Judith Butler: "What is queer theory?"

All of my assumptions regarding Judith Butler's role in the development of queer theory were turned upside down today. Like many others, I have long identified Butler's book Gender Trouble (1990) to be the starting point for queer theory, which is why I nearly fell out of my chair today upon reading the following quote from Peter Osborne and Lynne Segals 1994 interview with Butler, which was published in the journal Radical Philosophy. Are you ready for this? Butler states:

I remember sitting next to someone at a dinner party, and he said he was working on queer theory. And I said: What's queer theory? He looked at me like I was crazy, because he evidently thought that I was a part of this thing called queer theory. But all I knew was that Teresa de Lauretis had published an issue of the journal Differences called 'Queer Theory'. I thought it was something she had put together. It certainly never occured to me that I was a part of queer theory.

I'm hoping my surprise is shared by others, because I really had no clue of this. I suppose this tells us something about the practice of labeling. Writers (or any other person who creates original work) often have little control over how their materials get branded or packaged, which speaks to incredible power users of media have over the material itself.