So what Iāve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this siteĀ do not understandĀ that some of the stuff theyāre saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go,Ā āOh my god, Iām so sorry, I never meant to say that.ā
Like,Ā āqueer is a slurā: I get the impression that people saying this are likeā¦ oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men asĀ āf*gsā. Like,Ā āOh wow, thatās a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?ā
So theyāre really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it.Ā
Thatās because thereās a history of āpolitical lesbiansā, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date theĀ ācorrectā sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that donāt contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, andĀ unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender.Ā
WhenĀ āqueer theoryā arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles likeĀ āThe Queer Disappearance of Lesbiansā, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis āgold star lesbianā (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.
And when those arguments happened,Ā āqueerā was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didnāt know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified asĀ āqueerā were more likely to be accepting and understanding, andĀ āqueerā was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didnāt get chased out of. If someone didnāt disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didnāt want to be called queer themselves, they could just sayĀ āI donāt like being called queerā and that was that. BeingĀ āqueerā was to being LGBT as being aĀ āfeministā was to being a woman; it was opt-in.
But this history isnāt evident when these interactions happen. We donāt sit down and say,Ā āOkay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, andā¦ā Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow,Ā āDO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,ā because we cannot find a way to say,Ā āThis word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldnāt be alive in the same way if I lost it.ā And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.
But Iāve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go,Ā āOh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didnāt realize that IĀ was alsoĀ saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.ā
And that? That gives me hope for the future.
vaporwave
andulkaphoto
baratheonpilled
jacobvanloon
