The titles of popular television shows “Queer Eye For The Straight Guy” and “Queer As Folk” may have caused viewers who consider themselves politically correct to do a double take.

Is it OK now to use the word “queer”?

The historically negative term — used to describe members of the gay community — is now being used with pride by some of the community’s younger members to describe themselves.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the word “queer” shifted from meaning “odd or different” to a negative term for gay men, said Todd Herriott, adviser for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Ally Alliance.

“‘Queer’ became synonymous with being a gay male,” said Herriott, graduate student in educational leadership and policy studies. “It was a term used to point them out.”

Herriott said the term has become political in the past 30 years.

It is now considered a term to describe those who challenge mainstream society and labels given to people, he said.

“For some individuals who don’t fit neatly into boxes, the issue became how to define themselves,” he said. “Using the term ‘queer’ is a political statement that rebels against labels … ‘Queer’ is about a cultural concept.”

Herriott said the term became more of a political statement in the 1970s when used by a few of the younger and more outspoken members of the gay community.

“You began to see people start being much more open — much more in your face about sexual orientation,” he said.

As other sexual orientations were recognized and new terms — like bisexual and transgendered — were added, there became a need for one simple word to describe everyone, Herriott said.

Turning negative words around and assigning new positive definitions to them is “a source of power,” said Jeremy Hayes, coordinator for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Student Services.

“‘Queer’ is one of those terms kind of reclaimed by a community,” said Hayes, graduate student in educational leadership and policy studies.

Hayes said other people use the word “queer” because they do not want to run through the “alphabet soup” of different terms for people in the homosexual community.

“Some people say it because it is an easy, all-encompassing word,” Hayes said.

Although many people now use “queer” to describe the homosexual community, there are still some people who are offended by it, Hayes said.

“There’s not a clear consensus,” he said. “Because it has been a pejorative word in the past, some people still identify with it that way.”

Herriott said some people in the gay community still reject identification with the word “queer” — especially older members and younger people who have just come to terms with their sexual orientation.

“I think [older members of the community] look at it as a word that doesn’t have any dignity,” Herriott said. “[Younger people] are not yet willing to take on such a public and really political stance.”