The preference for [the term] 'queer' represents, among other things, an aggressive impulse of generalizations; it rejects a minoritizing logic of toleration or simple political interest-representation in favor of a more thorough resistance to regimes of the normal.... For both academics and activists, 'queer' gets a critical edge by defining itself against the normal rather than the heterosexual.... The insistence on 'queer'... has the effect of pointing out a wide field of normalization, rather than simple intolerance, as the site of violence.

Warner, Michael (1993). "Introduction", Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory, p. xxvi. Ed. Michael Warner. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.