I hope you don’t mind me picking up on this to go off on a bit of a rant.
I am a lesbian, so the acronyms used to describe the community I belong to do include me, and specifically. But I choose to identify as a lesbian AND as queer, because (1) “lesbian” doesn’t describe everything about me, and (2) the acronyms don’t include everyone and I see queer as a more inclusive umbrella term. It works for me in ways that other words don’t.
Queer has a history of being used as a slur, but so has every other word used to describe us, including gay. I won’t call other people queer if they don’t want to be called queer, but I will use the word when I talk about things like queer studies or queer politics. Some people may object to that: but you know what? I have objections to being called gay and having that word used as an inclusive description (though I myself sometimes unconsciously default into using the word generically). This is because gay is a term that has historically been used by some to refer only to gay men and to explicitly exclude lesbians and others, and I do not see it as in any way inclusive: I see it, in fact, as rendering the specific experience of other people invisible. But if someone wants to use it inclusively, I’m not going to complain that they shouldn’t.
(As a sidenote: I don’t know why some people accept “gay” and not “queer"—maybe it’s because “gay” sounds like a nicer word because it’s cheerful and its meaning isn’t preloaded with the suggestion that you’re “different”? But the truth is, if a word is used as a slur, the original meaning is irrelevant, and it is damn well being used to Other you: sounding nicer is not relevant to how it is used by a bigot. From my point it’s not an improvement if someone calls me a “gay bitch” instead of a “queer bitch.”)
Some people want to use nothing but acronyms. But using an acronym has its own set of problems. It doesn’t avoid the problem of stigma entirely, because of course even supposedly “neutral” words like “lesbian” that make up that acronym have been used as slurs. Hiding it behind a letter doesn’t change that. And which acronym do you use? Does Q stand for Queer or Questioning or both? What does A stand for? Who gets included and who gets left out?
At a certain point, if you try to include everyone, you’re going to end up with a string of letters that is impossible to remember. But lists always end up leaving someone off, and the longer they are the more likely it is to happen, because longer lists get more granular, and so do the identities they reference. And then the acronym isn’t inclusive any more. And you can’t use something like “LGBT” as shorthand for a more inclusive community: nope. That’s like saying “men” is inclusive of women, an approach that a large number of women strenuously object to, and for good reason.
That kind of exclusion, whether by accident or intent, is a political statement. Is it one you want to make?
I’m old enough to remember the reclamation of “queer” as an inclusive term. For a variety of reasons not everyone liked it, then as now, but many did, and that’s why it was so widely taken up. It was very effectively reclaimed, to the point that it was used without irony or belittlement to describe “queer history” or “queer studies” in academic settings, and still is. I’m baffled to understand why it’s suddenly become a problematic term.
This reclamation of a slur was very explicitly intended as a statement of pride as well as inclusivity. Are you going to insist that that symbol, that pride, be taken away? When you try to forbid the use of the word queer, you exclude everyone who chooses to use it, and do so knowing (or if you don’t know, educate yourself) the history of it is as a reclaimed word that represents a very significant number of people exactly the way they want to be represented, far better than any other word does. Forbidding its use is a political statement too: it’s a statement of ideological purity that says that only those who do things the Right Way are entitled to call themselves part of your community.
Do you want to subdivide and subdivide into smaller and smaller tribes? There are benefits to identity politics that help us to understand ourselves and find strength and pride and happiness. But the flip side is that if you subdivide into groups that are too small, you will find it impossible to make changes in the world. There needs to be a balance that allows us the strengths of shared identity at a personal level, but also finds a commonality with larger groups that facilitates political action.
My point is not to say that we can’t use acronyms, or gay, or any other words to describe ourselves. It’s that there is no solution that is perfect: every option has problems. Some problems will bother some people more than others, and we should be respectful of that. But let people use the terms to describe themselves that are meaningful to them, that give them pride and strength. By insisting that the word queer is irredeemable and cannot be reclaimed, that it can only hold nasty and vile meanings, you are saying that only those who oppress us have the right to name things. Words have power: claim them. Don’t give that power away.
blakekathryn
gummygunk
dailybridgerton
prguitarman
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