“If you give children a vocabulary that’s large enough and complex enough to express their emotions and their ideas, you give them access to complex feelings and emotions in themselves. So that if you talk to a teenager and all they can say about how they feel is BAD, and they haven’t got, you know, a larger vocabulary for lonely, abused, insecure, frightened…I mean there’s this huge panoply which…I remember when my daughter was just telling me that she just felt bad, I bought her a thesaurus. I said, “Look up, is it sort of over lonely, or is it insecure…and look up under lonely, you’ll find two hundred words for lonely. Which one?” But what that does is that it makes you feel that there’s this huge complexity of emotions and there are words for all of them. If you want children to feel less frustrated and less disenfranchised and less unable to even feel comfortable with their own emotions, you’ll have to give them a vocabulary that’s as complicated as their inner lives. And one of the things we see in children is this incredibly reduced capacity for reporting their inner lives to the exterior world. One of the things is just teaching them poems, just teaching them to memorize poems in school, they don’t have to interpret them, if they just internalize the language of the poem, the complexity of the emotion in the poems…” –Jorie Graham, in a conversation
And my partner adds: Yes, but teaching the vocab isn’t enough, access to language isn’t enough. You have to be willing to listen, to hear the words your children are saying. You have to accept what they’re saying, and not mock the language with which they are presented, nor the emotions themselves. Or else your child will learn to reduce and simplify for the sake of another, for your sake as a parent, a caregiver, a family member. They will know how to explain emotions to themselves but be terrified of sharing what they’d learned, of the backlash. They’d have a language in their head, and another language to speak to you, and a third one to speak to children their age at a register and simplicity that won’t get them beat up or ostracized. Language is a two-way street.
So why did we let them do that? Why not just keep using it the NORMAL way and then yelling at any racist assholes who try to talk to us thinking we’re dogwhistling at them?
My understanding is that “Folx,” in the last few years, has been used by people in queer spaces to include those who do not identity within the gender binary and has nothing whatsoever to do with Nazis and dog whistling?
yeah that sounds about right
Wait, how is “folks” gendered?
They weren’t using “folx” with an X to contrast with “folks.” The actual history of the spelling is still somewhat unclear here, but it still makes more sense for it to have started in that context
But why would you need a new spelling to be more inclusive if the old spelling didn’t exclude anyone?
I’m… on the “baffled” train with Fierce, here. I see no sense in it.
I mean, I always thought it was just a cutesy meme spelling or something. Like “smol”.
Yeah i even followed the link to their explanation and im still really not getting it like… If some people wanna use mlm or wlw thats their choice. There’s about 10 billion posts all over tumblr using every single term for anything under the Sun, if you want something different go get it. Untill there is a LGBT+ grand council to tell us what the One True Terminology is then its up to the individual to decide what they like best.
You know whats REALLY exhausting? Infighting over nothing.
i’m not real interested in replying at length, because you don’t sound all that interested in listening, but tl;dr: bisexual men & women desire men *and* women. in theory, WLW/MLM should include bi men & women. in practice, as in this post, it doesn’t. and in that post specifically, it basically takes a giant shit all over m-spec/bi+ folks and says “lol ur basically straight”.
make more sense now? or you wanna keep sticking ur fingers in ur ears?
Theres no way you would know this, but your not the first bisexual whose opinion on this particular post (or these terms) that I’ve heard. There are actually many bisexuals in my life, and many more online, whose opinions ive heard on this issue. So please dont assume I’m simply plugging my ears to bisexual voices.
A lot of them actually do use these terms, because they happen to like them. You do not. Thats fine. Thats the thing about the multitude of labels; not everyone is going to click with them. I personally use lesbian for myself, but thats mostly for ease of explanation. Like everyone else, my sexuality can be complicated and I use what terms i feel best suit me for the time being. Its useless and counter productive to get mad about any specific term simply because you feel it doesnt suit you. This post really does not exclude bisexuals, nor do the terms somehow imply they are “basically straight”. You are maby the first person Ive seen pull that from this post. But thats okay! Your life is shaped to your experiences so, if you choose not to identify with these terms dont use them. But dont throw shade at them, because others DO like these terms and find use for them.
Tl:dr: labels and terminology are going to vary from person to person because sexuality is complex and multifaceted and going around saying “this label exhausts me” just because you dont personally use it is actually pretty rude, please reconsider.
I am not even gonna bother tryna talk with you because you’re obviously pretty set, and set on being pretty damn patronizing about it, but just replying to let you know: nah, you’re wrong, you obviously are not understanding the actual issue here, and the words we use as identifying labels matter more than just “what sounds nice” or “clicks”.
Nice dismissal of someone’s emotional experience with your little “don’t show me your pain, it’s rude”, at the end there, though. 🙂
‘The only queer part of a bi/pan person’s experience is the part that looks just like a gay experience.’
That’s all that original post and 90% of wlw/mlm posts ever say.
Well, they say this too:
“We’re only interested in relecting cisgender people.”
If we could stop trying to annex the identities of other queer people to serve our own gay interests, that would be super awesome.
^^^ What Dawn said.
Also, suppose we, as bi people, do fall into the “wlw” or “mlm” categories (nvm that they tend to… not be inclusive of nb people). Nine times out of ten posts like the one in the screencap tend to… shit all over men. And “why are men Like That” and a myriad other things and turns of phrase that essentially come down to “ew boys why would you like those”
It… you’re essentially telling us that the only valid part of us is the part that is attracted to the same gender, while completely invalidating the fact that we do, in fact, like the opposite gender. And, worse, telling us that the opposite gender is gross and we have no reason to like them and, by association, we are gross and should be ashamed for liking the opposite gender.
Y’all…. I like men and women. I am dating a wonderful and amazing man. Do you have any idea how tiring it gets to see people who should be supportive of you shitting all over your relationships and experiences because “you’re basically straight”?
The answer is very.
so i’ll admit it took me awhile to understand what the problem was with a post that i thought was p funny but it finally clicked and is super obvious now lmao
(problem in super-clear language for those still brain-farting like i was: the screencapped post basically says that “wlw don’t like men (because they’re “like that” aka gross)”, but “wlw” does not in fact mean “lesbian”, it means lesbians and bisexual women, and bisexual women sure as heck do like men, so the usage of “wlw” in that post is inaccurate at best, and otherwise, well, what the posters above me said)
although, i disagree that it entirely “shits all over m-spec folk” bc the (actually accurately used) mlm slant is “how can we be expected not to like boys when they’re “like that” aka hot as hell”
or at least that’s how i interpreted it?
sorry if i’m still missing a bit tho x.x
m-spec as in multisexual spectrum, not masc!does that help? if… that was the problem. other than that, yeah, you got it! (mlm still has the exact same problems in common usage, and in that post, as wlw tho. it’s still just working as a synonym for gay.)
thanks for your clarifying explanation for others tho! i’ve been super aggravated by the acronyms for ages, and i’m well aware the saltiness of my OP is a bit obscure for anyone not tuned in to the same wavelength.
worst of it is, the post wld be pretty cute and funny…. if it just said gay & lesbian instead.
oh yes i was reading m-spec as masc-spec lol thanks
i don’t feel that the post excludes bi men though, bc it’s not saying they’re not attracted to women as well, just that they’re not limited to women bc men are (also) hot? that’s how i’m reading it at least
and yeah i can 100% understand your fatigue lol
Yeah, you’re giving it the pretty charitable reading. After seeing so much usage of MLM to mean gay, I’m pretty unwilling to be so generous, lol. It could be read as you are reading It, or it could be seen as just reinforcing the idea of “why be (attracted to women) when men are Like That”.
when someone keeps referring to ‘the queer community’ and ‘queer people’
plot twist, the queer community is a separate thing. literally its for lgbt+ people who identify as queer.
added to that, ‘lgbt’ erases a whooooooooole lot of people. and that’s even without dredging up the cesspool that is Ace Discourse.
pan people, intersex people, questioning people, people who don’t feel comfortable with a label at all and just know they’re not straight and/or cis… all clearly not cishet, but all clearly not included in the acronym.
‘queer’ might not be the best word for The Group Of People Who Are Not Straight, Not Cis, Not Perisex, and/or Not Allosexual/Romantic, but LGBT is even worse, IMO. it’s exclusionary as fuck, it’s unwieldy when you try to make it less exclusionary, it’s… generally not my first choice?
there’s no word that’s gonna cover everyone, but ‘queer’ covers more people than ‘lgbt’ IMO.
Also, I have a language disability. “Queer” is much more possible for me to even say, and that matters to me.
Reminded of one misconception I saw come up again recently, by one wtfduolingo post I reblogged earlier.
I don’t recall running across the word in Swedish before, oddly enough, but I wasn’t surprised that it’s “dum” and “dummare”.
Compare to “dumm” and “dümmer” in German. Which got snagged into American English from the huge number of German-speaking immigrants.
(Where “mute/silent” is “stumm”, BTW, with a totally different etymology. That incidentally got taken into British English, as “keeping schtum”. Snitches get stitches…)
Speaking of very direct usage adoption, as Mencken observed in the 1920s:
Dumb-head, obviously from the German dummkopf, appears in a list of Kansas words collected by Judge J. C. Ruppenthal, of Russell, Kansas. (Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. v, 1916, p. 322.) It is also noted in Nebraska and the Western Reserve, and is very common in Pennsylvania.
Dumb still not really used in that sense in British English–or probably other versions–which is likely why Duolingo opted for the “stupid” and “more stupid” translation there. (Which kinda jumped out at me, when “dumb” and “dumber” is a less clunky rendering. Better to use something more readily understood across dialects, though.)
People are certainly welcome to a variety of opinions on the advisability of those descriptions anyway, of course. But, the real etymology isn’t what it’s often assumed to be. Because English, and alleyways.
since this “latinx or latine” discussion is getting attention again, i’d like to point out that it’s important to know how disabled people feel about it, and why you should consider using “e” instead of “x” for making gendered words neutral.
basically, a blind brazilian and anti-ableism blogger first spoke about this issue in january 2015, claiming that words such as “latinx” and “bonitx” are actually anything but inclusive, since visually impaired people can’t understand what you’re saying, because their reading-out-loud softwares can’t pronounce these words. she then suggests that using “e” as a neutral term can be way more inclusive both to nonbinary and visually impaired people (ex.: latine, bonite). she also states that you can be neutral without using “ela” or “ele” by using instead “a pessoa/that person” or simply using the person’s name.
she stills talks about this issue on her page to this day, as well as many of other anti-ableism activists on facebook, and they ask us to spread the word by sharing their posts – so as a non-disabled person, that’s what i’m doing. i hope this helps!
I just want to add, before anyone asks, that for spanish/portuguese speakers the “x” is really hard to use because %99 of the time it doesn’t come out natural at all. We literally don’t know how to say it, like the softwares. If we use it, it usually interrumps our speech all the time because we have to think how we say it. The “x”/the sound that it makes is not usual in our languages. The “e” not only helps disabled people but also it helps us because its easier and more natural in our tongues.
On top of the aforementioned reasons to shift from latinx to latine for gender neutrality, doing so will not be difficult in oral speech even for native English speakers (instead of saying
/ˈlætɪnɛks/ = Lah-teen-ex
you say
/ˈlætɪnɛ/ = Lah-teen-eh).
If we’re thriving for inclusive language, we should thrive for an inclusive language that effectively includes everyone. The use of Latine (and -e suffixes for gender neutrality in Portuguese and Spanish), unlike that of Latinx (and -x suffixes for gender neutrality in Portuguese and Spanish), does not have ableist consequences, and does not exclude visually impaired people.
Today on Twitter I have seen several tweets about the accounts of people who identify as queer being suspended for posts where they talk about being queer…
For “using a slur”.
This was absolutely forseeable. This is 100% what “just so you know, IT’S A SLUR” aimed at people using the word queer to describe themselves and their activism was leading to.
I’ve seen “gay” used as an insult in my life WAY MORE OFTEN and YET
Worse, there’s reason to believe that these Twitter accounts were suspended because alt-righters and Nazis reported them for using “queer” as a way of getting revenge for all the Nazi accounts that have been suspended lately.
What did I keep warning about? What did I keep saying? That if we keep ‘problematizing’ words that living, breathing LGBTQ+ people use to describe ourselves and our reality, we’d end up where they would be used against us by precisely the individuals who hate us the most. Something that would have never happened had a term’s reclaimed status been respected, instead of people constantly screaming that it’s a slur, in any and all situations.
THIS is why I keep saying “let people talk the way they talk if what they’re saying isn’t malicious.”
THIS. RIGHT HERE.
If the word “queer” triggers you (or “queers,” “queerfolk,” “queer community” and other plural forms)…
…get yourselves a word replacer and Fucking. Stop. This. Shit.
Which also means that we now can’t advertise 90% of LGBT+ anthologies on Twitter. Queers Destroy Science Fiction, Hashtag Queer…Queer is in the title of MOST of them. Which should be enough proof that it’s not that much of a slur to a lot of us, right?
I did some quick research. At least one of the accounts has been reinstated. Is this alt righters or did somebody unleash a badly-coded bot? Either way, they need to get their head out of the sand and use more nuance.
Today on Twitter I have seen several tweets about the accounts of people who identify as queer being suspended for posts where they talk about being queer…
For “using a slur”.
This was absolutely forseeable. This is 100% what “just so you know, IT’S A SLUR” aimed at people using the word queer to describe themselves and their activism was leading to.
I’ve seen “gay” used as an insult in my life WAY MORE OFTEN and YET
Worse, there’s reason to believe that these Twitter accounts were suspended because alt-righters and Nazis reported them for using “queer” as a way of getting revenge for all the Nazi accounts that have been suspended lately.
What did I keep warning about? What did I keep saying? That if we keep ‘problematizing’ words that living, breathing LGBTQ+ people use to describe ourselves and our reality, we’d end up where they would be used against us by precisely the individuals who hate us the most. Something that would have never happened had a term’s reclaimed status been respected, instead of people constantly screaming that it’s a slur, in any and all situations.
THIS is why I keep saying “let people talk the way they talk if what they’re saying isn’t malicious.”
THIS. RIGHT HERE.
If the word “queer” triggers you (or “queers,” “queerfolk,” “queer community” and other plural forms)…
…get yourselves a word replacer and Fucking. Stop. This. Shit.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.