity exists independent of sex and gender. In fact, female masculinity disrupts traditional studies of masculinity, whereby masculinity always amounts to social, political and cultural effects. As Foucault suggests, discursive productions construct the “truth” about a person and this truth is aimed at making the person conform to the contemporary norms of heterosexuality. We can recognize that people draw lines between normal and abnormal, and these discursive formations have real affects on those deemed to belong to each group.
The boundaries of gender are continually being challenged, projecting faith in a future that holds promise for the “transcendence” of gender. Butler foretells movement beyond traditional gender roles to refashioned and more flexible gender motifs or perhaps even to the eradication of gender altogether.