Queer is the label we used when we weren’t sure. Queer is the label we used when we were sure no other label would do. Queer is a gender that is my own and only my own. Queer is a sexuality that defies definition.
Queer is the label which became genderqueer, and from which non-binary and genderfluid sprung. Queer is the label which is the un-box, in which everyone who is not cishet (including ace people!!) fits. Queer is community.
Queer is activist. Queer is in the streets screaming ‘we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!’ Queer is not ashamed.
Queer was ours from the beginning. Queer was ours a century ago. Queer was used against us, and we said ‘fuck you,’ and we took it BACK. Queer is butches and bears with bats, protecting our community.
Queer is blue-collar. Queer is working-class. Queer is poor. Queer is people who can’t afford to sit out Stonewall quietly and then go fight for marriage equality when the tax bills come due. Queer is a distinct identity, and queer is the un-box.
Queer makes TERFs and exclusionists angry, because it doesn’t let them define people by gold stars and terms like ‘SGA’ that come from conversion therapy. Queer doesn’t give a shit about historical revision to exclude members of the community who have always been here, because queer has always been here and always will be.
Queer is the life raft onto which we climb. Queer is community. Queer is important, and people will have to pry it from my cold dead hands. I’ve been queer for thirty years. My community is queer, and it is opt-in.
If you tag my fucking posts ‘q slur’ or any variant thereof I will immediately fucking block you. Don’t fucking do it. If you feel obligated to tag my posts ‘q slur,’ don’t interact with them. My identity is not a bad word and does not require censoring.
“slur” isn’t the same as “bad word”. everything this says perfectly illustrates that you literally don’t know what a slur is.
queer is a slur and none of this changes that fact. is it so hard to have some respect for LGBT people who choose not to reclaim it?? it wasn’t “ours” to begin with. society took a word that means “weird” and used it against lgbt people (AND continue to do so!) some people have chosen to recclaim it and thats fine! what i do not understand is how you have no sympathy for people in the very community you claim to love so dearly that you willingly throw their pain at their face while also delegitimizating their pain.
like. at least others who recclaim that word can at least recognize that its a slur ??
Cool, so everyone is gonna stop using “gay” all the time, because that’s the word that was used to attack me, and is still a widespread slur across the US? We’re all gonna have respect for that now?
No? Because that’s an okay reclaimed slur, but queer is so toxic that somehow in the last two years and only on Tumblr it’s become such a discourse point that y'all gonna ignore that the first uses of queer for our community are a century old, and come from within the community?
Literally everything you said is either incorrect or can be equally applied to gay. So, no, I’m not going to censor my identity out of sympathy, because I have to listen to people call themselves gay every day and do so with the knowledge that it’s their identity word and is important to them. I, you know, made my trauma my business and worked on it and didn’t insist that other people stop being gay (and calling themselves gay in my earshot) because that’s the word that got weaponized against me.
I have PTSD. I know how trauma and triggers work. I also know my trauma and my triggers are my business to manage, and not the business of another person to change a core part of their identity so I can manage my trauma. Insisting that other people change their identities for the trauma of others has nothing to do with “sympathy,” it is about control. This sudden upswell in “q***r” and “q slur” and “q*eer” - censoring an important identity word as if it is a swear word, making it a word so bad it can’t be spoken, as if it’s a community’s Voldemort - did not come from nowhere.
We literally sat here and watched it happen. We watched TERFs start this particular virulent bit of discourse, marrying “queer is a slur” - with the implication that “slur” means “irredeemable and unable to be redeemed” - and we watched exclusionists pick up the water of TERFs and carry it for them. This isn’t some bit of old contention that goes back decades - five years ago, the word we had PSAs about how it shouldn’t be weaponized was gay.
But queer is everything I said: it doesn’t let TERFs and exclusionists know for sure if they should be hateful because it’s the un-box. So that just can’t be tolerated.
The “queer is a slur (and slurs aren’t reclaimed and slurs should be censored and slurs should not be used for a group but gay is fine, gay is not a slur like that)” thing isn’t about individual trauma and it never was. This “queer is a slur” thing is about gatekeeping and control, so no, I’m not here for it, and I’m not for my identity being censored as if it’s a bad word when people interact with my posts.
Lest you forget, the most famous mantra we had as a community coming together was… We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it. You can’t erase that. It’s the name for academic studies of our community (which btw, is always led by queer people themselves). You can’t remove the label for people who are still trying to find their place in the community. For the people who never mind a word who describes them as well. Most of our labels are words that have been hurled back at us in hate. So you have to ask, who in our community started to say it wasn’t acceptable? And do you want to stand for what they do? Piss off a TERF this Pride by reminding them that we’re here, we’re QUEER, and they can just shut the hell up.
God am I sick of this asinine fucking discourse. I see we’ve reached the point where not being comfortable with a word that is regularly used as a slur means these clowns are going to imply you’re a transphobe because guilt by association which is totally sane and reasonable. Like I identify as queer and don’t consider it a slur in most usages but I still have the capacity for empathy and thus can respect that my comfort zone is not the be all and end all of acceptable positions to have on the issue. It costs me nothing not to call people queer when they dont want to be.
Saying “when you repeat ‘queer is a slur and should never be used’ you are repeating TERF talking points” isn’t calling you a transphobe, it’s saying that you are using the same talking points as transphobic people, talking points that were deliberately created to try to split the community.
I understand it’s much easier to say “wah how dare you say I’m a transphobe by association” than to acknowledge that you’ve been taken in by people who are working very hard to split the community, so if you don’t want to do the work of examining where you got your talking points and who your talking points benefit, I guess I understand, but that doesn’t mean that’s what I said.
Just because the truth that TERFs are behind the “queer is a slur” discourse makes you uncomfy to acknowledge doesn’t mean you get to change what I said so it makes you comfy in your unchallenged assumptions, and reassure yourself that you’re not saying the same things as TERFs!
You are. If you don’t like that?
CHANGE WHAT YOU’RE SAYING SO YOU’RE NOT AGREEING WITH TERFS, YOU CABBAGE.
No one is under the obligation to pretend you’re not agreeing with TERFs just to make you comfy.