Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon has explained why identifying as "queer" suits her best of all.
Nixon, who played Miranda Hobbes in the iconic comedy-drama series set in New York City, has been married to wife Christine Marinoni since 2012. She was previously married to ex-husband Danny Mozes between 1988 and 2003.
"I could call myself a lesbian, gay, bisexual. But none of them seems really particularly right," she told Attitude magazine. "To say ‘queer’ means, 'I’m over there, I don’t have to go into the nuances of my sexuality with you'."
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Continuing, Nixon said that falling in love with Marinoni, whom she began dating in 2004, didn't in any way invalidate any of her previous relationships with men.
"Falling in love with my wife was one of the great delights and surprises of my life, but it didn’t seem like I became a whole new person, or like some door had been unlocked", she said.
"It was like: ‘I have fallen in love with different people in my life and they’ve all been men before. Now, this is a woman and she is amazing. So I feel like ‘queer’ is an umbrella term, and it includes my formerly straight self, too."
Back in 2018, we spoke to a variety of women and non-binary people who prefer to identify as "queer" – a word which was once used as anti-gay slur, but has since been reclaimed by members of the LGBTQ community.
"Initially, I think some of my straight friends were a bit apprehensive about it, because they still thought of it as a slur," Puj, who is non-binary, said at the time. "It’s become more of a visibly positive term over the last few years, and people are actively trying to find out what it means and asking questions to better understand it, which is great."