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?

MN has automatic filtering of some offensive words

Does it? I know some words which will trigger a deletion if not used carefully, but that is reliant on readers reporting. Do you mean there's an automated system to remove certain words or does the post get the pending message or something else?

@Alekto

MN has automatic filtering of some offensive words

Does it? I know some words which will trigger a deletion if not used carefully, but that is reliant on readers reporting. Do you mean there's an automated system to remove certain words or does the post get the pending message or something else?

Posts containing the words are hidden automatically until a member of MNHQ checks them. When it was first introduced you couldn't use the word "snigger" which they fixed! It's used to filter some spam too I think.

I'm gay and use it. To me it just means gay, which I am and it also means a bit odd, and people have always described me as such. It fits. And I don't find it insulting.
It does not belong to straight people however.

But that’s the issue. In current day parlance, it’s seemingly straight people appropriating it, because they don’t want to identify as boring old, vanilla ‘straight’.

I'm happy to be described as a lesbian, as gay or as same sex-attracted. I don't want to be described as 'queer' as I associate it with the erosion of my homosexuality.

Basically this. I'm in my late 20s and, by the time I was in 6th Form, "queer" was being used over gay and lesbian. There was an LGBT society in 6th form which I didn't elect to join but there was a massive overlap in members with another club I was part of so I got to know the people in it fairly well. They largely referred to themselves as queer, "gay" was generally used in a jokey context and "lesbian" was pretty much not mentioned at all. They exemplified the "blue haired heterosexuals wanting to be quirky" which other posters have mentioned. I had no qualms about telling family and friends about being a lesbian, or introducing them to a girlfriend if I ever got one, but I realised then that I was very much out of step with the people who I was supposed to be part of a "community" with. I'm still loosely in touch with most of them as friends of friends and, to my knowledge, only two out of 16 have ever been in a same sex relationship. There's a variety of non-binary, genderqueer, pansexual (but only ever dating the opposite sex), demi-girl, and trans but homosexuality seems to have largely fallen out of fashion. Lesbian groups or dating sites which don't refer to themselves as being for "queer women" or fall over themselves to say that they include trans and non binary lesbians within their bracket are increasingly few and far between. (I thought that "non binary lesbians" would be female but, as it turns out, nope.)

I don't call myself queer partly due to the historical association with it as a slur but mostly because I've found I've nothing in common with people my age who use the term. (I'm aware that, in other age brackets, queer seems to be used more to actually mean gay or lesbian rather than someone who fancies themselves as "a bit different".)

Didn’t Lily Cole and that one from The Good Place announce that they were Q? Both either married or in long term straight relationships and not known to have had same sex partners?

I can't use it. I'm 31 and it was a "playground insult"

I can remember (enter boys name) shouting it across the yard age 13 "YOU FUCKING Q, ILL KNOCK YOU OUT NOW" toward one of the other boys.

Then there was "what's your problem, you a q?!"

So it's a no from me. I just use gay/lesbian but to be honest I don't even have to refer to anyone's sexuality generally. I don't care 🤷🏻‍♀️

@LoveGrooveDanceParty

I'm gay and use it. To me it just means gay, which I am and it also means a bit odd, and people have always described me as such. It fits. And I don't find it insulting. It does not belong to straight people however.

But that’s the issue. In current day parlance, it’s seemingly straight people appropriating it, because they don’t want to identify as boring old, vanilla ‘straight’.

People (mainly straight people) seem to be claiming this, yet I’m set to see a single person who isn’t LGBTQ+ calling themselves queer.

@Alekto

MN has automatic filtering of some offensive words

Does it? I know some words which will trigger a deletion if not used carefully, but that is reliant on readers reporting. Do you mean there's an automated system to remove certain words or does the post get the pending message or something else?

I don’t know what all the words are but certainly when I once tried to use the adjective for the noun ‘spasm’ in a discussion of words which are taboo in BrE but common in AmE it was deleted automatically at the point of posting.

It's all gone over your head a bit hasn't it. It's always been a word used by straight people you idiot! Never a word used by any LGB person. The fact you have made up a new definition of the word in your own minds makes not a bit of difference. It is a word that belongs to straight people.

@LoveGrooveDanceParty

I'm gay and use it. To me it just means gay, which I am and it also means a bit odd, and people have always described me as such. It fits. And I don't find it insulting. It does not belong to straight people however.

But that’s the issue. In current day parlance, it’s seemingly straight people appropriating it, because they don’t want to identify as boring old, vanilla ‘straight’.

Yes, I understand that.