Interrogating the Use of LGBTQ Slurs

Book excerpt: Interrogating the Use of LGBTQ Slurs: Still Smearing the Queer? provides a critical exploration of LGBTQ slurs through its innovative focus on hetero-cis-normativity and Norm-Centered Stigma Theory (NCST), the first-ever testable theory about stigma. Based on research with more than 3,000 respondents, the ways gender/sexuality norm-violators are stigmatized and disciplined as “others” through asserting and affirming one’s own social power are highlighted alongside other unique elements of slur use (joking and bonding). Through its fresh and in-depth approach, this book is the ideal resource for those who want to learn about LGBTQ slurs more generally and for those who seek a nuanced, theory-driven, and intersectional examination of how these LGBTQ prejudices function. In doing so, it is the most comprehensive scholarly resource to date that critically examines the use of LGBTQ slurs and thus, has the potential to have broad impacts on society at large by helping to improve the LGBTQ cultural climate. Interrogating the use of LGBTQ Slurs: Still Smearing the Queer? is important reading for scholars and students in the fields of LGBTQ studies, Gender Studies, Criminology, and Sociology.