PSA: Queer

[rm]

(This is an outgrowth of a comment thread I'm having with someone in their journal. If that someone is you, no worries, we're cool).

Queer (as an adjective, we will not be using the noun here) is not inherently synonymous with gay and lesbian or LGBT.¹

Many LGBT people do not like or choose to use queer and/or feel it to represent something additional or instead of gay and lesbian or LGBT.

Because queer was originally a slur and not all LGBT people like to use it,² it's generally best that straight people don't use the word unless talking about people and groups that self-identify as queer.

Queer can be considered a non-assimilationist word. Some LGBT people who are not interested in getting equal rights by proving we're just like straight people prefer the term. (This is like when I rant about how "I'm queer and you can tell and I like it that way.")

Some non-trans people who are gender non-conforming use the term or variations there of (i.e., genderqueer).

Some trans people who are additionally not straight use the term as a shorthand way of encompassing multiple identities.

Some people who would traditionally be called "bisexual" use the term to avoid the reinforcement of a binary gender dichotomy.

Some people prefer queer because it removes the separation between men and women in the LGBT community, breaks down barriers between bisexual and other orientation identities, and can be more inclusive of the T part of the LGBT (which often gets pushed aside, because oppressed groups can be crappy to each other too).

Others like it because it's only one syllable.

Additionally queer is sometimes used to encompass kink, polyamorous and other non-traditional relationship styles in a way that may or may not be related to LGBT individuals depending on the community.³

As usual, I don't speak for all LGBT or queer people, just myself and my experience of our communities. If you have questions or more to add, consider the comments a free for all. I'm particularly interested in other people's sense and connotations for the word as ongoing discussion in the original thread is revealing that they are highly varied.

---

¹ A commenter reminds me that LGBT is just not enough these days, nor is LGBTQ, which you'll also often see. The full acronym these days often includes not just LGBT, but Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual and more.
² It's also just been brought to my attention that age may be a factor in how one reacts to queer so this PSA might seem more or less peculiar to you depending on your age.
³ Please see comments for additional discussion of this as there is disagreement on this one. It is problematic for many, and I tend to agree, although the arguments for its inclusion in queer also make a lot of sense.

ETA: Please read the comments. This is such an awesome display of diverse identities, respectful discussion about fraught issues and random people making friends I can't quite get over it. I am loving the LJ today.

Comments

[reannon.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this. As a cisgendered heterosexual woman, I have often wondered about the difference (and when it stopped being a derogative thrown by idiots) but you know, sometimes there are questions you can't ask. I still feel awkward around the word because it was the derogative of choice for LGBT people when I was growing up; I don't think the tone of it is ever going to relax for me.

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

As a bisexual or pansexual woman who IDs as queer, I am uncomfortable with otherwise-heterosexual people in the kink and poly communities appropriating the word queer to describe being poly or kinky. (And fwiw, I am both poly and kinky.) While being poly and/or kinky have their own challenges in society, they are just not the same as those faced by people in the LGBT spectrum, and I feel we need different words for these different things. Additionally, I must note that I haven't actually met any otherwise-straight people in my own area who use the word queer to describe being poly or kinky.

I ID as queer because:
I am unapologetically non-assimilationist, although I do support full marriage rights.
I do not support the binary view of gender and have had a partner who did not fit neatly in either the M or F box.
IDing as queer in LGBT spaces occasionally saves me from some of the suspicion and ostracism that IDing as bi gets one.
IDing as queer in straighter spaces makes it clear that my alliance is with the LGBT community and I'm not saying I'm bi to titillate guys but otherwise living my life as a straight girl does.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

age is totally a factor-- i came out in the early 90's, and my cohort and i (and it seems like a lot of people younger than me, too) are all over the word queer, whereas with people who came out before that, it's hit or miss.

my mom *hates* the word, and wishes i wouldn't use it to refer to myself, so i don't use it around her.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this comment.

I, btw, pretty much totally agree with you on otherwise straight and poly people using queer but I have seen it more than once, so it is out there.

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

It's still used as derogatory by some idiots as you say, but so are other words that have been reclaimed, such as "dyke" or "faggot". We wear these derogatory words with pride as a way of removing their sting.

"Queer!"
"Yup, so?"

[rm.livejournal.com]

And you at least know why it bothers some people. I know many people who are 10 or 15 years younger than me who didn't know it was a slur or a reclaiming word.

[macadamanaity.livejournal.com]

This is a very excellent explanation. I used to, when I was a young and punchy Women's Studies major in college, always wish that everyone would get on board with the idea of queer as an umbrella term, as a unifier--but the more I work in LGBTTTTQIAetc circles, the more I see that it can't and shouldn't be.

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

Agreed on the age factor--I came out in the 90s and the older members of my community told me they did not like the word at all because it had been thrown at them in their youth.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Marion Zimmer Bradley's novel, The Catch Trap uses "queer" as the standard term by both gay and straight characters. When I first read it in the mid-1980s, the word stood out to me as sounding very old-fashioned and derogatory. By the 1990s it felt totally natural, and I barely registered it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I've read that book, and at the time both of the book's setting and writing, queer was absolutely derogatory, and if I remember the book correctly is often used in a sense of self-hate/oppression in the text.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

Pretty much word. I get tired of the alphabet soup and generally use it as an umbrella term for all sex/gender/desire alternative people – from kinksters to poly to LGBTQ. I do accept poly and kinky folks into the big house under the umbrella queer, though.

While different groups of people who's 'difference' centers around sex/gender/desire have different experiences and different ways the majority culture discriminates them, I do believe that this very broad category of people faces at least one thing in common (at least in the United States), which is a moralizing belief that it is a: other people's business who I fuck and how and b: who I fuck and how affects them personally, emotionally and deeply (and therefore they have the right to legislate/medicalize/baudlerize or brutalize in order to ensure their comfort and safety).

If you (general) fall into a group of people for whom this is true, then I feel that we face similar discrimination (as well as, likely, different ones).

Because I prefer being maximally inclusive and seeking commonalities among people, rather than using a razor to divide difference into finer and finer categories, I try and use language that reflects that. I don't think it's easy, and it's not terribly popular right now, but living through and watching various *isms and !fails suggest to me that the finer divisions of suffering are creating more suffering, not less.

Word also on the generation gap. It was an epithet when I was growing up and I've lived through the reclaiming process.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

I've read the book too, and it was both a reflection of the self-hatred and internalized homophobia that gay men would have had at the time and also the only word that was non-scientific and least offensive (I don't think gay was a commonly used term when the book was set).

[tree00faery.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I'm most definitely in the younger generation, and I wouldn't say that 'queer' has lost its derogatory/negative background. I grew up in a rich, upper middle class, liberal area, and I still got called queer (as if it were a bad thing) in school. Though 'fag' was definitely more prominent (and I still cringe when I hear it).

I call myself queer primarily because I don't like using 'bisexual', for the reasons you stated. But the reclaiming factor has always been there too.

While normally I say that I am queer to let people know that I'm not straight, I don't always mean that to be strictly about sexual orientation. To me, identifying as queer means also that I accept my non-conformity with 'traditional' gender roles. Namely, I speak my mind and don't change myself to appeal to men. In a way I wish that didn't have to be a part of my queer identity, but it definitely is.

Hope this makes sense. /rambley comment is rambley

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

May I ask a related question? I'm older than most folks here, at a time when the term 'gay' was used to identify both men and women. Is it still OK to use gay as a term when referring to women,or should the term lesbian be used exclusively?

[rm.livejournal.com]

I personally prefer to use "gay woman" when I'm identifying myself as female and feel queer would be not useful in the situation, mainly because I don't like the idea that there is a gay community made up of men, and some lesbians over here on the side.

I'm sure there are hundred different answers to this question at least. Unless someone has a strong self-identification as one (and some absolutely will as lesbian), I don't think using gay as an adjective is a problem regardless of gender.

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that "poly" and "kink" are perfectly good descriptors... why drag "queer" in to that?

Being not-straight, myself, but neither fitting into nicely defined gay or straight definitions, I prefer queer. But for me, the impact of "queer" came straight from the Queers Read This manifesto (1990).

I never know what to make of the ever growing alphabet soup acronym. I see the need to formally name and make visible different groups, to explicitly recognize and name allies; but for day to day speech, it defeats me.

[yendi]

One more area in which it's used (and in which, therefore, I find myself sometimes confronted with the word as a part of my day job) is in academia.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Does queer studies identify people who do not self-identify as queer as queer in its texts or is it an umbrella term that then covers people with a range of identities that includes, but is not limited to, queer?

(I can't believe I don't know this).

[jgcr.livejournal.com]

AFAIK (and I'm not a queer studies expert) it can be used in both of those ways, and also, interestingly, to talk about *texts* that are queer is some way that is not limited to the people who are in the text or authored the text.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Right, I'm used to it in terms of queer texts or things like "queering the villain," but I have to say I have a certain discomfort with academia choosing to define people who would not self-identify as queer (because that word was a weapon) as so. As it's still a loaded word, I think it's potentially disrespectful and harmful.

And I say that as someone who plays about in academia and self-identifies as queer.

[sihaya09.livejournal.com]

IDing as queer in LGBT spaces occasionally saves me from some of the suspicion and ostracism that IDing as bi gets one.
IDing as queer in straighter spaces makes it clear that my alliance is with the LGBT community and I'm not saying I'm bi to titillate guys but otherwise living my life as a straight girl does.

These ring like a bell for me.

[dr-is-in.livejournal.com]

I've always had a problem with knowing what terms were ok to use and when to apply them. I get really uncomfortable sometimes with the subject matter because I am so afraid I am going to use a term wrong or address something incorrectly and offend and anger someone.

[libgirl.livejournal.com]

I was in a literary theory course about, er, five years ago and a colleague was talking about being queer and Queer Studies. At the time, for me, it was like I had been slapped, and I was in my early twenties at the time. I'm not sure that I believe that the term queer has really lost the pejorative connotations, I think exposure and context are the real differentiating factors in whether or not you experience the word as one that carries baggage or not. At the time, I acknowledged my discomfort with the word, acknowledged that it was being used by one of the Family and as a claiming word and I moved on.

That's a bit ironic in retrospect because I've been out and involved to various degrees for a while now and queer is a word that I will use to identify myself. I used to give fairly frequent Q and A's on being part of the Community and I would describe queer as an umbrella term. For me, as someone who identifies with one of the more obscure letters in the acronym soup (Two-Spirit) queer gives me an ability to feel like I'm being honest with myself and others when I identify, but also allows me to avoid the extensive explaining and educating that Two Spirit requires, especially since Two Spirit is *also* an umbrella term. ;) I don't mind talking to people about who I am, my experience and how I identify, but sometimes you just want to be able to say, yes, I am also here, without having to be an expert. ;)

Also, I find that in the LGBT... community you are expected in many cases to identify yourself by both name and orientation basically the first time you meet someone--at least that was my college experience. I also find that problematic and struggle with identifying myself both spiritually and via my sexual orientation the first time I saw hello to someone. Queer gives me a chance to pass the initial hurdle and choose for myself (usually) when I want to get into the other stuff.

Having said all of that, only in settings where the vast majority of the assembled persons are somewhere on the LGBT... spectrum do I find that I use the word without the infinitesimal (internal) ! pause before it.

In terms of queer as a poly and/or kinky term. I haven't heard that.

[jeliza]

IAWTC.

Though occasionally I still use "bi" rather than "queer" in local LGBT spaces because otherwise some people assume I'm strictly lesbian; apparently butch bi females are unicorns, and I like to makes those people's brains hurt expand.

[jgcr.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. I guess most of what I've read (due to my interests) is about things written so long ago that *none* of our modern conceptions apply neatly, and academics are usually pretty clear about that. (E.g. Shakespeare, Spenser, etc.)

I can see that it would be more of an issue with more recent (or even more so, contemporary) authors.