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

I'm really puzzled by the embracing of the word 'Queer'. It just seems another kind of attempt at 'othering'. But It's so elastic now it covers everyone. What exactly defines someone as not being 'queer'?
It could be seen as a signifier of non conformist independence except calling yourself 'queer' is the height of fashionable orthodoxy. It's pathetic as well as offensive to lesbians and gay men.

@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.

Looking at the Glasgow Museums link earlier on the thread, I decided to start a Pinterest board of Joan Eardley paintings, and what should pop up on Pinterest than an invitation to add pronouns "so others know how to refer to me".... :/
I was angry the other morning when Lauren Laverne, introducing Desert Island Discs guest lawyer Nazir Afzal, said he was well-known for fighting gender-based violence.......
It sometimes feels as if everyone but me is converted to the new religion (until I find refuge here :) )

Thanks for this thread OP. It has articulated better than I ever could certain musings I have had about what is fuelling all this ridiculousness.

I definitely agree that there is a cohort of young straight white people desperate to be somehow different or edgy or alternative. In my teenage days it was emo or punk, but now it seems to be gender bullshit taking over rationality.

The foundations of this have been laid for several years, every celebrity has a sob story about how hard their life is, mental health issues, when their cat died etc. We are then supposed to ignore the hugely privileged lives they lead and feel sorry for them.
Young white people have been told for quite some time that we were the bad guys of history, the oppressors, the big bad monsters. You can understand in a way why they would want to distance themselves from that.

I do wonder whether when most of them grow out of this in 10 years whether they will look back and cringe at the nonsense they have peddled. Or realise the damage they are perpetuating.

And yes to there always seeming to be a small number of people with their own personal agenda, ready to latch onto something and make a career out of it. Activism is now an identity for them, but really they are in it for their own reasons; sense of control, power, telling others what to do, take your pick!

I used to work in a charity, and there were several people like this, who would go on like they were in the thick of it, on the front line fighting a war or something (in reality they sat at a desk in a nice air conditioned office and sent some emails). You could tell they got a real ego boost from it all, and thought themselves so different from the other 'corporate stooges'. In reality we were all corporate stooges, we just happened to work for a charity, same shit. They were there for the paycheck just like I was. it was wearing.

It's just sad that formerly respectable institutions are playing along with this crap.

I’ve heard gay and lesbian issues or culture being discussed as “queer” or that phase “through a queer lens” in the media more than once in the last few months. The first time it happened I thought it was just the particular person being interviewed, but it’s becoming pervasive.

Goodness, I do some work and in a flash posts have been deleted. I'm guessing I said something totally disagreeable.

twitter.com/SeahorseLt/status/1424169188302671881

The people on that thread suggesting the male does the housework are probably being overly generous to the “queer” couple.

Am I too cynical? I interpret the word as meaning “we practice kink to compensate for him being bad in bed.” I don’t think queer believers have any investment in overturning gender roles in a way that’s valuable to women.

I reported them.

I am not doing the hokey cokey with anti-gay bullshit again.

Good grief that was quick.

Have we been deleted?

I've read articles and posts here and elsewhere by trans people who find all this as offensive as some women do. You're representing a political position, not a group.

And there we go from the presumably "be kind" advocate.

Personally, I don't use offensive slurs, no matter what someone has done. I wonder what other slurs come to your lips when someone from a marginalised community refuses to submit.

What we will try to move past is the notion that sexuality must be strictly based on the "observed sex" at birth.

Is this the royal "We"?

Anyone getting a sense of deja vu?

You're welcome to believe and label yourself any way you like. Just please don't force your beliefs, labels and boxes on others who do not agree and do not want to get in them and we shall all be fine.

People, both cis and trans, will continue to identify as gay, bi, and lesbian. And they will all be considered to fall under the queer umbrella.

What we will try to move past is the notion that sexuality must be strictly based on the "observed sex" at birth.

I have been listening to R 4 multiple times every day for over 60 years. I also have to keep turning off due to the non science, bias and general nonsense about women. I am ready to stop paying BBC license. For ever. Unfortunately DH disagrees about license although seemingly right behind women and girls' issues. Is it worth divorcing him? ( married 50 years)

I was giving this some thought last night, and putting aside the fact that and many other LGB people will always consider the Q word as an unacceptable slur, I still don't buy the internal logic that it's a positive identity umbrella term.

I am not LGB but I also consider the Q word as an unacceptable slur, I'd rather be on the "wrong side of history" with this, then use it.

Just listened. FFS. I didn't catch the name of the young woman talking about Joan Eardley as 'queer', but she clearly knew nothing about Eardley.

She describes Lady Audrey Walker as Eardley's 'life partner', which I am pretty sure would have come as a surprise to both of them, as Audrey was at that time (and for the rest of her life) married to and living with her husband, who was a judge in Glasgow.

There was definitely a romantic and possibly a sexual element to their friendship (Audrey's letters to Joan have been lost, so it is hard to tell how one-sided the romantic and sexual feelings were), but it was not a 'life partnership' and I cannot imagine either of the women would have described themselves as queer. Or non-binary, come to that.

Yes I’d noticed this on Front Row too. It’s tiresome. I hear the otherwise fantastic Samira Ahmed mentioning the q word a lot.

I also heard it on Loose Ends. Not Clive Anderson but another man and he was saying how much he admired Munroe Bergdorf so I had to switch off. I don’t think MB is even in the arts so I don’t know why they were mentioned.