There’s a lot of discourse™ that says this:
You can call yourself anything you want.
Don’t call other people things they don’t want.
And that’s reasonable! Right? It makes sense. Be respectful of the wishes of others. That’s right up there with the Golden Rule of social justice. Do unto others as they would have you do unto them, not as you’d have them do unto you, because the things you’d like may well be different.
But here’s the issue I run into with it:
if you don’t want me to say “the queer community,” what do you want me to say?
Is it LGBTQIA+ community? It’s a mouthful, but it’s what I used in my academic writing.
Is it sexual minority community? Because that always sounds kind of weird, and nobody outside of academia that I’ve met uses it.
Is it QUILTBAG? It’s cutesy but I’ve only seen it used in the wild, like, twice.
Is it LGBT community? Why do you prefer that to LGBTQIA+? Is it just how long it takes to say? What about the people it omits?
If you’re that concerned about the people in the intersex community who aren’t a fan of being grouped in, what about LGBTQA+? Is that still too long? I’ve never seen it used. Why exclude the Q and the A and the + if you wanted the term to be inclusive? Do you believe that asexuality is a) real b) non-cis-het? Do you believe that nonbinary people are legit? How much do you really believe that trans people and bi people are valid?
Is it gay community? Because I am not gay and I’m really, really tired of being told I’m not gay enough or I’m too gay or I’m on the fence and I need to make up my mind or I’m a bihet or I need to shut up about my sexual orientation because I’m just confusing the issue and I’m not really experiencing homophobia anyway or I can’t be experiencing biphobia because that’s not real and I’m just experiencing watered-down homophobia or I married a man so I’m really just straight or I married a man so I’m just in denial that I’m gay and so on ad nauseam, literal ad nauseam, because it’s nauseatingly enraging to be specifically told that I don’t exist, my sexual orientation doesn’t exist. And dear Lord in heaven don’t tell me that I haven’t been told all of those, because I have, and calling me a liar is one quick way to get blocked. I’ve been told I can’t call myself gay, and I’ve been told I have to call myself gay, “part of the gay community”–well, when you’ve been made a roundly unwelcome in the gay community as I have, you get touchy about it. You don’t want to use a word that isn’t right.
And the people who don’t like “queer community” so very, very often seem to prefer “gay community.”
How do we talk about all of us? Not just “how do we talk about all of us, theoretically, in order to not offend any members of the community, whatever we want to call the community”, but “how do we talk about all of us now, and who doesn’t want to talk about all of us”?
Because it’s pretty fucking clear to me that there are plenty of people who don’t think I belong in The Community, whatever we call it; who resent calling it either the LGBTQIA+ community or the queer community; who would prefer to wallpaper over me. There are certainly people who have real issues with the word queer, who’ve had it shouted at them on streets (like I have), who didn’t decide to reclaim it (like I did). But the people getting all up in my shit about it on social media… a lot of them like to talk about the gay community. As if I’m not relevant. As if I didn’t struggle, fight, work, found my school’s first Gay-Straight Alliance (there was no room for acknowledging bisexuals even in the club I helped found) back in 2003, get spit on, rocks thrown at me, cursed out, chased, threatened, as if that was all somehow homophobia lite, as if the people doing this didn’t know I was bisexual, didn’t also come up to me and ask for threesomes, didn’t make cracks about watching me with women, didn’t ask what percent gay I was.
I’m not saying I have an answer, here. I’m not saying “let’s all call it the queer community!”
I’m saying there’s a correlation between people who don’t like “the queer community” and people who don’t like me. R may not equal 1, but it’s… pretty damn high. I’d say it’s a correlation coefficient of, like, .85.
If you come up with a label for the community that includes all of us, and that you can get everyone in the community to agree isn’t disrespectful, sign me the fuck up. I’m all for it. But I don’t think you can, because I think the fundamental problem, at the root of this, is that the community is fragmented and splintered. The more acceptable people, the ones who are “just like you!” except gay or lesbian, have a social incentive to push the rest of us away. Throw us under the bus, so the straights think you’re OK by them. Or, hell, refuse to acknowledge us so you don’t have to poke at the awkward, weird bits of your own identity–consider whether genitals mean gender, what it means if someone has no gender or all genders, what attraction and love can be or boil down to or where they end and why.
We’re divided. If we stay this way, no wonder we don’t have the political pull to force change.
I want The Community to be for everyone. I want us all to pull together. And the people who are trying to push the unacceptable ones of us out are harming us all.
I guess what I’m saying is that I think the reason we don’t have a “good” word for the LGBTQIA+ community is the same reason we don’t have a “good” word, without negative connotations, for feminists.
It’s because the thing the word denotes is seen as not good.
Like I said, I’m not so attached to the word “queer” that I couldn’t start using something else if we could all agree on it. I don’t want to cause pain, even if I don’t understand that pain. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.
What is being objected to is not, in many cases, the word. It’s me. It’s the idea of a community that includes me.
This is what I’ve been saying, but said so much better.
MOGAI for example was a perfectly acceptable alternative, but it was shot down and ridiculed and stomped on. Why? The same reason queer and any extended version of LGBT is shot down.
It’s too inclusive.
“What is being objected to is not, in many cases, the word. It’s me. It’s the idea of a community that includes me.“
Thank you.
As far as queer as a slur, I don’t understand this from the under-30 community anywhere near where I’m from. I didn’t hear that word used like that growing up. Gay was used like that growing up. And I just learned that an 11 year old second cousin is hearing that word used that way still. So like, that argument just doesn’t work for me. Gay had been far more prevelant as a slur where I’m from than queer. Like so much more so, and it’s not considered one. Soooo….
Thoughtfulfangirling 