What does queer coded mean?
Thank you for asking! "Coding" here can refer to the conventions/assumptions/stereotypes in our culture that we assign to certain groups of people based on the way they supposedly act. The best known examples of "queer-coding" are probably the Disney villains of the 90s era: Jafar, Scar, Ursula, Captain Hook, etc. These characters have the hallmarks of queerness (usually just being effeminate men but also having drag queen references in Ursula's case)
Above all, this makes them devilishly entertaining. Academically, though, they are part of a larger idea of casting queer people in a villainous light. This isn't an inherently bad thing, and it's often remembered nowadays as a consequence of making something out of a bad situation: for much of the history of film and TV, studios were actively prohibited from showing queer personalities in a positive light (see: the Hays Code). So before queer people became more acceptable in the 21st century, almost all of our representation in the media was as the "bad guys." You could say queer people got the last laugh here, as Ursula and Scar and Jafar and Captain Hook are all the most memorable characters from their respective movies, owing a lot to the fun queer personalities the filmmakers gave them.
I also referenced Disney queer-coding in my original post with the note about King John, who is a character in the Disney Robin Hood movie, and is a good example of queer-coding as well.
In my post I mostly mean it satirically. But, I also see it as a useful way to look at this part of history… call it a unique lens.
