My first introduction to the word “queer” was written. In Little Women, describing things both quaint, odd, peculiar, strange, but generally- neutral to positive. There was a lot of whimsy wrapped up when Miss Alcott used the term. It was delightful, and I remember it to this day because the word was even pleasant to say with soft, easy sounds.
My first introduction to the word “gay” was a slur. I heard it before I ever read it in Miss Alcott’s novel. It was equivalent to stupid, wrong, idiotic, disgusting, and everything you should never want to be. A hard G, a braying donkey’s Ay; thrown across the playground at school and I knew it was bad. Gay was bad. When I read it in Miss Alcott’s book, I was confused- because when her girls were ‘happy and gay’, it didn’t make sense. Gay was a bad word. To be gay was bad.
With Lesbian, I never remember where I first heard it- but my grandmother once called me a thespian as a kid & I recoiled, thinking she’d called me a Lesbian & I was horrified. To be a Lesbian was Bad. Even if I had no concept of what it even meant.
My first introduction to Queer in the context of sexuality, I was a teenager. “We’re here, we’re queer!” A rallying cry when I started to learn about the 70s and queer liberation. My second time seeing the word was in the context of community. It was a chant, a united front, an army of people fighting for their rights. I thought I was on the outside looking in, but it still made me smile.
My third encounter with the term was in University, learning Queer History as a proper subject, a topic of history and struggle. It was legitimate, it was lengthy, it was amazing.
Its only in watching really dated films from the 1980s or things like that where I encountered Queer as a slur. But to me, I’d never heard it hurt. It was the words of a friend, and then the words of a family.
I understand some people had the opposite experience. They were barraged with being called ‘a queer’ while I heard ‘thats so gay’ thrown around like a football. To them, the endless acronyms and changing labels is more inclusive; despite every identity label being used against us at one point or another. Despite it being reclaimed since the 1970s, it can still be used to harm. And I would hazard a guess not many folks have been spat at with “you’re such an EL-GEE-BEE-TEE-PLUS!!!”
Though I came out under the label of Bisexuality, Queer fits me so much better. Queer is a more welcoming term to me than boxing us all under a hundred flags and putting up lines of demarcation. If you don’t know how to describe yourself, you’re queer, no giant essay or explanation. You say you’re queer and we know you’re not cishet. You say you’re gay… that means something more specific. With Queer, people can’t pin us down. They can’t prescribe what we are. They can’t tell us what to do, how to be, how to behave to be a ‘real’ queer person.
It’s only in recent years on social media where I have even seen the suggestion to stop using the term. Stop that shit. You may not use the term yourself, and if you do not want me to use it around you, cool. But it’s not a slur. My identity, my history, my community: the QUEER community, the QUEER struggle, the QUEER experience, none of it is a slur. It’s beautiful. We took it back. It’s ours.
discoholicmusic
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
