Unnatural
The idea that queer = unnatural is summed up in Gayle Rubin’s charmed circle, originally illustrated in her text Thinking Sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality (1993)1. Shown below, at the center or “charmed” circle are the “Good, Normal, Natural, Blessed [Sexualities]”, which include heterosexuality among others. These sexualities are considered charmed because they have privileges that people at the margins, or in this case, at the “outer limits” of the circle, do not have. These sexualities are the “Bad, Abnormal, Unnatural, Damned [Sexualities],” including homosexuals and the non-procreative, as well as “with manufactured objects.” Of course, Rubin does not state this dichotomy as fact, but as the lived reality of social-sexual systems in place at the time, and still to this day. People who live at the margins, in this case on the outer ring, of society are considered unnatural because of their difference and divergence from the norm. Versailles is queer because it construes, manufactures, and abstracts nature, tearing it away from its ecological, native, reproductive functions—a form of divergence from the norm.
Rubin, Gayle. "Thinking Sex: Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." Culture, Society, and Sexuality, edited by Peter Aggleton and Richard Parker, Routledge, 2006, pp. 143-178. Print.