[picture is of a Simpsons couch gag, the one where they show shots from the future and Lisa is on the couch with her college girlfriend]
This is also the most direct individual example Iâve seen of this phenomenon.
The more I think about who uses âqueerâ, the clearer it is that itâs a ton of people under the bi umbrella - especially because thereâs so little bi visibility that MOST bi people are afraid to claim âthe B wordâ - and, especially, a ton of trans people. IIRC, one survey had a majority of trans people identifying their sexual orientation specifically as âqueerâ.
This is undoubtedly also partly because thereâs such a huge overlap between bi and trans people, and because our communities have always been allies.
The more I look at who opposes the word, the more restricted it is to the various branches of the radical feminist communities telling everybody not to use this terrible slur. People outside that community pick it up because it sounds important, when you say something is a slur. Or because they personally hate the word. But thatâs where it seems like it originates.
So, itâs coming primarily from a community thatâs known for having an extremely anti-trans branch. And which has an overall philosophy thatâs toxic to bisexuals, genderqueer/nonbinary people, and aces/aros. And which also has a pattern of wrapping abusive acts in faux-social-justice terminology - pretending that trans people invade womenâs spaces, labeling any terms people use for calling them out as âslursâ, etc.
And the âq slurâ meme spreads, because it sounds social-justice-y. It makes it seem like the larger community has rejected the term, instead of a subculture of a subculture being very very vocal aboutâŠ
how we should ban a term that is primarily used by bi/trans peopleâŠ
that is the only word many people feel safe using to describe themselves, thanks to rampant bi erasure and bi demonizing and to the pressure to fit your sexual orientation into a binaryâŠ
and that is the only word any of us has that lets us identify people like us in history without a ton of âbut they didnât have that identity back thenââŠ
or to identify what we all, including aces/aros, have in common today, the essence of what is wonderful about all our different flavors of queerness as well as what the rest of the worldâŠ
Itâs the only word we have that can build that community and hold it together, without all this infighting about terminology. (All right, I know that people can fight about any term. Itâs the one that doesnât explicitly exclude anybody that it shouldnât.)
Itâs also a word that a huge number of bi people use to identify themselves. A minority of gay and lesbian people prefer it over âgayâ or âlesbianâ. But in the bi community, itâs a HUGE thing for people to call themselves âqueerâ instead of âbisexualâ. Itâs so common that itâs one of the things people include when the spell out what âbi+â includes.
Itâs also a word that almost 25% of trans people use to label their sexual orientation (with 52% of trans people identifying as some flavor of âbi+â including this âqueerâ 25%). (Itâs in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, which surveyed almost 2,000 trans people.)
It has seemed to me for a while that the effort to go back to the âqueerâs a slurâ fight of the fucking 1980s is an unconscious attempt to center things around âsame-gender attractionâ and push issues that are specific to being intersex, trans, ace/aro, and bi+ out to the margins. Or, anyway, farther out to the margins. Just the same as the tendency to label everything âthe gay rights movementâ does, or the pattern of referring to âgay and transâ issues and leaving everything else out.Â
romaincrisis
turnnoffyourmind
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
gummygunk
jimmyeatworldofficial
