To resist using the word "queer"

[Piapiano]

I am old enough to remember (not even that long ago) when calling someone queer was a massive insult. So I'm really uncomfortable using the word now even though some sections of LGBT+ seem to have reclaimed it. I would feel the same using the "n" word that some sections of black communities (especially in the US) have reclaimed.

I mentioned this to a friend the other day and she seems to think I was being really unreasonable in not accepting it as a perfectly valid word to describe someone's sexuality/sexual preferences (actually not sure what it even is referring to) and that I was somehow bigoted for not feeling comfortable using it.

AIBU?

I don't understand your first paragraph?

I’m L/B and wouldn’t use it - I come into contact with a fair number of older very posh people through work, and you still hear it used as a slur in casual conversation in those social circles. My students however all love it and it’s widespread in youth social media.

I don’t like the “reclaiming” thing because gay people have spent decades getting to the point where their sexuality is not seen as abnormal, strange, out of the ordinary or odd. Young people using it often want to signal how they are out of the norm and “queer” sexuality is seen as anything non-normative (including kink and so on). Well, that has always undoubtedly been present in some gay communities (largely gay male communities), but at the same time lots of gay people just wanted equal pension and employment rights and to be left alone to book hotel rooms and get mortgages and have kids without it being assumed they were “kinky” or “bent” just because they had fallen in love with someone of the same sex. The right to be considered normal and boring, in fact!

Queer for me is a backward step precisely because of that - but lots of young people see it as precisely their way of asserting their difference from the boring old normies. I presume it will become a lot less attractive as a term when that generation get to the point when they want all the boring stuff too.

I wouldn't use it - still sounds insulting to me and seems to have been adopted by a fair number of straight people who want to make themselves sound edgy

My Nan used the word queer all the time purely to describe something odd.

My husband occasionally uses it in that way too.

As in “I feel a bit queer.”

I thought it meant weird and nothing else when I was a kid.

I don’t use it at all. Certainly I would never call someone “queer”.

@foxgoosefinch

I’m L/B and wouldn’t use it - I come into contact with a fair number of older very posh people through work, and you still hear it used as a slur in casual conversation in those social circles. My students however all love it and it’s widespread in youth social media.

I don’t like the “reclaiming” thing because gay people have spent decades getting to the point where their sexuality is not seen as abnormal, strange, out of the ordinary or odd. Young people using it often want to signal how they are out of the norm and “queer” sexuality is seen as anything non-normative (including kink and so on). Well, that has always undoubtedly been present in some gay communities (largely gay male communities), but at the same time lots of gay people just wanted equal pension and employment rights and to be left alone to book hotel rooms and get mortgages and have kids without it being assumed they were “kinky” or “bent” just because they had fallen in love with someone of the same sex. The right to be considered normal and boring, in fact!

Queer for me is a backward step precisely because of that - but lots of young people see it as precisely their way of asserting their difference from the boring old normies. I presume it will become a lot less attractive as a term when that generation get to the point when they want all the boring stuff too.

Insightful post - thanks, and I agree re your last point.

I have a fair few gay and lesbian friends who refer to themselves as queer, so I would have no issue using it around them. As a bi woman I wouldn't necessarily use it myself, mostly because I am now married to an (also bi) man - I would have been less bothered/felt more 'deserving' when I was in relationships with women (which is some internalised biphobia probably! But I don't want to be seen as co-opting something when to the casual observer I am in a hetero relationship).

I'd be VERY wary of using it to refer to anyone who hadn't explicitly defined themselves that way to me.

I'm a lesbian in my mid thirties. It's not my chosen way of describing myself, and I'm cautious in using it for two reasons -

1. Lots of (LGBT) people still find it offensive, with good reason
2. It has IMO a shifting meaning so often doesn't aid clarity.

I recognise what people are saying here about it seeming to be a handy identity for people who appear to be straight and not trans but who want the cool points. Having run the gamut of homophobia and lesbophobia for many years now, the idea that there are cool points makes me roll my eyes hard. I also suspect that for many/most teenage girls, lesbian is still a difficult label to assume and present with.

A bit earlier than this, I experienced it as a reclaimed word which strongly connoted a certain set of gay politics - queer theory stuff, before queer theory became so widely discussed in the mainstream, and also lots of gay liberation type stuff which emphasised the shared struggle and overlaps of L/G/B/T people.

I know people who have lived for decades on the boundaries of lesbian/gay/bi/trans, for whom I think it can be a helpful way to capture that. I do think this is different from the wistful straight people who want to perform their queerness whilst also benefiting from societal approval bestowed on their observably-straight relationships. Eg people who are female-bodied, sometimes passing as male but not strongly or consistently identifying as trans men, who have relationships predominantly with other women - it's not on me to tell them they need to call themselves a lesbian, although obviously they qualify for this label (maybe this is where I'm differentiating them from the 'cool points' people).

Finally, it's helpfully more amenable to verbing than lesbian is (or even bi, gay, homosexual etc). So it's easy to talk about queering an aesthetic or a dynamic or whatever, and I'd theoretically use it in that context. I could rework the whole sentence to use some version of the word 'lesbian' instead, but queering is a very usable and well recognised term which works for me.

I think it's a fraught term, and would not recommend straight people adopt it as an inclusive term when they (occasionally) need to discuss LGBT people as a group. But I also know from experience it's very avoidable.

As a lesbian I hate it. I'll probably get flamed for this but to me it's generally used by people who do belong/want to belong to the LGBT community for anything/everything except being a bog standard gay man or lesbian.

I'm mid 50s, and it just makes me think of 'queer-bashing,' thugs shouting 'Oi, poofter', and horrible 70s sitcoms where being gay was mocked and derided.

Interesting thread.

There’s a scene in Sex Education on Netflix when the non binary character and the “straight” sportsman boy type are kissing and they turn to him and say “You do realise if we continue with this you’d be in a queer relationship?” And Dh and I both looked at each other a bit because for us oldies it was always a gay insult. But young people don’t use it like that anymore at all. It seems to be a way of describing anyone who isn’t heterosexual (as far as I understand it)!

I'm mid 30s and although not gay myself, I have lots of gay and lesbian friends and I am very much involved in the lgbtq+ community as an ally.

Queer has been a way they have described themselves since early teens and still do. We had queer as folk on repeat, used to go to a club night called queer. It's been a reclaimed word locally (manchester) for 20+ year.

If people want to refer to themselves as queer, why would you not support it? And like others have said, how often would you use the phrase when talking about people, if they haven't confirmed it as a comfortable umbrella term previously?

I'm finding these responses really interesting, thank you to those who have explained your thoughts. I'm glad I'm not the only one to have reservations about the term and haven't turned into too much of a dinosaur 🦖

I wonder if it is adopted in the mainstream of the younger generation it will eventually lose its negative connotations. Or if, conversely, there will be a backlash against what could be seen as a heterosexual appropriation of the word.

I don't feel comfortable using the word queer as to me it still feels like an insult. In the same as someone asked me to call them the "n" word I wouldn't feel comfortable doing so.

I don't use the phrase when talking about people. I don't use it at all.

This is quite a powerful link-

My understanding is that gay and queer are not exactly the same thing. I don’t want to label anyone anything at all. I just want to see fellow humans.

Gay is homosexual. Queer is basically straight with a stupid hairdo.

So he is saying that queer is another word for LGBTQ+ and he personally likes the word but acknowledges that other don't like the word queer because of its history.

So can queer sometimes mean heterosexual but not conforming to gender stereotypes then? Eg wearing alternative clothes and hairstyles?

Many bi/pan women who have ended up with a male partner or vice versa also use queer because of the connotations associated with saying they're bi/pan.

I'm 40 and don't feel comfortable using it either. I also know that people my age who don't like it.

However, younger people do use it to describe themselves (including ones who appear to be straight?!) and if they want to use it that's fine. Language evolves. I would feel very odd saying it though.

*know gay people my age who don't like it

@Piapiano

I don't feel comfortable using the word queer as to me it still feels like an insult. In the same as someone asked me to call them the "n" word I wouldn't feel comfortable doing so.

I don't use the phrase when talking about people. I don't use it at all.

I think this could come across as insulting to some people who do describe themselves as queer. I don't know what kind of publishing you work in, but if you e.g. refused to describe someone as 'queer' in an article (when it was relevant) or to write about an academic who works on 'queer theory', I expect they'd be quite put out.

I know straight women who got called lesbians as an insult at school (because they had short hair etc), but I wouldn't be happy if someone refused to call me a lesbian for that reason.

I know straight women who got called lesbians as an insult at school (because they had short hair etc), but I wouldn't be happy if someone refused to call me a lesbian for that reason.

We’re not talking about school insults though, re “queer”. This was a long-standing historical term of abuse for gay men, and, as a pp said, often accompanied by violence.

I’m in my early forties and vividly remember often hearing it said - eg. in my twenties walking through Soho with male friends and hearing aggressive men shouting “queers” at us. I know a fair number of gay men of my age who got “queer-bashed” - as the charming term used to be for beating up gender non-confirming men (once, aged about 22, a gay male friend was beaten up outside the local police station by “queer-bashers” in broad daylight, and no-one came to his aid.)

That must have been around 2002. Not so long ago that gay people my age don’t immediately associate the term with genuine violence - not just playground insults.

Fine for young people without that experience to believe they are reclaiming a positive self-identity by using it; that’s their prerogative - but no, it isn’t disrespectful to avoid it as a term either. It is not a term that’s largely welcomed by anyone over 35 and for very good reasons.

Would you be happy to call someone an "n" word if that's how they like to refer to themselves?