Jameela Jamil comes out as queer

The word "queer" is the homeopathy of gayness.

Minty, I was not expecting people to agree with me. I just wonder whether JJ to some extent cherry picks her identities. Yes she is a WOC, but she also could identify as an expensively educated upper-middle class woman now living a well connected life in Los Angeles. But we don’t hear that, instead, conveniently, she identifies as queer.

Again personal, but I would like to see a world where skin colour was not noticed. I worry that gender identity ends up reinforcing sex stereotypes...born in the wrong body, so change the body, rather than accepting who someone is. I also worry that people like JJ, by emphasising their skin colour are increasing awareness of difference in an unhelpful way. And essentially promoting their own specialness rather than tackling the real issues faced by many women of colour who dont have economic advantage to protect them.

Has she really had much direct experience of racism? I would not know. However DC went to another central London school with a similar affluent and international catchment and as far as I am aware skin colour was not an issue. (The only disparaging, quasi racist, remarks DC and I picked up seemed aimed at the British, regardless of skin colour. There seemed to be plenty, whether from New York, Stockholm, Paris, Moscow or Beijing, who saw London as inferior to their home cities and who perceived the British as lazy and stupid. That said Americans, Russians and East Asians seemed far more race aware than Brits.)

I guess it depends on whether you believe using identity as a way of confronting disadvantage is helpful or unhelpful.

thinking about getting with a girl doesn't make you bi/queer - same as thinking about stabbing someone doesn't make you a murderer
This has raised an intriguing tangential thought train for me - does one have to be sexually active, therefore, to have a sexuality? If so what counts as sexually active - touch, kiss, clothes off, orgasm, (penetration? clearly not). At the end of the day sexual orientation is always going to have an element of self-declaration about it isn’t it. I don’t think I agree with the above quote tbh. I think that sexual thoughts and feelings, not actions, define sexuality. Queer to me is not a sexuality, but some kind of umbrella term, I would understand that the person perhaps has or identifies with homosexual/bisexual feelings/thoughts/culture but for some reason doesn’t want to call themselves gay or bi, either because they are actually heterosexual despite their politics/philosophy, or because of prejudices about what bisexuality/homosexuality is, perhaps it not fitting with their beliefs around gender identity and related issues. So ‘queer’ is a nice blurry catch-all.

This is great and entirely logical.

Isn't it?

So my interpretation of queer is a toe in the water of bisexuality or quite liking the idea of it.

At the end of the day you are gay, straight, bi or unsure. End of. Liking transgenders is a fetish, not a sexuality, because they are not another sex. And thinking about getting with a girl doesn't make you bi/queer - same as thinking about stabbing someone doesn't make you a murderer.

Very very different from the life experiences of WOC from poorer backgrounds.

But still someone who faces prejudice because of her skin.

I have a different life from white women of poorer backgrounds, I still experience sexism.

This is akin to saying Clare Balding shouldn’t complain at being paid less than her male counterparts, because she was still earning 400k per year.

Now’t as queer as folk....

My mum uses it alot and I will use it with very old friends who use it the same way.
Now, I dont know if this is the place to bring this up, but I get the feeling that being a white straight woman is a sort of figure of fun, or to be jeered at when scoring cool points
Listening to an American podcast and persons said "yea, I was behaving like an old white woman" I.e. complaining.
A drag queen saying she would vote out straight white girls in a competition, just because. Even though her entire schtick is a trashy white woman.
All the Linda's Karen's and Brenda's
Are white straight women not a good subset to be lumped I with these days.
Sorry if I have missed a beat but it just seems to be popping up a lot

Oh dear Jameela. Of course she would be out and proud as "queer" already if it had ever been a reality! It means "special in a way I don't need to define and therefore worthy" as well as "noooooo, don't be mean to me because I'm straight! I'll do better!"

She can't say bisexual because it contains the word sex and that's transphobic dontcha know. She can't say non-binary because she's not even slightly non-binary in terns of stereotypical gender performance. But she can say queer because that just means "cool enough to be allowed to live".

As an old straight cis lady I think I might as well just call the police on myself now.

Yeah, I grew up hearing Irish men refer to their wives as 'the quare one'.

Quite funny in this context now, how things come full circle

Will there have to be a discussion about Brendan Behans play "The Quare Fella"?
Quare inbIrish vernacularbisbtacked onto many things.
Quare hawk.
Quare looking

Just freak the 20 somethings and tell them that women have been like that since we crawled out of the swamp. Blow their brains completely and ask them to speak to their nannas about it.

And no - she would really have faced much oppression in her life.

So yes I agree about the slap in the face to all those who had it spat at them as a term of abuse

There’s an argument to be made that if you haven’t been subjected to a slur, it’s not yours to reclaim. I think I lean towards that, although can also see how, for some, it’s part of a heritage/continuity with the struggles of the older LGBs.

but as he was marrying a pansexual woman, this now meant that he is no longer strictly straight and they do not want to be defined as having a heterosexual marriage

Does it rub off on you like dandruff then?
The things you learn....

She went to a very posh private girls school in Central London (Queen's College, alumni include Anna Wintour, Jane Asher, Susannah Constantine, Emma Freud, Gertrude Bell, Katherine Mansfield, Jacqueline du Pré and Winston Churchill's daughter).

You mean she hasn't got a fucking clue what 'oppression' and 'disadvantage' is?

What a shocker.

Thank you @CreaturefromtheDeep for articulating exactly what makes me wince so much about it all.

I’ve got young friends in their 20s who use the term queer to describe themselves. I’ve probed a bit & in both cases they are women who’ve only dated men but think women are beautiful and that kissing one experimentally would not be beyond the realms of possibility.

They don’t remember the days of “queer bashing”, section 28, the fight to equalise the age of consent & the many many battles LGB ppl had to fight

To them it really does seem to be a way of showing they’re not like their boring old parents

So yes I agree about the slap in the face to all those who had it spat at them as a term of abuse

Maybe JJ just doesn't identify as cis and therefore must be queer... in which case, there are a whole lot of us!!

And how does IW get away with that tweet when if one of us said..

'Heh, Twitter fell for it, he claimed to be trans when he took a female person's place on an all women's short list, as a women's officer, on a women's ward, in a women's prison, in a women's toilet, in an award for women.. #womanface' we would be hauled off by the police and told that these thoughts had no place in civilised society and could be offensive to someone who heard we had said it.

I really hope IW was being ironic but I doubt it.

She's an attention seeking to shite. I can't stand her

I'm waiting for 'my sexuality is one of your business - and I don't care about your orientation either' badge but it may need a very large pin.

I am waiting for the badge "hetero" to be reclaimed. At that point, I will know the purity cycle has come the full circle.

Do you know what, let them eat each other. Queer this, apporiation that, check your privilege this, stay in your lane that

yeah it's quite funny watching them deal with their woke struggles.

It’s funny because when I was a teenager (early-mid 90s, gen x) we are all about being alternative and individuals. I used the word alternative like a badge to show who different and unboring I was compared to all the mainstream folk and scoffed at the oldr generation who pointed out that those of us who claimed to be individuals all dressed alike and had the same interests and mindsets, not very alternative really.

That sounds very familiar. I thought the alternative kids were very cool when I started high school. My parents kindly didn't point out that they were actually all following the same model, but I eventually clued in myself. Maybe in part because I never quite fit in with them and ended up hanging out with a group of kids who were considered very "normal" and uninteresting, though in fact that was far from the truth.

But it does make you wonder, if a 17 year old can see through that stuff how are these adults falling for it?

Man marries woman = queer? No just desperate for attention and to appear ‘unique’. Luckily my brother is very gruff (and even if he wasn’t he - and his wife/partner/whatever - would have the merry piss taken for taking nonsense)

Agree. Compulsory heterosexuality, and plain old availability of partners due to local demographics play a part. Hopefully we’ve moved past the concept of the only legit bisexual as a polyamorist or someone who does rapid serial monogamy with both sexes (MF sequentially or not valid)

I don't think there are really tight boundaries around this, but I think there are a lot of women who might be or have been occasionally sexually attracted to other women, but - I'm not quite sure how to describe this - it doesn't have the same quality as their attraction to men. It's in some way more limited, maybe. I've certainly been attracted, even very attracted, to female bodies on occasion, but with two caveats I feel are significant, one being that I don't feel the same kind of emotional attraction I do for men. In a way it's a very shallow sexual attraction. And the second thing is probably related which is it's a fairly narrow sort of youngish attractive woman that I tend to think of that way, which isn't really the case with men. The latter is something I didn't realise when I was younger, in part because my attraction to men at that age was also not as mature, so it seemed more similar.

I've never called myself bisexual, but some might. I get the impression though from talking to women that it's not an uncommon sort of phenomena.

I’ve not got much more to add but and nodding vigorously at all the comments here – I wish these was a like button! I agree that queer is often used to signal that an individual is not as boring as all the normal straight folk and completely agree with whoever upthread used the “not like my mum” analogy. It’s funny because when I was a teenager (early-mid 90s, gen x) we are all about being alternative and individuals. I used the word alternative like a badge to show who different and unboring I was compared to all the mainstream folk and scoffed at the oldr generation who pointed out that those of us who claimed to be individuals all dressed alike and had the same interests and mindsets, not very alternative really. Now I’m an old gimmer I see the woke trend being exactly like that but the difference, and the danger, is that rather than being confined to teenagers, adults are also competing to be the wokest and the discourse has entered the media, social and political policy etc.

My brother is married to a very young (there is an 18 year age difference), very woke, blue-haired, pansexual individual. As far as I can work out, she’s pansexual because she snogged a couple of girls at parties as a teenager and finds certain women in the media very attractive. I once agreed with her that Emma Watson is indeed a beautiful women and got a lecture about how I can’t possibly think this way because I’m straight (or, in her words “cishet”) and that I was appropriating her gayness which is the worst form of literal violence against the LGBTQ+ community. I’ve tried talking to her about my life experiences, which, as far as I can see are exactly the same as hers – had some drunken girl-snogs/experimentation in my youth, long term relationship with a man but she just recoils in horror, telling me that I’m nothing like her and that I really don’t understand sexuality definitions. The only difference I can see is that she is a young, nubile 24 year old and I’m a frumpy 40-something who clearly doesn’t fit her narrative. For the record, I’m not suggesting that she is definitely straight or even that I might be bi – I was simply trying to find some common ground. Anyway, shortly before she married my brother, they came around to our house to tell us something very very important and serious. My brother then came out to us as “queer”. We were very supportive (interestingly, I’ve had way more LGB friends than him over the years) and asked some gently probing questions about him coming to terms with his identity, through which it was revealed that he has no attraction to anyone of the same sex and never has but as he was marrying a pansexual woman, this now meant that he is no longer strictly straight and they do not want to be defined as having a heterosexual marriage. So he is now queer, she is pansexual and they are in a queer relationship. Again, I have no issue with any sexual preferences, I completely agree and understand that bi-sexual people can have long-term relationships with members of the opposite sex and would defend to the death anyone’s right to still identify as bi in that situation. But dear god, I’m sick of the woke virtue-signalling.

Jameela may be bi and the fact that she is in a relationship with a bloke has no bearing on that whatsoever. I suspect though that if she were bi, he would have said so. Queer seems like a word to hide behind, to signal that “yes, I’m a woman attracted to men but I’m really fun and exciting and an LGBTQ ally so I need a word to describe all that” and that seems like a slap in the face to all those who had the word spat at them as a term of abuse and who have fought to reclaim it for good.