Queer is Here? Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Histories and Public Culture

This article documents the emergence, in recent years, of a prominent discourse on queer history in the public sphere. Focusing especially on LGBT History Month, an events programme launched in February 2005 that sets out to ‘mark and celebrate the lives and achievements of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered people', as well as reviewing an exhibition at the Museum of London called ‘Queer is Here’, which opened in February 2006, I consider the potential exclusions generated in these contexts by a rhetoric of outness and repression. Stressing the significant role that transgender identification has played historically, as well as the shaping effects of race and place on experiences of sexual and gender dissidence in urban environments, I argue that models of ‘sexual orientation’ leave certain dimensions of queer experience and desire untold. Drawing on recent efforts to theorize the relationship between publics and queer counterpublics, I conclude that the translation of queer history into the language of public culture ideally entails a contestation of the very norms of presentation and consumption in which museums and other popular history narratives are currently embedded.