Y’all are some of the most disingenuous motherfuckers. I am exhausted. And I am really done with this trauma argument.
A confession: I have been harassed and verbally abused with it/its pronouns before.
I don’t fully understand why some trans people choose to use it pronouns for themselves, and I don’t follow anyone who does anymore because seeing someone referred to as “it” upsets me.
However, I do not shame or belittle trans folks who use it/its pronouns in a reclaiming fashion because it’s none of my business and I am not a piece of obnoxious shit.
If you have trauma associated with the word queer, then you need to respect me and yourself enough to not interact with my blog.
This blog literally has QUEER in its url, name, and description. Every other post on this blog contains the word QUEER. This blog is about QUEER people, for QUEER people, by a QUEER person.
No one is forcing you to interact with this blog. No one is forcing you to interact with the QUEER community. No one is forcing you to apply the word QUEER to your own identity.
Block blogs that have queer in their url. Add the word QUEER to your Tumblr tag blacklist. Download one of the many different apps and browser extensions that exist and use it to hide posts with the word QUEER in them.
Try taking at least some responsibility for your own mental health.
You aren’t queer? You don’t like the word? That’s fine. Your feelings and your trauma are valid.
But hear this: y’all need to leave QUEER people the FUCK alone.
Stop adding “queer is a slur” to our posts.
Stop inviting yourselves onto our posts to whine about the phrase “queer community”.
Don’t reblog our posts if you’re going to tag them with “#q slur”.
Stop making discourse of our genders and sexualities.
Stop trying to create rules over who is allowed to call themselves queer when you yourself are not queer.
Stop sending us invasive messages demanding to know “how” we’re queer or if we’re “really lgbt”.
Stop trying to make the queer community responsible for your personal baggage, as if we aren’t surviving with our own.
Let QUEER people live.
god yes OP
“Stop trying to make the queer community responsible for your personal baggage, as if we aren’t surviving with our own.”
A conversation on the fluidity of terms, and how to understand and have a productive conversation with a shifting generational gap in trans terminology.
The easiest way to deal with this is the same as the easiest way to approach all the newer labels and identities:
The other thing about the word “queer” is that almost everyone I’ve seen opposed to it have been cis, binary gays and lesbians. Not wanting it applied to yourself is fine, but I think people underestimate the appeal of vague, inclusive terminology when they already have language to easily and non-invasively describe themselves.
Saying “I’m gay/lesbian/bi” is pretty simple. Just about everyone knows what you mean, and you quickly establish yourself as a member of a community. Saying “I’m a trans nonbinary bi woman who’s celibate due to dysphoria and possibly on the ace spectrum”… not so much. You’re lucky to find anyone who understands even half of that, and explaining it requires revealing a ton of personal information. The appeal of “queer” is being able to identify yourself without profiling yourself. It’s welcoming and functional terminology to those who do not have the luxury of simplified language and occupy complicated identities. *That’s* why people use it – there are currently not alternatives to express the same sentiment.
It’s not people “oppressing themselves” or naively and irresponsibly using a word with loaded history. It’s easy to dismiss it as bad or unnecessary if you already have the luxury of language to comfortably describe yourself.
There’s another dimension that always, always gets overlooked in contemporary discussions about the word “queer:” class. The last paragraph here reminds me of a old quote: “rich lesbians are ‘sapphic,’ poor lesbians are ‘dykes’.”
The reclaiming of the slur “queer” was an intensely political process, and people who came up during the 90s, or who came up mostly around people who did so, were divided on class and political lines on questions of assimilation into straight capitalist society.
Bourgeois gays and lesbians already had “the luxury of language” to describe themselves – normalized through struggle, thanks to groups like the Gay Liberation Front.
Everyone else, from poor gays and lesbians to bi and trans people and so on, had no such language. These people were the ones for whom social/economic assimilation was not an option.
The only language left, the only word which united this particular underclass, was “queer.” “Queer” came to mean an opposition to assimilation – to straight culture, capitalism, patriarchy, and to upper class gays and lesbians who wanted to throw the rest of us under the bus for a seat at that table – and a solidarity among those marginalized for their sexuality/gender id/presentation.
(Groups which reclaimed “queer,” like Queer Patrol (armed against homophobic violence), (Queers) Bash Back! (action and theory against fascism, homophobia, and transphobia), and Queerbomb (in response to corporate/state co-optation of mainstream Gay Pride), were “ultraleft,” working-class, anti-capitalist, and functioned around solidarity and direct action.)
The contemporary discourse around “queer” as a reclaimed-or-not slur both ignores and reproduces this history. The most marginalized among us, as OP notes, need this language. The ones who have problems with it are, generally, among those who have language – or “community,” or social/economic/political support – of their own.
Oh hey look it’s the story of my growing up.
All of this is true.
Yes.
also, “qpoc” is a thing, like how about we not take away a term that a lot of people of color id with? thanks :))))
It’s the only word I have for what I am, that encompasses both identity and sexuality. It’s literally the only word. I’m not calling myself a “slur”, I’m using literally the only term that works to define me.
I’m not LGBTQ+. I’m not a catchall. I am a very specific thing.
I know there are people who don’t want it applied to them and I try to be considerate of that because I’m not a total asshole, but we CANNOT throw the term away.
i’ve said this already but wlw/mlm solidarity or w/e is fucking pointless if boys will continue to ignore misogyny and steal terms from wlw instead of coming up with their own
if you use the term achillean on yourself you’re not allowed to interact with this post
MLM are the ones who introduced “butch”. It was a word in Polari. Even the term “bisexual” might have descended from the Polari word “bibi”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari and the book they cite also lists “femme” as a Polari word.
they’ve been using it for themselves ever since. achillean is new, but I don’t understand why the fuck having a parallel term for sapphic would be considered some kind of cultural appropriation. seems like they SHOULD make their own word, rather than call themselves sapphic?
I did not know that about the origin of butch. Another mark for ‘this isn’t exclusive to lesbians,’ damn.
Can we stop it with this ‘stealing terms’ bullshit?? Like, what are you even talking about? Creating new terminology using the same convention as another word with a related meaning is exactly how language works
The stealing terms discourse is the absolute worst thing that has come out of Tumblr. Fucking stop already.
A conversation on the fluidity of terms, and how to understand and have a productive conversation with a shifting generational gap in trans terminology.
i just saw someone completely seriously, without a hint of irony, refer to it as “Q-slur Eye” and my intestines started melting like so many Salvador Dalí clocks
I’ve seen “don’t call the show Qu**r Eye if you’re a cishet and can’t reclaim the q-slur” so nothing surprises me anymore.
“Don’t normalize this word that people fought really hard to normalize! Let it keep its oppressive power because I don’t understand queer history”
God I literally fucking hate this rhetoric. It’s exclusionary, gatekeepy, TERFy, and supports a totally revisionist queer history that erases so many marginalized people, especially people who are marginalized on multiple axes.
“LET IT KEEP ITS OPPRESSIVE POWER BECAUSE I DON’T UNDERSTAND QUEER HISTORY”
Wow that really sums it up.
I lived through the “take back the word queer” movement, so let me further sum it up
The entire point was to strip the word of the power to hurt us. We embraced it by refusing to be offended by it. We were saying “you can’t hurt us with that word, we now feel empowered when we hear it.”
During this time I saw an interview with a gay man who’d been arrested while wearing a “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used To It” t-shirt. He was put into a holding cell with other detainees who tried to verbally abuse him. They started out by calling him queer but after seeing his t-shirt, and him not reacting to that word, they started stumbling over their words trying to find a name to call him. They finally settled on repeatedly calling him a “sissy” which, by the late 90s, had become a very out-dated slur toward queer men and was a laughable effort by these hyper-masculine and sexist bullies
When they tried to call him a queer it had no power because embracing the word, no matter who said it, had taken away that power
tl;dr We took back the word Queer with the intent of it no longer having the power to hurt us, but people now calling it the Q-slur are giving power back to the people who hate us
^^^^^^^^^^
ever since got into disability pride, whenever people start throwing around “retard” have just started accepting it and asking what is wrong with it. it’s really interesting watching them try and make the insult work.
i just saw someone completely seriously, without a hint of irony, refer to it as “Q-slur Eye” and my intestines started melting like so many Salvador Dalí clocks
I’ve seen “don’t call the show Qu**r Eye if you’re a cishet and can’t reclaim the q-slur” so nothing surprises me anymore.
“Don’t normalize this word that people fought really hard to normalize! Let it keep its oppressive power because I don’t understand queer history”
God I literally fucking hate this rhetoric. It’s exclusionary, gatekeepy, TERFy, and supports a totally revisionist queer history that erases so many marginalized people, especially people who are marginalized on multiple axes.
“LET IT KEEP ITS OPPRESSIVE POWER BECAUSE I DON’T UNDERSTAND QUEER HISTORY”
Wow that really sums it up.
I lived through the “take back the word queer” movement, so let me further sum it up
The entire point was to strip the word of the power to hurt us. We embraced it by refusing to be offended by it. We were saying “you can’t hurt us with that word, we now feel empowered when we hear it.”
During this time I saw an interview with a gay man who’d been arrested while wearing a “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used To It” t-shirt. He was put into a holding cell with other detainees who tried to verbally abuse him. They started out by calling him queer but after seeing his t-shirt, and him not reacting to that word, they started stumbling over their words trying to find a name to call him. They finally settled on repeatedly calling him a “sissy” which, by the late 90s, had become a very out-dated slur toward queer men and was a laughable effort by these hyper-masculine and sexist bullies
When they tried to call him a queer it had no power because embracing the word, no matter who said it, had taken away that power
tl;dr We took back the word Queer with the intent of it no longer having the power to hurt us, but people now calling it the Q-slur are giving power back to the people who hate us
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.
“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.
Y’all are some of the most disingenuous motherfuckers. I am exhausted. And I am really done with this trauma argument.
A confession: I have been harassed and verbally abused with it/its pronouns before.
I don’t fully understand why some trans people choose to use it pronouns for themselves, and I don’t follow anyone who does anymore because seeing someone referred to as “it” upsets me.
However, I do not shame or belittle trans folks who use it/its pronouns in a reclaiming fashion because it’s none of my business and I am not a piece of obnoxious shit.
If you have trauma associated with the word queer, then you need to respect me and yourself enough to not interact with my blog.
This blog literally has QUEER in its url, name, and description. Every other post on this blog contains the word QUEER. This blog is about QUEER people, for QUEER people, by a QUEER person.
No one is forcing you to interact with this blog. No one is forcing you to interact with the QUEER community. No one is forcing you to apply the word QUEER to your own identity.
Block blogs that have queer in their url. Add the word QUEER to your Tumblr tag blacklist. Download one of the many different apps and browser extensions that exist and use it to hide posts with the word QUEER in them.
Try taking at least some responsibility for your own mental health.
You aren’t queer? You don’t like the word? That’s fine. Your feelings and your trauma are valid.
But hear this: y’all need to leave QUEER people the FUCK alone.
Stop adding “queer is a slur” to our posts.
Stop inviting yourselves onto our posts to whine about the phrase “queer community”.
Don’t reblog our posts if you’re going to tag them with “#q slur”.
Stop making discourse of our genders and sexualities.
Stop trying to create rules over who is allowed to call themselves queer when you yourself are not queer.
Stop sending us invasive messages demanding to know “how” we’re queer or if we’re “really lgbt”.
Stop trying to make the queer community responsible for your personal baggage, as if we aren’t surviving with our own.
Let QUEER people live.
god yes OP
“Stop trying to make the queer community responsible for your personal baggage, as if we aren’t surviving with our own.”
This was exactly my reaction when, in 2015, a 15yo on Tumblr came and sent me a load of hate for being “an OMG ACTUAL ADULT” calling myself ‘queer’ and using ‘queer community’.
Like, how to put this. In Australia since the early 90s, ‘queer’ has been the accepted term to call that community. It’s a mainstream word. We say ‘queer theory’, ‘queer community’, ‘queer organisations’, etc. Another Australian who words for the government said it’s a perfectly acceptable term to use in policy documents and funding applications. Here, in Australia, queer hasn’t been a slur at any point in my life. The only Australians I’ve ever come across who think it’s a slur are people who spend too much time around American youths on social media.
I did a post about the international queer community, it got 5-7k notes (ish) and people from at least 10 other countries said ‘queer’ is not a slur in their country and it’s just the word that’s used for the queer community.
This is why it drives me nuts when a 15yo from South Carolina, USA assumes:
1) Her experience with ‘queer’ is the same as everybody else’s
2) A small number of people having a bad experience with ‘queer’ is an acceptable reason to deny and police usage by the entire wider international queer community
The short of it is that it’s not acceptable. Many older queer folks have used this word for decades – it’s been in common use since at least the 80s. In the past 3 years it’s become very fashionable (mostly only on Tumblr, but on pockets of social media elsewhere, too) to treat queer as this Big Bad Slur (forgetting that there are many other slurs and most of our language gets used as slurs at some point by various people) and to pop up on every fucking post that mentions queer like “UM EXCUSE ME IT’S FINE FOR YOU TO CALL YOURSELF QUEER BUT IT’S LITERAL ABUSE FOR YOU TO USE IT FOR OTHER PEOPLE LIKE AS AN UMBRELLA TERM AND YOU ARE A BAD PERSON!!!”
like. babe. I’ve never met you in my life. You live an entire world away from me and you can’t tell me what language I’m allowed to use for myself and my own community. If you don’t like the word, you have trauma associated with it or whatever, I accept that. I feel for you, I have trauma about some words, too. USE XKIT BLACKLIST. Your trauma is your problem, just like my trauma is my problem. Yes, really. Get counselling. It’s not everyone else’s responsibility to change their identities and language because of your trauma. That’s not a lack of empathy from me, that’s a hard life lesson you need to learn about the world not revolving around you. I am not abusing anyone by using the language I’ve always used about my own community.
It’s not the end of your world, though. You’re not doomed to read ‘queer’ all over tumblr forever. There are many many many tools available for you to protect yourself and avoid triggers. You should be responsible for yourself and your experience online and protect yourself from seeing things that upset you.
“BUT I’M A MINOR!!”, you cry! okay, true. Get up from the computer, go directly to your parent or guardian, and let them know you’re not old enough to police your own internet usage and ask them to do it for you. It is not my responsibility to take care of you. It is no one else on Tumblr’s responsibility to take care of you. The internet is not just for kids. If you can’t take care of yourself, your parents need to help you do that.
The short of it is if you’re old enough to know the word ‘queer’ upsets you, you’re old enough to download xkit blacklist and add ‘queer’ to the blacklist words. If you’re not doing that, I have to assume you’re actually trying to pick fights with queer people and it’s more of a power struggle to you than anything about semantics.
“BUT I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO USE XKIT! IT’S AN EASY CHANGE FOR YOU!” Dude, you’re asking me to change my whole identity. You’re asking me to change my lexicon for you. It’s not an easy or fair change for you to ask me to make. Xkit is a quick and easy solution for you (and now, you can use the tumblr innate tag blocks, too). If that’s too much for you to do, I have a feeling you’re just looking for a fight and not actually traumatised by ‘queer’.
NEVER. NEVER. Come onto a queer person’s post and start telling them anything about how to use their word. Queer folks get policed and oppressed enough by cishet folks. We don’t need people from our own community trying to police our language and language we’ve used for decades and continue to use in many countries and in many parts of the US.
There is absolutely no reason to derail posts being “””””””helpful”””””””” by repeatedly, constantly, aggressively spreading rhetoric that shames people for using language we have used for ourselves and our community for decades. Your problem with the word queer should not be my problem, so don’t make it my problem.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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