The erasure of LGB: just Q and T in the future?

This is interesting. I recently had a Discord discussion with some women who identify as queer about why they identify with that word. They agreed they do so because they like how uncomfortable the word makes straight people.

I like the fact they give no consideration to it making some gay/bi people uncomfortable. I can't stand the term personally, it makes me cringe - and I'm a bi woman in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship.

Don't get me started on people who would claim my husband and I are in a queer relationship. We are not.

For people who are all about 'you are whatever you self identify as', they're remarkably disrespectful about other peoples choices of labels.

That does sound threatening. "We're LGB who stand with T" would work for LGB people who actively want to be part of the same group and want to state that. Or the "No LGB without the T" would work if it was heterosexual groups who were trying to force a split. But when it's specifically aimed at LGB people who are choosing to split, then I don't think it can be interpreted as anything other than a threat.

Second that recommendation.

The very fact that the LGB Alliance is attacked for its focus on LGB people, while they tell those of who object to the Q that we don't belong in the 'community' shpuld tell you something significant about how the LGBTQ+ adherents actually view LGB people.

That slogan 'No LGB without the T' looks more like a threat to me than ever.

I've always thought it seems offensive to LGB people to have all these other letters lumped onto them when they have no relation to sexuality?

Great posts. It’s reminded me of this Twitter thread, for some reason I can only view it on what looks like Russian Twitter.

mobile.twitter.com/tucker_shaw/status/1041839498999603202

*1. not every LGBT person has access to queer theory at university, and not every LGBT person agrees with or understands its general tenets, so it's exclusionary to use the term

1. it's going to be most offputting to older LGBT people, who are the most likely to have heard the word used as a slur and to have faced the most difficulties growing up
2. it's a term that will sound vague, ambiguous and possibly also offputting to ESL speakers, who are likely some of the most marginalised in the UK LGBT community
3. it's just generally someone's personal choice to 'reclaim' the term for themselves, not for others, and it's inappropriate to use for a whole group of people - this is how slur reclamation works*

Really good points, all of them.

I think it would be a good idea to start sending emails.

My university's LGBT society had 'queer' in the title until I protested in an anonymous post, caused a debate and eventually had it renamed. A lot of these people are probably just going off guidance from Stonewall et. al and have absolutely no literacy surrounding gay history or 'queer theory'. It would be very effective imo to just email any (non-LGBT-specific) organisation you see using 'queer' as an umbrella term and request on 'this is problematic' grounds that they drop the word, without using GC terminology and appealing as much as possible to unity and inclusivity - eg say:

1. not every LGBT person has access to queer theory at university, and not every LGBT person agrees with or understands its general tenets, so it's exclusionary to use the term
2. it's going to be most offputting to older LGBT people, who are the most likely to have heard the word used as a slur and to have faced the most difficulties growing up
3. it's a term that will sound vague, ambiguous and possibly also offputting to ESL speakers, who are likely some of the most marginalised in the UK LGBT community
4. it's just generally someone's personal choice to 'reclaim' the term for themselves, not for others, and it's inappropriate to use for a whole group of people - this is how slur reclamation works

'Queer' is just a way to engineer phony acceptance from the LG/B towards the T, because it turns someone's natural sexual orientation into a deliberate political philosophy (and, conveniently, a consumer identity). 'Queer' activists love using slurs to describe whole groups of people, because they're like edgy children who still yearn for approval: think also of 'whorephobia' and 'slut-shaming' (imagine saying either of those things to an actual woman forced into prostitution!).

There's also a related branch of disability theory called 'crip theory', but I don't see able-bodied theorists calling anyone in extraordinary bodily condition a 'crip', identifying with this term themselves, or using it for all disabled people as a group, even if some object. Maybe it's just a matter of time.

Sorry for long post. Anyway the only way forward from here is letter-writing!

Radio 4 might as well have said "Michel Foucault lens" as"Queer theory" was coined by scholars influenced by him in the late 80's/early 90's.

A "Michel Foucault lens" is chilling

all call themselves “queer”, and can be constantly found policing that term and enforcing it on some of the actually gay young women who have been told off for calling themselves lesbian!

I just don't get how, in 2021, we have lesbian erasure by heterosexuals

[quote PurgatoryOfPotholes]This is the second time I've come across Joan Eardley being retrospectively reassigned.

Previous thread about the last incident.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4171054-Glasgow-Museums[/quote]
This reminds me of Ann Listers blue plaque which "erased" her lesbian identity.

The plaque honouring Anne Lister was unveiled at Holy Trinity Church in York, where she took the sacrament in 1834 with her lover, Ann Walker.

It originally described her as "gender non-conforming", prompting an online petition to change the wording, which had "nothing to do with sexuality".

York Civic Trust agreed and apologised, and re-did the plaque

Just dare let anyone take my name and call me queer!!!!

I'm in my sixties and came out in my late thirties and coming out to myself and then wider society as a lesbian was a frightening brave and joyful thing to do. I constantly use the word lesbian, just to go against the current erasure of it as a word to describe what I am. An adult human female sexually attracted to other adult human females. Not an identity, a lived reality.

(And these aren’t even LGBT-focused Discords by the way - they’re for a niche but very heavily female-dominated hobby (think knitting, but it isn’t knitting). And yet the younger female people in the group are constantly bringing discussion round to queering things and policing and enforcing terms and boxes on others. It’s really very tiresome to be honest.)

Oh and I’m on several Discords with largely young women (often exclusively so if you count the trans men). Interestingly the young trans men, non-binary and straight women all call themselves “queer”, and can be constantly found policing that term and enforcing it on some of the actually gay young women who have been told off for calling themselves lesbian!

In one group the loudest “queer” person is a young woman, engaged to a man in the military, who bakes cakes for her fiancé and calls herself “queer” because she dresses “alternative” and likes tattoos - but she is entirely straight and will happily admit she isn’t sexually interested in women. Yet she and a young trans man police any appearance of what they perceive as “terf rhetoric” in the group, which includes any statement about men or saying you aren’t sexually interested in men. The young trans man is also only sexually interested in men. Yet they are the self-appointed “queer” ambassadors of the group, and will happily police the sexuality of lesbian women twice their age. I mean you couldn’t make this stuff up really, it’s so daft.

And lots of my gay male friends actually disapproved of that even then, and really disliked it. Particularly those who saw themselves as quite socially conformist really, they just wanted a job and a house and to have a quiet life paying taxes and just happening to have a male partner.

There were always divisions in gay male culture between the idea of gayness as something outside the social norm, which challenged bourgeois social institutions like the family and so on; and those who wanted to normalise gayness as part of ordinary social life.

Lesbian culture was always a bit less hyped on the idea of standing against social norms - largely because even women committed to lesbian separatism also were often still quite interested in having children or in living an communal life, and the politics of lesbian separatism tended to be a more community-focused, woman-centred utilitarian politics rather than a radically individualist one. So even lesbian feminists who saw themselves as challenging bourgeois social norms were largely interested in communitarian and radically Marxist politics rather than capitalist-individualist politics. And that was of its nature much less hostile to the other kind of universalist lesbians who saw sexuality as a spectrum and were quite keen on same-sex marriage and so on. Hence why lesbian politics was always less aggressively “anti-normative” than gay male politics anyway.

BUT in general, with marriage equality and greater visibility of LGB people across all political parties, by the late 2000s LGB culture had largely turned away from wanting to “queer” things — probably also in the Anglosphere because with the New Labour and Obama administrations, the centre left were in power = “normie” culture was increasingly centrist/leftist!

It’s significant that “queering” everything appeared as a renewed fashion just after the turn back to right wing governments happened across the West in the 2010s - especially for young people who see themselves as leftist to make an anti-Establishment statement. Except they aren’t at all informed about the complex histories of all this stuff before they jump in.

a vested interest in the oppression of homosexuality continuing. Without that, they lose the leverage and frisson of the oppression they have played cuckoo with.

Excellent post, Floral

So, in the term LGBTQ... I get LGB, I even get T, so what is Q, exactly, as it's listed separately?

The people who use 'queer' to describe themselves seem to be desperate to be 'different' and 'edgy' and 'cool'.

Reminds me of Colin in The Fast Show.

This is interesting. I recently had a Discord discussion with some women who identify as queer about why they identify with that word. They agreed they do so because they like how uncomfortable the word makes straight people. It felt kind of childish, tbh. If the word makes straight people uncomfortable, they are uncomfortable that slurs and repression were and are a thing, not because you aren't straight. If they are uncomfortable with the word queer, it's because they really don't want to inadvertently abuse someone. So I don't know why any LGB person would actually want to make someone who is trying to not be hurtful, uncomfortable.

Yes that seems a strange way of justifying it's use, it makes me uncomfortable because it, to me, a slur due to historic use. (By historic I mean 25/30 years ago)

Back in the 80s and 90s, most of my gay (male) friends described themselves as queer, whereas none of my lesbian friends used queer to describe themselves. The difference, I think, was that the gay men liked being different to straight men, wanted to stand out from heteronormativity, and positively embraced the discomfort some straight men felt around them - even their friends; the lesbian women OTOH just considered themselves to be another version of normal. And none of the women were uncomfortable among any of the other women - sexuality was irrelevant unless we were interested in a relationship. (I appreciate that this might be a feature of my social circles and far from universal.)

Now, looking at my teenage dc and their circles, all the youngsters calling themselves queer have never actually had a relationship.

My eldest, at uni, says his circles include people in hetero, gay and lesbian relationships, but no 'queer' friends, "because they're all noise and no substance".

Which anecdata tells me that queer is about rebellion and attention-seeking.

[quote lalalalalafeelingroovy]**@irresistibleoverwhelm* Exactly this. “Queer” just relocates and creates a new binary somewhere else - but by doing so, it privileges those who have the (usually class and financial) luxury of thinking about themselves as “anti-normal/non-normies” when it suits them (but often not when it doesn’t).*

This is interesting. I recently had a Discord discussion with some women who identify as queer about why they identify with that word. They agreed they do so because they like how uncomfortable the word makes straight people. It felt kind of childish, tbh. If the word makes straight people uncomfortable, they are uncomfortable that slurs and repression were and are a thing, not because you aren't straight. If they are uncomfortable with the word queer, it's because they really don't want to inadvertently abuse someone. So I don't know why any LGB person would actually want to make someone who is trying to not be hurtful, uncomfortable.

The thing that really got me about it though, was that these women were bisexual women married to men. In marriages they say are fulfilling, happy and monogamous. So while these women are not straight, they are now living lives that are straight presenting. I don't want to erase their bisexuality and attraction to women. Those are real things and it's good to acknowledge that not everyone is a heterosexual relationship is heterosexual. But I do think that if you are a bisexual person in a monogamous longterm relationship with someone of the opposite sex, it's fair to say that your day to day life isn't exactly 'queer' anymore. Some of them only realised they were bisexual after they married and have never had any some-sex relationships or even casual hook-ups. So they haven't even had any experience of how wider society treats them for being in a same-sex relationship. Again, this isn't to invalidate their bisexuality, but their lived experience is one where they were only ever 'out' within a heterosexual relationship. So it's not the same as someone who is in a same-sex relationship or only same-sex attracted.

It kind of came across to me as a high-stakes move for some people who's personal stakes are low. Backlash against LGB people isn't really going to hurt them. We're never going to be entering a Gilead style society where they are penalised retroactively for their past same-sex relationships. If LGB people become less safe and lose their current protections and rights, it won't affect them in any real way.[/quote]
Have definitely seen this kind of thing. Granting all your caveats about acknowledging bisexuality, it does often read that people like this are keen for the edgy cache of the Qslur, without any of the attendant difficulty and oppression involved in being obviously homosexual. They want to deploy the shock factor, but they view the horror stories of LGB people solely as exotic fodder to co opt because they've never faced it.

I've said elsewhere, people like this have a vested interest in the oppression of homosexuality continuing. Without that, they lose the leverage and frisson of the oppression they have played cuckoo with.

It's one of the reasons why I think Stonewall have done what they've done. Oppression of lesbians and gay men serves a useful purpose as a shopfront justification bait and switch, making it look like you give a damn about that, when actually you are more interested in pronoun policing and highlighting the struggles of the Ace spectrum, which is conveniently loosely defined and more widely marketable.