About the thing said to Ianto in CoE, Day 3 that is causing controversy

[rm]

I learnt the word queer when I was about eight, reading something or other. I didn't learn that it meant gay, just that it meant weird, and I thought it was a lovely word and I used it all the time.

One day, at camp, when I was twelve, I used it to describe a novel I was reading, and another little twelve-year-old looked at me wide eyed and asked in what manner it was homosexual, as they had not heard that it was. I did not understand, but by the end of the day, I learned I could never use the word queer again, not because it was offensive, but because it looked bad to talk about homosexual things.

When I went to university, it was a time of Riot Grrls and being confrontational. People wrote slut on themselves in lipstick, not to be cute and clever and get laid (which does seem to be a trend now), but to be angry and repellent. And people like me? Well, we were queer.

But queer was never an angry word for me, it was just mouth pleasure to say, and less clinical or multisyllabic than my other options (gay woman, bisexual, homosexual, lesbian, gender variant, etc.) and I liked it in the sort of ridiculous way a slight girl who happens to look like Oscar Wilde must. So it's been my word, for-like-EVER, not to make people uncomfortable, but because it's easiest for me. I like it.

Now sure, I've had queer used as an insult to me, and you know, insults are all about tone. When the waiter called me sir last night at the Algonquin, I practically puffed up with joy. When the idiot that works at my bank does it, when I'm wearing a dress, as some code for "ugly woman I don't want to deal with right now" I could punch someone. So sometimes queer is an insult and sometimes it's not.

One of the rules of thumb I've noticed about this is adjectives are more likely to be okay than nouns. If you're describing me as queer without vitriol, we're good. If you're describing me as "a queer" even without vitriol, we might have a problem. It's the same thing with being Jewish or describe as "a Jew." I've had people scream at me on the street "You Jew!" because of disputes over taxis and stuff. Nouns with implied (no matter how irrational) negative associations can be really scary.

And that's, of course, how Clem used "the queer" in talking about Ianto.

Now I've seen a lot of meta about whether Clem could really smell his orientation, or if it was about the scent of recent intimacy with Jack (when? in the backseat of the car at the end of Ep 2?) and whether saying things like this on TV is dangerous because it leads people to think queer people really are different and not just like everyone else, and oh, god, you can tell!

Man, I have so many more problems with all this meta than I do with what Clem said, even as, yeah, I would have hollered too.

1. As a queer person, I am different. And you can tell. This is not true of all queer people, but it's worth noting that I'm somewhat sick of people advocating that we're all just like everyone else. Hardly. We're not even all like each other. Get it?

2. The world has homophobia in it. Why shouldn't it be on TV not as a major plot point but as the real live background noise we deal with in the world -- even when fighting aliens apparently?

3. Can we please stop thinking that writers share the views of, and advocate the behaviors contained in, the material they write? I think Jack/Ianto in IHNIIHBT are codependent loons, although I also think they are beautiful. And have you fucking read Descensus -- an epic examination of the very high and ugly price of trying to preserve traditions no matter how ugly they become -- do you really think I think those characters are good just because I'm capable of justifying in their own heads for narrative sake where they are coming from? Because if you think I think those characters are right, as opposed to justified from their perspectives, I'm not even sure why you're still talking to me.

4. Can we please stop thinking the audience is stupid? Did anyone watch a mentally challenged guy with a history of alien abduction call Ianto a queer and say he smells different and then decide that this somehow implies true facts about gay people? REALLY? Are you actually afraid this is happening out there?

5. People! Are you not loving the running joke about Ianto Jones's Very Bad Homosexual Day? Come on, this is the funniest shit ever. This thing that's only ever been a vague niggling issue for him because he's got no time and he's in the Torchwood bubble, and christ, it's Jack, has suddenly become the stupid topic people won't drop even while the world is ending. It's really funny, and if your life has even half of the weird serendipity mine has, you know that this sort of absurdity tends to cluster. It's hilarious, and it's RTD winking and nodding at us. Seriously, am I the only person who has had my own version of this? No way! NO WAY!

6. I stand by what I said yesterday about the read GDL gives Ianto's reaction line. Outrage and personal processing: it's gracefully done and elevates the writing. Once again, Euros Lyn is a genius of a director. Torchwood doesn't always know why it's doing things, but it usually knows what it's doing. Trust.

7. As a queer person, I love my allies, but come to my side, not to my rescue.

Comments

Re: No offence taken - just a bit of bogglement

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Ah, 26. I recall. Long past being Marianne or (heaven forbid) Lydia Bennet, and just starting to wonder about what it might be to be Anne Elliot (who, now I'm twenty years older than she was then, strikes me as the best of them all, and has since I was nineteen).