Please help stop Queering and TQ+ing LGB people

I’ve heard this view expressed by a male gay colleague. Basically put, “I’m a gay man. Why am I clumped together with all these other identities and presumed to share a community with them?”

Queer is also utterly useless as a label. If I want to read a book from the "queer" section of the library, I'll have no idea if it's a book about a lesbian or a blue-haired straight woman (and even then I won't know if the lesbian really is a woman...)

L, G and B are understandable. They makes sense. The rest of it? No, thank you.

I'm a step further on in that I've stopped calling myself 'lesbian' mostly and gone to 'female homosexual' since 'lesbian' is now regarded as a nasty transphobic thing to say (unless you are biologically male, then it's applauded)

Really! Bollocks to that! Utterly ridiculous. Even more reason I'll keep using lesbian then!

Isn't that really rude/insulting? I'm no expert though as I'm not a lesbian/gay.

Or ‘oi dy*e’ maybe?

As 'queer' has been rebranded from insult to badge of honour to some and others feel the word lesbian is being erased could 'lezza' not be rebranded too as a more upbeat, version of lesbian so the word and femaleness of it is still used?

I really hope this doesn't offend anyone, that's definitely not my intention.

Whoever thunk we’d see a day when gay has been rebadged as ‘boring straight kiddos’

I'm a step further on in that I've stopped calling myself 'lesbian' mostly and gone to 'female homosexual' since 'lesbian' is now regarded as a nasty transphobic thing to say (unless you are biologically male, then it's applauded) and naice female homosexuals call themselves 'queer' which has no overtones of 'I have sexual boundaries and won't sleep with anyone male regardless of their identity'.

It's very sad. More and more people are being forced out of their words, categories, groups and legal protections by this fantastically self centred movement. Who scream 'be kind' and aren't.

I'm in my 50s. All through my 20s and 30s I would use 'gay' to describe myself, I didn't like using the word 'lesbian'... I don't know why - possibly internalised homophobia.
For the last however many I will ONLY use 'lesbian' as I feel I am now in a dying breed! And a group whose rights are being eroded before my eyes.

Fond memories of university LGB society marches shouting "we're here, we're queer, we will not disappear."

I remember being very confused in the last year at uni when it became the LGBT society. I never felt like the T issues had anything in common with the LGB issues. Now I feel like they are almost in opposition to one another.

Because, a few decades ago, people (mostly gay men IIRC) started very emphatically trying to take the sting out of it with chants like 'we're here, we're queer'. It's been mentioned on the thread already - surprised it's not common knowledge.

I keep wondering why this word has ceased to become an insult!! Not too many years ago if you called someone the "Q" word you could find yourself in trouble.
I have several gay male friends and all of them.have said they hate the word (perhaps it has been used to abuse and insult them in the past?)

Interesting discussion, thank you - which I’ll join in properly when I’m off my crappy little phone.

I agree in most instances the use of ‘queer’ could be replaced with ‘alternative’. I was at university in the 1980s and comedy, music, theatre, dance, our dress and presentation, clubs and pubs, were all ‘alternative’.

Even our politics was ‘alternative’ in the sense of, say, Greenham being female only (unusual) - of course that would never be allowed now; it would be ‘queered’. Which makes me sad.

Very irritating. Also irritating that gender and sexuality is bundled into one. Gay + Trans is not an automatic association..... one is sexuality, one is gender....

This is irrelevant but when I were a lass in the 80s, the word queer was used as a sneer, a nasty name.

Same growing up in the 90s and still used as abuse now, to a lesser degree.

I think it's bonkers that a newspaper uses a term of abuse to describe gay people, no matter that some want to reclaim it.

trying to informa myself more about Emily Bridges, I came across this magazine, Diva, “for LGBTQI women and non-binary people”. Such a range of target audience adds to the confusion (for me) as to what all these initials mean.

Well I don’t understand why we would use the word Queer to encompass all LGBTQ+.
it’s such a disparate group with different needs and attitude.

For me, it’s a bit like saying that when one talks about men they mean men and women together. It’s assuming that men and women are the same and have similar needs and issues, which is clearly not the case.
Why doing the same thing with LGBTQ+ Unless of course, one group has decided to be the ‘dominant group’, the reference by which all the other members should be evaluated.

Whew! I was a bit blindsided there.

Same hear. It makes me wince every time I hear someone use the word.

That was a general 'you' Sarah, not you personally.

I was agreeing with you that words are a choice, and cannot be enforced. I think the enforced use of 'cis' often evident on this board is very similar to to pushing of 'queer'.

But I'm not ordering and insisting anything? I don't know where you get this from.

Like I say, I personally don't use queer; I'm a lesbian, it's fine. But I understand why some people do use it, and to me their reasons seem perfectly sensible.

And rather like 'woman' we now have a very large chunk of the population wandering around going - we had a class definition which was the means by which we organised and had legal rights - they've taken this and made it mean something else to serve their rather selfish personal interests....

wtf are we called now?

This is to me rather like a white modern population deciding to appropriate a racial slur word and embrace it as look at us overcoming oppression.

And it baffles me that I can't name any of those words, because all hell would break loose in how offensive it would be and how unacceptable - rather like now saying 'adult human female' is - but you can call female and homosexual people whatever names and take what you want from them, that's fine.

See how successfully homophobia and misogyny has been normalised and made fun to do?

These people are so stupid . Once you dismantle the protections for any group like this, you have nothing left at all but the hope that you and your mates and loved ones stay in the currently fashionable group. And fashions change. They change constantly. If you can do it to someone else then sooner or later they will do it to you, and it will be too late then to wail about the protections and social beliefs that used to protect you - you were the one that queered and dismantled them.