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The History of "Queer"

  • Writer: yannick-robin eike mirko
    yannick-robin eike mirko
  • Aug 29, 2023
  • 3 min read

It’s fair to make space for this starting out, though you’re probably not going to like it. The origin of the word queer is relatively uncertain, it entered the English language by the early 16th century, and was primarily used to mean “strange, odd” or “peculiar”. According to the National Archives, the word was thought to have been used in relation to a person’s identity for the first time in 1894, in a trial of Oscar Wilde’s where a letter from the Marquis of Queensbury detailed his “disgust” at Oscar’s relationship with the Marquis’ son Lord Alfred Douglas. The letter, read aloud in court, described Wilde and other homosexual men as ‘Snob Queers’. In the late 19th century, queer was unfortunately used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships.



[image description:a picture of Oscar Wilde, left, and Alfred Douglas, right.] via NYLON



I know, I'm sorry, look - if I could travel back in time to ensure queer was always a word associated with positivity and beauty, I would! All I can do now is help those around nowadays keep it positive for queers, which is why it’s important to understand that it wasn’t always a good thing to be associated with. Lucky for us, in the late 1980’s there were brave advocates who began reclaiming the word as a politically radical alternative to its bullying nature at the time, an example of such behavior being found in an LGBTQ activist organization founded in March 1990 in New York City, calling itself Queer Nation.



[image description: the Queer Nation logo, which is black with black lettering on white highlight, made to look like cut magazine pieces.]



It came up as a spin off-of ACT-UP, a group that was started in the 1980s to address the AIDS crisis in NYC, with the focus on combating homophobia and violence while promoting queer visibility. Imagine protests with banners and flags all covered in big bold lettering, normalizing the use of ‘queer’ as a positive for us. Both orgs sound pretty cool, right? Thank you, New Yorkers for your continued charges against hate! It’s rippled around the world and we’d be in such a different place without the work of those who took back queer as a word we could smile about and use to describe ourselves, our friends, our community.




[image description: the ACT-UP logo, which is black with white lettering, and says, “AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power”]



[image description: Young folks holding a Queer Nation banner and kissing, Photographer Unknown, 1990 (from the Outweek Photographs Collection)]



Today’s society describes queer as “sexual and gender identities other than straight and cisgender,” which I’m grateful for, because otherwise it would mean I’m calling myself “peculiar” whenever I identify with it which, for the record, I am incredibly normal and very much someone worth being friends with - like all queer people are! Not everyone is going to like using the term, not everyone that is LGBTQIA+ identifies with it, or uses it as an umbrella term - all of this is completely okay, as it’s important to respect not only those who identify with it, but those who don’t that are LGBTQIA+. There is never going to be an umbrella term for LGBTQIA+ that 1000% of its members are pleased with, though mindfulness with use of terms and with whom, is definitely important and appreciated.



[image description: Queer Nation activists at a "Take Back the Night" march in New York City in 1990. (Ellen Neipris)]


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yannick-robin eike mirko [who communicates in Spanish, English, + ASL] is a Manhattan-based Biawaisa/Yamoká-hu/Maorocoti multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, writer, doula and disability justice activist with a rare disease. His work sits at the intersection of movement, access, queer and indigenous survival, death care, and institutional accountability, using the body as archive, protest, and living evidence.

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Her relationship with dance and movement has never been linear or purely technical. From Off-Broadway to online, their work has been shaped by access, interruption, advocacy, and forced stillness. Movement and progress, for yannick-robin, is not simply choreography or activism; it is testimony, how a marginalized body speaks when institutions fail to listen. 
 

In 2021, yannick-robin participated in Drawing Breath, a visual and embodied project by Risa Puno that centered marginalized voices during COVID, with yannick-robin representing disabled people. The work focused on breath, endurance, and visibility at a time when disabled lives were being openly treated as expendable. This project cemented their understanding of movement as political: presence itself became resistance.
 

In 2022, disability justice became inseparable from his professional life. He was the first physically disabled actor/musician [acoustic and electric guitar, accordion, glockenspiel, xylophone, tambourine] to play a physically disabled role written through an ableist lens and publicly fought the theatre and writers for accountability. This work was documented in his blog and a documentary, a social media movement, and ultimately led to his inclusion in the University of Minnesota’s Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, archiving his contributions to disability, gender, and labor justice in theatre (the most recent edition/collection of years awaiting entering the public access archive due to funding and completion of editing. Help fund the preservation of non-cis history here).
 

That same year, he worked on Mr. Holland’s Opus at Ogunquit Playhouse as an actor/musician [bugle, trumpet, drum kit], a fully captioned production where his lived experience as a non-cis deaf and physically disabled artist directly informed their performance rhythm, physical storytelling, and musicality. Also in 2022, she performed in the inaugural Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival on Theatre Row under the direction of L Morgan Lee, delivering work as an actor involving monologuing about wheelchair use, access failure, and systemic injustice, using their body not as metaphor, but as evidence. 
 

In 2024 after a year and some change prioritizing deathcare work, they returned to theatre at New York Stage and Film (NYSAF), contributing to the work of disabled choreographer Jerron Herman as an actor/dancer. They also released their multi-genre EP passing that year, which catalogs their multi-instrumental writing and use of music for processing as they fall deeper into grief, hearing loss and deafness, and a world of being misunderstood for not being cis.

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In 2025, yannick-robin worked on the developmental process for Jay Alan Zimmerman’s upcoming show Songs for Hands on a Thursday, following Jerron Herman’s recommendation. The project included a residency at New York Theatre Barn’s Choreography Lab and a music workshop premiere, where yannick-robin served as both choreographer and dancer. The piece centered a Deaf father’s death and a CODA grappling with silence; yannick-robin’s role was to integrate sign language into choreography and bridge gaps between sound, access, and movement for d/Deaf performers.
 

Alongside his performance work, yannick-robin has been active in nonprofit and advocacy spaces since 2020. She worked for Imara Jones of TransLash Media, one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2023, where they were nominated for a Webby Award as an associate and digital producer for The TransLash Podcast, contributed to The Anti-Trans Hate Machine series, and wrote obituaries for TGNC siblings lost to violence. He has written for TalkDeath on racial disparities and discrimination in death care and other deathcare and injustice related topics and now offers obituary writing, death doulaship, and bereavement counseling for TGNC decedents and their families, people with rare diseases, and disabled communities.


for commissions, death care, speaking engagements and more, press the contact button.
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yannick-robin eike mirko is represented by Arise Artists Agency

© 2026 yannick-robin eike mirko

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