The important part of reclaiming a word is changing the negative connotation. Once, queer’s only meaning was negative. Now, the word is neutral in general society. That’s a little different with naming yourself ironically based on the comments of your opponent. That is, I suspect the Dutch Beggars still had negative opinions of actual beggars of the Dutch ethnicity. Or if some religious group called LessWrong members “Arrogant Assholes.” It wouldn’t be intensely surprising for some of us to adopt that as an unofficial moniker. But that probably wouldn’t change our (or society’s) prior beliefs about being arrogant or being an asshole.
Regardless, the interesting point about “queer” is not that reclamation as I’ve described it actually occurred. If empirical feminism is true, there’s every reason to think it has happened lots of times before. Sans-culottes appears to be one such example. What is particularly interesting about “queer” is that someone wrote an essay saying, “Let’s reclaim ‘queer’ because it has a negative connotation and that’s bad for homosexuals” and the reclamation effort worked. That doesn’t seem to be the same process as “sans-culottes” or other historical examples.
The important part of reclaiming a word is changing the negative connotation. Once, queer’s only meaning was negative. Now, the word is neutral in general society. That’s a little different with naming yourself ironically based on the comments of your opponent. That is, I suspect the Dutch Beggars still had negative opinions of actual beggars of the Dutch ethnicity. Or if some religious group called LessWrong members “Arrogant Assholes.” It wouldn’t be intensely surprising for some of us to adopt that as an unofficial moniker. But that probably wouldn’t change our (or society’s) prior beliefs about being arrogant or being an asshole.
Regardless, the interesting point about “queer” is not that reclamation as I’ve described it actually occurred. If empirical feminism is true, there’s every reason to think it has happened lots of times before. Sans-culottes appears to be one such example. What is particularly interesting about “queer” is that someone wrote an essay saying, “Let’s reclaim ‘queer’ because it has a negative connotation and that’s bad for homosexuals” and the reclamation effort worked. That doesn’t seem to be the same process as “sans-culottes” or other historical examples.