lenyberry:

fierceawakening:

lenyberry:

fierceawakening:

lines-and-edges:

fierceawakening:

satans-tiddies:

I assume you’re talking about this post. Well done on missing the entire point, I guess?

Let’s see how your ask holds up when we replace queer with another reclaimed homophobic slur: gay.

reclaiming a slur means using it for yourself. you can’t just say calling other people gay without their permission (incl. using it as a blanket term) is ok just because it “has a history of being reclaimed”, that doesn’t change that it’s a slur. it’s no different from the f slur. how is some people being fine with it more important than the people who are Not fine with it? if you forcefully call OTHERS gay, thats not reclaiming it, it’s just calling others a slur

Oh no, no one is allowed to say “they gay community” anymore because you might accidentally include men attracted exclusively to men who don’t identify as gay! /sarcasm

If you want the long-form, researched and sourced answer to your frankly insulting, asinine ask, it’s under the readmore, but tl;dr:

• When I say “queer people”, I am (shockingly enough) referring to people who identify as queer.
• If you don’t identify as queer, I am not talking about you.
• If you’re going to police queer people about their identity because it’s a slur, but not any of the other IDs that are also reclaimed slurs (gay, bisexual, fag, etc.) or that have a pathological history (homosexual, lesbian, trans, etc.), all you’re telling me is that you’re being hypocritical and perpetuating exclusionist/REG/radfem rhetoric.

Keep reading

“When I say “queer people”, I am (shockingly enough) referring to people who identify as queer.”

I hate to be That Guy, but wouldn’t this make it hard to talk about the community as a whole? (Or actually in a weird way get what exclusionists want—having to say LGBT+ when we mean everyone, because on this definition, exclusionists are not queer?)

It seems to me this could have the unintended (?) consequence of shutting people out of conversations and communities they actually should be part of even if we disagree with them or even think their views are toxic.

(By which I mean, like, if something gets called the queer community center or queer resource center, does this mean you have to philosophically commit to identifying as queer before being allowed inside?)

I don’t think so; after all, I spent a hell of a lot of time swimming in the YMCA pool as a kid, while being neither a young man nor a Christian. And I took gentile friends with me to events at the JCC, too. One doesn’t have to be a Sikh to eat at a Sikh temple, either.

I think it is a perfectly fair stance to say “the queer community” refers to people who identify as queer, but also that one of the ideological stances of this community is generally to have open doors and share resources with people who need them, whether or not they identify as queer.

More pragmatically I think it’s the only workable compromise we’ve got.

The queer community is my community. I don’t think we need to dismantle or erase our identity and history in order to share resources with people who exist outside that identity for one reason or another.

If people require that we dismantle or erase our identity and history before they are willing to break bread with us, they can find another table to sit at, but only because they choose to be intolerant and wish to do us harm (cf. Karl Popper’s tolerance paradox.)

So someone who doesn’t use the word queer but who goes to the resource center for education and condoms is a non-queer person using queer resources?

I guess I can see the logic, but it still makes more sense to me just to think that person is being a little precious about what other people who don’t even know them call them.

(Like, an example from my own life: I find the prefix allo- unfortunate. I would prefer people specifically not refer to me as “allosexual” or “allistic” when they want to say I’m not ace or not autistic. I think I should be able to tell them I’m not a fan of those words (though not to *demand* people specifically remember not to call me that; people know a lot of other humans, generally.)

But I don’t think it’s my place to get mad at random posts that are like “hey any allistics who read me, what’s up with Thing x?” That person isn’t using a word I dislike AT me, they’re just talking. I don’t get to demand they talk in ways that don’t bug my ears.

They’re also not saying “hey anyone who, specifically, BOTH isn’t autistic AND is okay with this word.”)

Well, I do think that you’d be within your rights to decide “since I don’t like being referred to by that word, I’m going to choose to assume you don’t mean me with that comment”. 

Of course, you’re also perfectly within your rights to just, in general, decide not to respond to general talking-into-the-void-of-tumblr posts that you don’t feel like you have anything to say to or just find annoying for any reason and want to ignore. In fact I generally recommend that people consider doing that thing, where the annoyance is objectively petty (such as, “this person used a word I personally dislike but which is in common usage, with intent to refer generally to a group that I’m technically qualified to consider myself a part of”.

…but that’s apparently a lot of emotional maturity to ask of people and they’d rather scream about how queer is a slur every time you so much as speak of “queer people” or even call YOURSELF queer. 

This is exactly my issue with it, right here.

(And yes, I think you’d be within your rights to assume it, but I also think you’d be rude if you said the person didn’t ask you, only “allistics.”

Kind of the same way I think ink it’s rude when a radfem uses her objections to “cis” (some of which I share!) to be like “oh you couldn’t have meant me, I’m a WOMAN not a CISWOMAN.”

Like, you get to dislike the term but you don’t get to… evade consequences for publicly screaming at people who see things differently for reasons that don’t involve being mean to you on purpose.)

Agreed. It’s one thing to refrain from commenting at all because someone used a word you personally dislike, it’s quite another to be snide about it and go out of your way to tell the person that you’re Not Acknowledging Them until they bow to your nitpicky linguistic demands.