Queering Marketing

The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the flourishing marketing and consumer research scholarship, aiming to give a queer spin to marketing research ( Pirani & Daskalopoulou, 2022 ). Queer theory problematises the categorisation of gender, sexuality, and desire in polar opposites, structured on unequal power distribution ( Jagose, 1996 ). Born in literature in gender studies, queer theory has contaminated management studies for its potential to question assumptions around identity ( O'Shea, 2018 ; Rumens et al., 2019 ). Departing from the experience of the LGBTQIA+ community, whose sexuality and desires have been historically linked to perversion and deviance, queer theory has shown how those identity traits which we perceive as ‘natural’ are the result of constant repetition ( Butler, 1990 ). Masculinity and femininity, then, are not expressions of genetic material but the only legitimate expression of gender. Refusing to perform one of these two, or blurring this categorisation, is not only a matter of personal preference, as it engages a socially shared system of privileging certain identities over others. This system, called heteronormativity, gives to normative femininity and masculinity, and to heterosexual desire, a position of legitimacy which is denied to other identities ( Butler, 1990 ; Jagose, 1996 ).