Both contest the notion that people have stable, “natural” identities that exist separately from the social world they live in. But there is a difference (Green, 2007): Symbolic interactionists try to explain how we construct gender and sexual identities that seem durable and lasting to us and to those around us. But queer theorists tend to argue against the whole idea of durable gender and sexual identities; rather, they see fixed identities as deeply problematic. Queer theory, then, is deconstructive; it attempts to take apart the idea of a stable self-identity.
similarities and differences between the two perspectives.
