ABSTRACT
The way in which ‘queer’ is pronounced in English sounds exactly the same as the Catalan word cuir. And cuir means ‘leather’. Pronouncing this word when conducting interviews with young lesbians in a small city close to Barcelona provokes a suspicious reaction: ‘What are you exactly asking me about … ?’ In the Catalan context, ‘queer’ is mainly used in feminist and LGBT social movements and in academia. However, it is not a common word used to identify people or used for self-identification by lesbian, gay, bi or trans people. In the interviews I have conducted in Manresa, Catalonia (Rodó-de-Zárate, 2015), the concept usually came across as unknown. Significantly perhaps, only young lesbian activists were aware of what I was referring to.
