#q discourse

[blanklier]

i was gonna be like chill but it's 1:30 am and i deserve to be a hater so: saw two completely dogshit stupid completely mindless, missing-the-whole-point takes today. first was about how dream did nothing for the dsmp and was just the manager which made me so fucking irritated i considered if they'd actually watched any of the dsmp like, at all, or if they were basing this idea off of pocket lint and sheer stupidity. secondly the take i saw on twitter on how dream going to spain is bad. that was the whole take. that him going to spain is bad because he doesn't know spanish. i shit you the fuck not. have they heard of tourism. do they know what multilingualism is. also saw this heavily supported by qsmp fans which surprised me very little since they really love hypocrisy. am pretty sure the specific take i saw came from someone who also didn't speak spanish. anyway. i live in spain. i pass like an average of seven english speakers on the street or train every day. i promise it's not that fucking hard to communicate. sidenote there was also something about how it's racist and id like to like, broadly gesture at the fact that spain is a) predominantly white (sidenote the xenophobic shit here is fucking wild), and b) the existence of the spanish empire and thus c) spain are colonizers???? did you think the fact that latam is a thing was like a nice little coincidence???

anyway this has been the 'lo is so fucking tired of dumb ass ideas' corner, tune in probably either next week or a time i can only define as "soonish (sigh)"

[weaver-z]

Can we at least say "queer people" instead of "queers." One rings much more closely to the derogatory use of the word, which is still extremely widespread (especially in the southern US). I knowww it's reclaimed rebuilt recycled et cetera but there's a reason why we say "trans people" and not "transgenders"--saying the descriptor as a plural is dehumanizing and just off. I've seen a lot of people on this website start posts with "listen up, queers" and stuff like that when phrases like that are literally the exact way in which the word was used in a derogatory sense.

[wandererslullabi]

Did you know…that there are folks who ID as queer who are still hurt by its usage as a slur & its use in negative contexts…did you know…that reclaiming a word doesn’t mean you can’t experience triggers in relation to that word being used in negative and damaging ways…

[piss--course]

Trans men: *create spaces where they can openly deal with dysphoria and the constant anxieties and pressures of passing and transitioning.*

Tucutes: WE HAVE NONE OF THOSE PROBLEMS PLEASE LET US IN!!!!!!!!!!!

trans men: *continue trying to have spaces*

tucutes: why won't you indulge my entitlement to your sense of community?? ur cis bootlickers!!! Come lick my cis boots!

[min0uet]

if yall don't stop calling lesbian a slur regardless of the argument over using queer...

[riparian-ripuarian]

Increasingly I'm noticing people say "queer and trans" to replace the awkward "el gee bee tee cue plus" in spoken conversation. This implies that it's just gay, lesbian, and bi (and if you want to include them, other identities that aren't heterosexual or related to gender) that the word "queer" refers to. Is trans not queer? Is it like all trans identities are queer but not all queer identities are trans? In these contexts is "queer" a different identity altogether from lesbian, gay, and bisexual, which must now be passé? What do my trans followers/general readers think? Is it important to distinguish gender identities from sexual orientation if the acronym and major organizations championing the advancement of our causes have lgbt all together? I personally don't enjoy hearing the word referenced toward me (but appreciate the political context of its reclamation by some), nor do I identify as transgender. Just a plain ol' gay white man who wants to know more.

[theinfiniteofthought]

queer discourse done actually okay

I saw a cool interaction on Oxfess - a public fb page for anonymously complaining/ “confessing” oxford students and residents. I thought i’d share this cos i thought it was a really well thought-through post.

First Person: I’m gay, but I haven’t ever done anything to do with LGBTQ soc because they seem to use the word qu**r for everything and it makes me have flashbacks of my homophobic father :)))))

Second Person: I really get you, but also, it's really unreasonable to expect our community to stop using our own language?

I used to be EXTREMELY sensitive to the words 'gay' and 'lesbian' for the exact same reason - they reminded me of my abusive father, and of my horrible upbringing. It made engaging in our community really fucking hard because those words were absolutely everywhere! I was so mad for a while - I didnt get why people couldn't just call themselves something else? Why did it have to be a "gay club" or an "LGBT society"?

But then I got my head on straight and realised that I couldn't expect people to stop using that language. Yes, they're words which have been used in horrible ways by horrible people for decades, and really wounded me personally, but they are also our community's rallying point, identity descriptors, and so forth.

My friends and, eventually, girlfriend, are still cautious about what language they use around me - we call ourselves WLW rather than a 'lesbian couple' between each other. Just like I would keep my house nut-free if my girlfriend had a nut allergy. But I don't expect the community to avoid those words, that's not fair.

Trauma therapy helped me to get past my association of my father with such words, as did engaging in the community itself actually. I know it's such a typical narrative, but creating a found family of people like me really did help me to be less triggered by such words. I still find them hard, but there's essentially a massive content warning right there - a space in our community will/will likely contain these words, and I can prepare myself, self soothe where necessary, apply coping mechanisms, and choose to remove myself if the words are bothering me too much.

I hope that you can engage with Soc, because I've found the community in Oxford to be wonderful overall, but I also hope that you, and anyone who is angry about our community's language, reads this and thinks long and hard about it. (Emphasis added)

[frappuccinio]

every time some 14 year old kid who doesn’t wanna be called the same word they get called at school while being shoved down, only to be told by their community that they’re “spreading terf rhetoric” it makes so fucking glad to remember that nothing on this website matters irl.