Please help stop Queering and TQ+ing LGB people

Yup. Agree with all of that, I feel much the same way.

Used to love Pride. Wouldn't now go near it. I'm not proud at all of what it has become.

I don't know if it's just me getting older and more prudish but I feel like Pride has been overtaken too. When I was a teen in the 80s if was about pride in being LGB and I was happy to go along and support my friends. But now it feels seedy. Like it's all about fetishes and how sexually outlandish and shocking you can be. I wouldn't go anywhere near it now.

I had a very assertive female customer march up to me once, and ask “Where are your queer books?” - not even a ‘please’ 😲. For me, growing up ‘queer’ was a slur, so my jaw hit the floor, and I must’ve looked horrified: I was horrified. Thankfully during the Plague era, my facial expressions were partially hidden by a mask. I then had to regain my composure, and very tactfully try to elicit more information about which of the L,G,B or T or Other -type books she wanted, whilst trying not to offend by asking too direct questions … ooooff. It was hard work, felt like I was about to step on a land mine with every utterance 😳

It's long fucked me off that trans rights is lumped in with LGB (I'm B). If you do ascribe to trans ideology, then it's clear that trans people can be LGB or straight. Gender and sexuality are not linked in that way.

It's makes as much sense to me linking trans & LGB rights as is does LGB and black rights - there may be overlap but they have clear and significant difference which need tailored approaches.

*An account.

Well it's strange and somewhat confusing, because I was flicking through Instagram the other day and you know where it gives you 'suggestions' of people to folllow?

Where account of a young woman popped up where she stated that she was proud to be 'Lesbian, Non-conformist and Queer'. She used all 3 words as separate descriptive titles. So I assume she means Queer in a different sense unrelated to being a Lesbian?

I am reaching back to my teens years. Is queer being used by the young in the same way being a 'Goth' was? Like edgy and into non-normative social circles, paraphernalia and art but this time including sexually diverse?

So you can be a Queer Lesbian or Queer Gay? Is this why it's being used interchangeably in the Guardian article linked above?

I'm stumped otherwise.

Maybe we could call it the Nirvana Paradox?

I think it became difficult for people to maintain this idea of an alternate to corporate culture Because now, if such a thing appears, it becomes corporatized very quickly. It's like the same company owning gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy, you make more money if you have shops that cater to different pice points. In the world of pop culture you don't want to own only mainstream acts but the "alternates".

Life of Brian got here first, as well:

’Yes! We are all individuals!’

Funny, really, when I was young, back in the Palaeolithic, same sex attracted (hope this is okay ) people and those drawn to the wilder shores of Aphrodite used to pretend to be ‘normal’. Now the normal pretend to be ‘wild’.

Personally, I identify as the plus sign. Always good to assume superiority.

There's also a huge difference between the historic British use of the word 'queer', which gay rights activists did use along with the Nazi concentration-camp-derived pink triangle in the 80s, in a deliberately challenging way, and the current USA campus, Foucault and Butler-derived usage of 'queering' which is about blurred lines and destroying boundaries.

That was me I think.

I do think, however, that "alternative" did used to mean something. The Levellers - appalling as they were - were an alternative to mainstream pop. And the world of alternative music did feature all sorts of styles which might have been very modern sounding, or very retro, very noisy or very relaxing... but they did share something, they were a "genuine" alternative to mainstream culture, even if some of the alternative groups were quite homogenous. Nowadays "alternative" in music seems to pretty much mean "it has guitars!" It is an "alternative" to the majority of pop which is electronic, but it is not an alternative to mainstream culture, or corporatism, or anything really, it is just bland.

So funny to read this thread just now. I've said recently "What?!, I'm sorry what?!, queer? How odd, my same sex attracted family members and friends completely reject that term, they actually find it really offensive so would you mind not using it please?"

The person was confused and embarrassed and couldn't get away quick enough. It's the only time I have ever heard it used in RL, so my shock wasn't actually exaggerated.

Lesbian, gay and bisexual. These are the terms. I am a lesbian who is proud of what I am. I hate the way the name lesbian is being replaced by gay. Well of course it goes deeper than my name. What I am is being erased by transactivists. I'm a woman who is sexually attracted to other women. That's my living breathing visceral physical reality. Please help to stop us being erased in how we are named and in how we are defined.

And what do we do about the fact that the legal protections formed specifically for those people now in fact cover a very different and unplanned for group, and are being gently adapted and shifted over to better fit this unplanned group and exclude and cease to protect the original groups, particularly in regard to their having boundaries that the new group find inconvenient?

And that none of this has happened openly, democratically or with any kind of consultation of the affected groups?

Word. Damn you lack of edit function.

The world that, somewhat ironically, refers to a stone wall in my part of the world. (Which is the only context in which I use the word).

I do also think that a desire to be part of (what used to be) the happy, joyous freedom of Pride formed a part of it. Again it's the 'I deserve it' mindset that shoehorns self into a desired situation to be part of it- and ignores that this forces out people who formed this, fought for it, created it and continue to need it instead of just quite like the feelz and the optics.

What for example do we now do with all the homosexual people who aren't considered LGBT any more because they don't conform politically and won't believe that being homosexual is as deliberately harmful to others and as ethically indefensible as apartheid?

What do we call them? I mean, other than the obviously apparent terms of abuse?

It's rather like what do we call the group formerly known as women?

I was at university in the 1980s and comedy, music, theatre, dance, our dress and presentation, clubs and pubs, were all ‘alternative’.

Isn't it strange how 'alternative' involves so very much conformity?

There was a highly insightful quote the other day on here, and I apologise for not remembering who or where - it was a comment about how someone at a Levellers gig was watching a crowd of kids passionately singing 'there's only one way of life... and that's your own, that's your own, that's your own' - and every single one of them was in the uniform. Little carbon copies.

This is also the term that was used when I was in my late teens.

Most of us at some point realized that a lot of it was a different kind of conformity, and based in some pretty shallow things like clothing choices, and that it wasn't really where you could find a stable, robust sense of identity.

I really find it so weird that adults now are completely bamboozled by something most teens then understood by about age 20.

I think one of the reasons it's gained in popularity is pragmatic - no one knows had to deal with the ever increasing acronym in everyday speech. So people who have a vague sense they are supposed to acknowledge all the letters are happy to have an alternate that seems to mean the same thing and is pronouncable.

They have turned it, quite intentionally, into meaning 'a group of people of any sexuality who are committed to a certain political belief system'.

Yeah, that's vey insightful and I think you have connected something that I've been feeling but not able to articulate. And I think it may relate to the over the top policing of all kinds of communities, trans people who step out of line, but also black conservatives being called Uncle Toms or other examples where people are "supposed" to have a certain set of political views that actually aren't intrnsically related to their shared charachteristic at all.

I just don’t get it. They really think the ‘community’ is all sparkles and parties.

That’s the point - q Is pretty hideous.

There is no need to try to ‘rebrand’ anything - especially when one group is taking a horror or a word, stealing it (to be all dramatic) for themselves even though they are asked not to be a lot of those who suffered or as a term of abuse).

Wbeezer, one of my acquaintances posted a gushing 'coming out' message for Pride. She came out as demisexual. She's a straight married woman. Straight people having particular tastes is 'queer' now.

I recently read a post on a Facebook page for neuro diverse people I'm a member of.
The mods put out a call for everyone to post their "flag" in the comments on a post about Pride.
One defensive young woman posted about being a demi-sexual and moaned about people not thinking she was "valid". Much reassurance was forthcoming.
So, I saw it with my own eyes, a young straight woman claiming to be Queer because she wasn't into casual sex. 🤔