QUEER is a word that we have already RECLAIMED for our own use.
Please don’t wrench it back out of our hands only to return it to the people that hate us. We really don’t need to hand them ammo. Particularly not when the word has been hard won and is now valued by many of us.
It is especially loved by those of us who don’t fit comfortably under one tidy label such as Gay, Lesbian, or Bi.
QUEER is a word that I, and many like me, find EMPOWERING. Using the word QUEER is an acknowledgment of our past (and present) struggles, an acceptance of who we are, and an expression of SELF LOVE.
If you are old enough to have experienced the word QUEER being used against you as a slur (I am,) and that experience hurt you in a way that prevents you from embracing QUEER as a new, positive expression - that’s ok. You don’t need to use it for yourself. And what you experienced might drive you to educate younger people about the struggles we had to go through in the past - we NEED to remember our past. But please don’t try to impose the breadth of your pain on other people by taking this word away from them when they are using it to find HOPE and HEALING and PEACE.
If you are young enough to have never experienced QUEER as a slur, but dismiss it now as a slur out of a righteous desire to defend us - let me please tell you that you are NOT defending all of us. In fact, you are hurting many of us.
A word becomes a slur through INTENTION. The intention to cause pain, to express hatred, to alienate.
The word QUEER, as used by QUEER people and QUEER allies, is being used with the intention to stir PRIDE, to express LOVE, to be INCLUSIVE.
QUEER is not a slur. Insisting that it is taking 2 steps backwards in a battle where we fight and bleed and die for every inch forward.
areudirty
jbbartram-illu
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
prguitarman
snowghoul
