Who first theorized Queer theory?
Queer theory
Early discourse of queer theory involved leading theorists: Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and others. This discourse centered on the way that knowledge of sexuality was structured through the use of language. Michel Foucault writes in "The History of Sexuality", critiquing the idea of the “repressive hypothesis” that supposes from the 17th to the mid-20th century, sex was a private matter limited within a marriage between a husband and wife, and discourses of sex have been otherwise prohibited and repressed. As a result of this repression, people sought outlets to release sexual feelings, building their own discourses of sex and thus liberating themselves from the confines of a sexually repressive society.[42] Foucault argues that the “repressive hypothesis” is a limiting attempt to connect open discourses of sex to personal liberation. This sort of narrative which views discourses of sex as revolutionary progress against a repressive system is dependent on the assumption that people of the past were sexually repressed; however, Foucault states that from the 17th to the mid-20th century the "'repressive hypothesis"' was an illusion, rather a suppression of western society's sexuality. In fact, discourse about sexuality flourished during this time period. Foucault argues,