Welcome

In 2017 I graduated from my masters degree and realised most of what I was taught would never leave a lecture hall.

Completing a postgraduate science degree in Gender, it became evident to me that Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology and Political Science are deliberately kept behind a paywall. Only the academically elite are given the tools and resources to learn about human cultural diversity. In the summer of 2019 I deferred my PhD and funnelled my doctoral studies savings into a trip around the world to take all the stories and cultures I had learned about in my Master’s classes and broadcast them, in the words of people from those very communities, around the world. The /Queer Project became a means through which to democratize and decolonise gender and sexuality education. Since its inception, /Queer has amassed listeners in 124 countries around the globe and through the work of our team of volunteers, /Queer has been added to educational institution curricula in both the UK and US, exhibited at NGOs in Indonesia and archived at the Kinsey Institute, USA.

Queer is a word which has become a site of reclamation and resistance for the gender and sexuality diverse community. The general use of this word- according to the Oxford English Dictionary- is as a synonym for that which is strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Another definition, adjacent, is of course a homosexual, especially for a homosexual man. A slur against us has become a word which belongs to us- which cannot be weaponized against us if we define what it means. In the act of queering something we bend, we blur, we obscure and we shift- the categorical becomes the indistinguishable. Queer is how that which resists categorization is transmuted, re-purposed, exploited, celebrated, weaponized and vilified. Queerness is- it represents so much that is border-less and unquantifiable about our bodies, our practices and our culture(s).

Of course, the title of this project is more than queer- it is /Queer. Queerness is often an afterthought- queerness follows after words like gay and transgender; what is queer is placed out of necessity to catch all that falls through these terms and out the other side.

However, /Queer is not just about that which is overlooked- it is about what can be transformed. Queer is a transitive verb- anything can be queered, and to press /queer against an identity category is to indicate that there is space here for all of those who do not belong in a box. To everything that came before- Queer is what comes afterward. 

/Queer is a community-focused, collaborative platform upon which resources regarding LGBTQ+ experiences can be shared around the globe. /Queer is predominantly disseminated via a podcast which records the oral histories of transnational queer communities and provides evidence to demonstrate how what is ‘queer’ is native- it is global, it is pervasive and it is enduring. As a community, those of us in positions of privilege have a responsibility to make our acquired knowledge accessible to our less privileged peers. Through audio, transcriptions, articles and resource signposting, /Queer has become a hub where individuals varying in gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, race, culture, physical ability and neurodiversity can access valuable information and learn more about the history and diversity of the human experience.

This is a project dedicated to showcasing and celebrating the heterogeneity of people all around the world- and creating a touchpoint of empathy for that diversity through a term reclaimed from those who sought to dehumanise us- Queer.

Welcome to /Queer- I hope you enjoy our work.

Georgie Williams (they/them), Founder, /Queer