#queernormativity

[haleyhalcyon]

Ah yes, Pride Month, also known as “try to shield yourself in vain from people throwing around the Q-slur more than usual for 30 days”

[disworksdrazon]

Benji and Supercorp both serve as a test for to see how much everyone really is queer-open, and how much everyone is still stuck in heteronormative/traditional ways.

Don’t get me wrong, I would have wanted a kiss between each of the ships at the end. Or a clear confirmation they’re dating, or will do so sometime in the future, not just hinting through references, parallels and analogies.

But … the writers/creators from both shows have left quite some signs that hint that they are endgame. Maybe not with traditionally rose relationships, or maybe not yet, though they do clearly love each other.

Why do y’all need a kiss in order to see a ship as canon?

Dinostar didn’t have one; the writers did show they are very queer-open — cause Darius might be aro, but even if he’s not, their storyline conclusion basically showed love is more complex and not every deep love is romance per se. Darius saying it out loud in the elevator felt like the writers were screaming at the fans, “we’ve given you so many signs already in s1-3 for Benji, how do you still not see it’s not just bait?!”

(Same with Supercorp in s6. You could argue with them that Katie was mostly trying to please the shippers, but Melissa wasn’t really on board with the ship, yet acted Kara/Supergirl in a similar way as Katie. More than enough confirmation that the director at least wanted it that way.)

It’s only bait, for you, if ro/se are the only attraction types you count as non-familial love.

Which is just not the case, cause Queerness is much more than what happens in the bedroom, has many more attraction types and microlabels.

[haleyhalcyon]

⚠️ CW: The Q-slur, used uncensored. ⚠️

The whole fervor around the Q-slur is so incomprehensible to me because it’s backwards from every other epithet for an oppressed and alienated minority.

For comparison, if you say “illegal aliens” you get a flurry of angry corrections that rightfully point out that you’re abnormalizing them. “Illegal” strips these people of the legitimacy to exist, despite that “no human is illegal”. “Alien” means “abnormal”, “foreign”, and “weird”, despite that many of these undocumented immigrants pay into the US’s tax and Social Security system (like any other American) and get nothing in return (unlike documented Americans).

Just recently, the White House published an ICE Deportation Tracker themed around the movie Alien, and all of you rightfully got outraged that these people—We say “undocumented immigrants”, excuse you very much!—are not “alien” invaders that “walk among us”.

We say “undocumented immigrants” to normalize them; we say “illegal aliens” to abnormalize them.

But here’s what grinds my goddamn gears: Why do so many of you love that abnormalizing slur for sexual minorities?!

“Queer” means “odd”, “weird”, “abnormal”, “alien”. Even before it first referred to gay people, it had many negative meanings in slang, like “fake” and “shoddy”. By all accounts, it should be as sternly frowned upon to call LGBT people “queer people” as it is to call undocumented immigrants “aliens”.

And yet. And yet! For some incomprehensible reason, the very people who should be championing sexual minorities’ right to exist as a normal part of any society are instead also calling us “queer”, and meaning it! We are already abnormalized by cis-hetero-patriarchical society stabbing us with “smear the queer”, and now our supposed “allies” and “community members” are backstabbing us with “WE’RE here, WE’RE queer”! Instead of pushing back against that crushing oppression, they decided to become the other arm of the vise grip!

Make it make sense! Why is it not cool to call someone an “alien”, while it’s totally hunky-dory to call someone “a queer person”?! They should be both unacceptable in any reasonable society.

No group of people should be abnormalized, no matter how “progressively” or “inclusively” you think you’re doing it.

[haleyhalcyon]

this is your Pride Month reminder that war is 20% battles, 80% diplomacy

too many of you have romanticized the Stonewall Riots so much, that it seems like you have internalized the bigotry that LGBT people didn’t exist before them, and that being LGBT is, or necessitates, antagonizing random strangers instead of criticizing power structures.

LGBT pride should necessitate neither cishet shame nor compulsory q***rness.

[haleyhalcyon]

Snakelung and I vehemently disagree on whether Instagram “Poetry” counts as poetry. We, however, strongly agree that the Q-slur is too loaded a term to use indiscriminately. That’s solidarity, folks.

[haleyhalcyon]

Genuinely what the fuck is the difference between the ways that homophobes vs. “q***r people” use the Q-slur? Because it’s definitely not about “noun bad, adjective good”.

I call people who self-identify as the Q-slur “q***rs”, and I get bashed for “homophobia”.

Some fuckface calls me “a fellow q***r” and nobody gives a shit.

[haleyhalcyon]

I really appreciate you being to outspoken against the Q-slur

It sucks how people refuse to respect a boundary as sumple as not wanting to be called that

To combat the Q-slur users who are “out, loud, and proud”, we have to use their weapons against them. Being q***r is being annoying; out-annoy them. Pride is a protest; out-protest them. They bullied us into silence for being who we are; out-bully them.

They colonized our communities; revolt.

It’s the only language that these tribalistic crybullies understand. I wish it could be as easy as teaching them that the Q-slur is a slur and a worldview exclusive to LGBT people who don’t want to be seen as “other”; because it isn’t as easy as that, we have to fight.

At least someone has to fight. What have I got to lose anymore?

[haleyhalcyon]

The Q-Slur Has Never Been Reclaimed

The problem with the Q-slur is that it has not been meaningfully reclaimed. A slur gets reclaimed in one of two ways:

The insult is genericized to the point that it doesn’t evoke the image of the minority that it used to denigrate. “Lame” fits into this category; nobody uses “lame” to describe the physically disabled anymore. “Idiot” also fits into this categery.

The insult is negated by the people who use it. The word “black” to refer to race fits into this category; the “black power” movement aimed to normalize saying “black” instead of the then-accepted term “negro”. So does “gay”, if you believe that it used to be a slur.

The word “q***r” has undergone neither. The insult behind the Q-slur is that sexual minorities are inherently and unfixably abnormal. Many who self-identify as the Q-slur actively agree with that insult! This keeps the Q-slur a slur.

The Q-slur is built upon the foundation of a hateful ideology, exclusionary against the people that it pretends to champion.