I’m trying not to be a huge dick about it but I got a “but what about us q-slurs who are traumatized by the bad words?” on my slur reclaimation post and so I’ve made a handy guide
1. You are being called the slur.
A. If it is with malice, I am sorry for this experience, however, this situation is not at all what I was talking about.
B. If it is with affection or as a joke from other LGBTs, and it makes you uncomfortable, ask them to stop. If they don’t, they’re a dick for not respecting your boundaries.
2. You are being “forced” to see other people use the word for a larger community
A. If it bothers you then you are probably not the “fag community” to which they are referring, then. In a post? Block. Blacklist words. Block tags. Walk away. Avert your eyes. You don’t vibe with “queer community” then refer to it as LGBT. You make it sound like a “someone saying Happy Holidays means I can’t say Merry Christmas anymore” situation. You don’t have to use any words you don’t vibe with. Hate to say Dyke March or Dykes on Bikes? Don’t go to the march. Avoid the bikes.
3. You are being “forced” to hear other people use the word for themselves
A. I mean this with love and respect…suck it up. If it is so deeply triggering, remove yourself. Leave the situation. Block. Blacklist words. Block tags.
In a conversation about reclaimation, I am sorry, but you only get to decide how people refer to you, no one else. If someone else’s use upsets you, YOU have to do something about it, not them. You do not, under ANY circumstances, get to ask someone not to use dyke or fag or queer or tranny for themselves. You don’t get to ask someone not to use it/its. You don’t get to tell someone to tuck or bind because it gives you second-hand dysphoria. You do not get to decide how someone else is queer.
If being around them is that debilitating, you need to take steps to insulate yourself.
On the curate your own experience website, you should know how to do just that. There are so many guides out there. And to the complaint that “now” Pride uses all these slurs which has made Pride hostile to you, I’d invite you to crack open a book, but perhaps what you find will be too upsetting
With regard to IRL events, it sucks to have such bad triggers and it can be isolating if you can’t be in spaces that use those terms, but also: there are ways of managing and healing from those triggers! Like, if you have such a bad trigger with those terms, there’s a good chance you have PTSD. PTSD is treatable, not just through therapy but through things like peer support too! You deserve better and if support is accessible to you, you deserve to have support!
"But I have trauma" is often used as such a hard stop in these conversations that it absolutely drives me up a wall.
Baby, ain't nobody in this community that doesn't have a buttload of trauma. And I'm talking like a wine butt's worth of trauma. All of us have it.
If we just rolled over and said 'oh no I have The Trauma' to everything we encounter, we might as well just roll on up and fucking die, because we are the Traumatized Community. We have been told -- all of us -- how much we are terrible fucking people for being who we are. All of us.
Like, me, I fucking hate being confronted with doctors when I didn't expect them. When the medical students in their white coats showed up to march in solidarity with the Trans March in Philly like 5 years ago, I did my breathing exercises and moved to a spot in the march where I didn't have to see them all the time. I didn't demand they all take off their white coats or leave the march. And they were just there to support us.
There is a point where refusing to claim responsibility for your trauma and how it is making you treat other people is just fucking wallowing, and I see way, way too much of that in these discussions. If your trauma is really that bad that you can't handle seeing someone's identity word written down, baby, you need to seek and find help. You deserve that support. You truly do. But other people in your community aren't responsible for your trauma, and the reasonable accommodation for this is not "you never have to see anything that upsets you when you attend a RL event." It's "you move somewhere else in the march," it's "you filter your posts so you don't have to see it." And it is definitely "you respect that other people have the right to call themselves whatever the butts they want to."
