Like, people who identify as Queer know the word is used like a slur. Trust me, we know.
So when we say “queer is a slur” was started by terfs, maybe use some critical thinking and try to understand what we mean. That is, if you actually care about queer people and the damage terfs do, rather that just screaming “queer is a slur!” and ignoring the actual point.
Terfs did not like that queer was reclaimed. End of. This is a fact. Queer was too broad, too accepting, and embraced all the people they wanted gone. And I know y’all exclusionists feel the same but get pissed when we point it out so you deny it, but sit down and listen for a minute.
Queer was the preferred term for poc. For bisexuals. For trans people. For people with multiple identities. It neatly encapsulated everything, and was a friendly community to those who felt thrown under the bus by mainstream LGBT activism. It was a political and social statement, “you treated my like I was different and weird, and guess what? I am and that’s something to be proud of.”
So the response? “You can’t use that word. Its bad. Its a slur.”
And at the time, a lot of people rolled their eyes. Everyone knew why they didn’t like the word and brushed that off. It was fine.
So they started more subtly. “Just so you know this word is very harmful and is a slur so be careful how you use it :))) in case you didn’t know :)))) its a slur :))) friendly reminder :))) for the sake of other people of course :))))” type shit on every post involving the word, including and especially posts simply mentioning self identification.
Always worded in friendly, concerned ways, like the derailment was meant to be nice and considerate, and not about normalizing their rhetoric.
And what happened because of that was a younger generation of community kids growing up with these statements being thrown at them and absorbed on every. Single. Post. That. Mentionioned. Queer.
The result? That same generation of kids cutting it all short, removing the meant-to-be-palatable niceness, to just say “queer is a slur.”
Exactly how it was originally intended. “Queer is a slur.” People drop on posts where young queer people talk about it being a self identifier that actually fits them. “Its a slur,” they comment, with nothing else, on posts they clearly didn’t read past that word, written by people twice their age who had reclaimed it before they were even born.
Its nasty. Its disgusting. It’s plain old bigotry, whether the people saying know it or not. It is a terf tactic, plain and simple.
And no one wants to deny that it is indeed used as a slur (right along with all the rest of our identities.) No one wants to be insensitive and force it on people who haven’t reclaimed it.
But invading queer people’s posts to spit “queer is a slur” is flat out queerphobic. You do the dirty work of terfs, of cis straight oppressors, by saying in one simple sentence: “its a dirty word, there is no pride in it, you haven’t/can’t reclaim(ed) it.”
And regardless of your actual intentions, when you do this, that is EXACTLY what you are communicating and doing.
“Queer is a slur” is a terf movement. Stop fucking supporting terfs just because you want to pretend like it isn’t.
Calling yourself queer is fine but like.. it’s not a good umbrella term bc it Is a slur and if you can reclaim it you can but lots of gay people are uncomfortable w it (including me, a trans woman) n u gotta respect that
“Gay” is a slur too. In fact I have never once in my life heard queer used as an insult, but I lost track of how many times I’ve heard gay used to way. And yet here you are using it as an umbrella term. In fact it’s used as an umbrella term constantly. And nobody says a word about it.
What’s the difference?
Rhetorical question. The difference is that there wasn’t a movement by terfs and similar exclusionists to make sure nobody could comfortably self-identify as gay. There was for queer, and sadly it worked on a lot of people.
I’m going to keep using it as an umbrella term. Because that’s what it is. Because it is actually the best umbrella term we’ve ever had. It sucks that so many people have been misled to the point where they’re uncomfortable hearing/reading the word queer. I won’t use it to refer to individuals unless they’ve indicated that they’re okay with that, because each person gets to choose their own labels. But for the community? It’s the most inclusive word I’ve got and I’m not letting exclusionists take it away. I’m going to keep fighting for the queer community, because it’s the only community that undeniably includes all of us.
The difference between Queer as a slur and Gay as a slur is the history behind the words. “Queer” means “weird”, whereas “gay” means “happy” in historical terms. Though both have been used as slurs, and both have been reclaimed, the reason why some people are uncomfortable with “Queer” as a catch-all term for the LGBT community is that history.
So when you refer to the LGBT community as “queer”, you’re saying that all LGBT people are “weird”. That’s why people, including me, are uncomfortable with it being a catch-all term for the community. For personal use, it’s fine, but for widespread, it’s got its problems that should be taken into consideration.
That’s actually not true. “Gay” in origin (as a label to call other people) meant “sexually perverse/deviant,” and was most prominently used on sex workers, as well as perceived gay and gnc(trans) people in the early 20th century. It was reclaimed in the exact same fashion as queer by gay men, as a purposeful distancing from the term “homosexual.”
There is actually a surviving letter written by a queer identifying person around that time discussing the shift of terms over to gay, and that not being something they liked because of the horrible connotations and it not being as good a term as queer (if I’m remembering correctly.)
The reclaiming process redefined these terms to an extent for us (though the “weirdness” was embraced as something to be proud of in the 90s, that was an important part.) but “gay” lost its negative connotations over time (though it was still hurled as a slur,) but queer was hung onto because gatekeeping bastards hated the fucking word and its inclusiveness and never let anyone forget it.
I feel just as bad when people call the community “the gay community” and yet an overwhelming amount do it. But I don’t rag on gay people who do it really because I know they use the terms comfortable to them. I also don’t hold it against people who use other terms that are more offensive but personally reclaimed, because I know they include only those who identify under that term.
When “queer community” or “queer people” is used, a) its no more offensive than any other term being blanketed, and b) it literally only includes queer people. Of you’re not queer identifying….it doesn’t include you.
Honestly “queer” is so useful for people like me w/ a “complicated orientation” b/c instead of having to say I’m “asexual panromantic” and explain what that means, I can just say “I’m queer” and it tells you all you need to know (that I’m not straight).
yeah sure good for you but don’t ever ever use that word for someone who doesn’t identify as it themselves, it’s not an umbrella term for everyone. also “pan/ace” would definitely work, even if you don’t want to use it, other people could. i use ace lesbian and definitely not the q slur.
Wow its almost like they were just talking about using it on themselves for individual reasons and you butted in to be an ass and be condescending because you think you’re superior for not using queer, then you called their identity a slur right to them. But that can’t possibly be what you were trying to do, right?
Anyone is allowed to use it for themselves, I never said no one should do that if that’s what they want. Queer is a slur though. I just want people to be aware of that, I have no idea if OP is aware of that or not but some people using that word aren’t. I’m tired of people including me and other people who don’t want to be included in that word, and before anyone asks, I never meant that OP did that, because I literally have no idea if they do.
Queer is a slur as much as any other LGBT+ word, I just want you to be aware of that.
“Gay” is used as an insult. It is used to be demeaning. Its used to discriminate. And yet its used as the all mighty umbrella – gay rights, gay marriage, gay community – when discussing the entire community.
Gay gets used as a slur. Queer gets used as a slur. But I don’t walk up to gay people and say “your identity is a slur, you know that right” or get pissed when they say “the gay community” when they mean the whole community.
Personal identity and preference in terms, even harmful words that get used as slurs, are not questioned; except for the word Queer.
Queer gets shut down. Queer people get others in their faces saying “your identity is a slur!” Queer people don’t have the freedom to identify in a community, but are forced under other terms against their will due to hypocrisy and double standards.
So if you’re not going to come onto gay people’s posts for the same behavior, maybe critically analyze why exactly you feel the need to be so condescending to Queer people, specifically on posts that ONLY have to do with personal identity. Why you feel the need to insist to Queer people that their identities are slurs, to directly slap away the power of reclaiming a word from them by demanding it remain in the hands of the Straights as a perpetual slur.
I think an important difference between gay and queer is however, that queer started out as a slur used against members of the community and continues to be used as a slur in many places. Whereas gay began as a word the community chose itself to describe itself and was then later used by homophobes and heterosexuals in general in a negative way, meaning however, that gay doesn’t hold the same negative connotations as queer for many people simply because it was our word that they took, and not a word that they forced on us to make us “strange” or “other” like queer means.
That’s…. Not true. People think so because the history before gay was reclaimed is way older (older than any love community member’s lifetimes, probably,) but gay had the exact same origins.
It was meant to denote sexually perverse people, most frequently sex workers and those who hired them. Anyone who participated in anything but married, vanilla, straight sex might have been referred to as “gay,” including any suspected LGBT person.
The word (already being one frequently used on the community,) was reclaimed as a community identifier when the community wanted to disconnect from the clinical and diagnostic implications of “homosexual.”
There is record of queer being reclaimed and used as a personal identifier literally before the popularization of gay. Both words are reclaimed slurs with negative histories, and BOTH are used as slurs against the community still to this day.
The more recent history of the mid to late 20th century more prevalently favored queer as a slur, as is represented in our media. However its clearly undeniable that the switch back to gay as the popular community slur (along with the ever present f slur,) happened in the 2000s. Which is trying to be denied and rewritten by the anti queer crowd, who completely ignore the words popularity with community members who actually lived through when it was a popular slur.
Yes to all of this. When it comes to words for “not straight” there are hardly any choices that didn’t originate as ways to stigmatize or pathologize us. We are all using reclaimed slurs to describe ourselves.
Also, queer is reclaimed in a particularly empowering way. It doesn’t just mean “same-sex attraction” but encompasses a whole spectrum of attractions and gender orientations. It’s a word that says to asexuals, pansexuals, bisexuals, trans folks, genderfluid and genderqueer and genderless folks and people who are still figuring themselves out, “hey, you’ve got a home here. We don’t need to categorize you to love you.”
This is important because there are a lot of divisions within the LGBTQ+ world, and in particular cis gay men and cis lesbians often overlook or exclude trans, bi and asexual people. Queer is the only word that not only demands equal acceptance for everyone, but leaves the door open for words and descriptors that haven’t even been invented yet.
Somebody else pointed this out earlier to me, and of course I’ve lost the post, but it’s really suspicious that of all the reclaimed slurs, the one that gets the most pushback is the one that is most radically accepting of all identities
“hey, you’ve got a home here. We don’t need to categorize you to love you.”
Lmao yeah! the pushback against this idea is overt and disgusting and I don’t trust anybody who perpetuates it.
Queer is an ideology and an identity, historically and now. It is an umbrella for that ideology and an umbrella for those identities, historically and now. They can’t be conflated (with LGBT) and it’s super fucking disingenuous to pretend one is just the tarnished besmirched dirty slur version of the other. They’re different. In my particular work for example, Queer bioethics is different from LGBT bioethics and conflating the two will muddle any discussion you try to have about them because they lead to literally opposite conclusions in some cases.
Yeah I freaking love pancakes
Wait wrong post
By far the best addition to this post
This is one of those things where I feel like an old.
Like, *the* slogan I associate with pride is, “We’re here, we’re queer – get used to it!”
There was a TV show called “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” that was total mainstream pap. (Not that the show wasn’t riddles problematic elements from the concept out, but ‘queer’ in the title was clearly meant as a positive.)
I just have a hard time processing queer as anything but reclaimed.
They actually shot “Queer As Folk” in my city!
TERFs and radical gender/sexuality bianarists are flooding social media and blogging sites with propaganda smearing the word queer in the hopes of silencing all of us who don’t identify with their hate politics. I fought hard to reclaim the word queer in the late 80s and early 90s, and it’s the one word that doesn’t worship exclusion. Which is why these people are trying to convince you not to use it. fuck that noise. there is literally no word i could use to identify my sexuality that hasn’t been thrown at me in hatred, fear, and violence. No way am I giving up the one of those that allows me to talk about all of my community without trying to put people in boxes they don’t fit in.
I will never not reblog this post. Queer, queer, queer here.
“Queer” has been claimed by queer people as a self-descriptor since at least 1910. It’s an insult to those historical people (and all the generations of queer historical people who have identified as queer since then) to pretend that the people using it as a slur owned it more than the queer people who used it as a self-descriptor.
Source: George Chauncey, “Gay New York,” page 101
They don’t want us to use queer because they don’t want to be lumped in with anyone who’s not cis gay or cis lesbian. So fine. You don’t like the word queer? You don’t want to be in the “queer” community? Get the fuck out, then. Y’all don’t welcome us in your community anyway, so we’ll just have our own.
And it’ll be queer as fuck.
I fucking love the word queer ❤
Or, to put it another way, using a great old slogan of the community: I’m not gay as in happy, I’m queer as in fuck you.
Yes yes yes yes yes! These younglings today don’t know their queer history but feel so free to comment on it. Trying so desperately to assimilate into straight culture by turning your nose up at queer, and all the people who take refuge under its umbrella. Queer accepted me when nobody else would, not even the LGBT groups.
Queer is full of the types of people who don’t make good poster children for the middle class assimilationist cis gay couple just looking to get married and have some kids. Queer forces us to realize the fight didn’t end with gay marriage, and cis gays are gonna have to step out of the spotlight sometimes, and realize cis gays have privilege, and fight for someone with less. Trans people, nonbinary people, people in nontraditional relationship structures, aromantics, asexuals, sex workers. Heck more and more bisexual people these days are switching over to queer because the amount of biphobia in the so-called lgBt community is so alienating, and also because so many of us feel the term bisexual reinforces a false gender dichotomy and we’re too tired of jokes about kitchenware to use pansexual.
Part of what I love about the term queer is that it does make people uncomfortable. It makes them aware of their privilege, exposes certain biases, even within the LGBT community. What’s so wrong with a movement that strives to fight for everybody, huh? Huh?
Proudly bi, proudly queer, and being part of this movement when I was young was an honor.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 