Queerness

[Colinfromaccounts]

Is anyone else bothered by this becoming a catch-all term?

I’ve had relationships with both men and women, but never felt the need to define myself that way, I feel my sexual and romantic life is fairly private. I suppose in a way I feel both straight and gay rather than one or the other so never wanted to claim the term bisexual either as I then felt hemmed in by the LGBTQ+ label, when for all functional purposes I move through the world as a straight woman.

I’m not anti gay culture, loved a gay bar in my youth and still love gay books and films etc.

I just feel queer has come to define everything, either you’re in the gay and trans soup or you’re not, and it’s quite flattening to the multiplicity of the human experience. I have basically nothing in common with a man who has only been in sexual and romantic relationships with men.

It seems to me that the queer world itself wants to ungender everything. But try asking a gay man on Grindr to fuck a “man” with a vagina and see how far you get.

can anyone relate?

You can obviously have your opinion. But if you feel that you don’t want to label yourself it doesn’t mean other people don’t. I think the word queer has so many different meaning these days. The word queer for me growing up meant a gay man, then after that more woman started using the term. So for me it simply meant gay.

It’s become a political term. So people labelling themselves queer share a blanket identity with others under that umbrella, eg gay men and women are both queer, trans woman is queer. But it just seems to me to flatten out the diversity of human experience when I think we should be interrogating what it even means to be gay in the first place.

You said you don’t like to label yourself but what are you?

I’m just a person. A woman.

I suppose I wonder if, having celebrated in recent years that it’s ok to be gay, we may be entrenching a binary between being gay and straight that is actually quite artificial, and that the rise of queer as a label is highlighting this

I meant your sexuality.

i think lots of younger people appreciate the term "queer" because its less limiting? it also tends to give more "space" for people to figure it all out?

But this is exactly my point. Why does it matter.

I think this question is particularly pertinent on this board as it flattens the trans thing into traditional gay identity, as if they are the same.

Exactly. Rather pointless thread about a discussion around people who want to be called queer yet you don’t call yourself anything. Go to sleep.

Queer these days means 'straight but special, not like you boring non queer straights' doesn't it?

considering the amount of chat on this site about giving people space and time to decide labels, and also allowing rejection of sexist tropes...... isnt it good that there is a word for young (or ANY) people to use while they figure stuff out?

We were so, so close to people just not labelling themselves at all. Now, if you have one label everything else associated with that label has to follow or people are outcasts. It is very regressive.

Ugly word. Nails on chalkboard stuff. To watch its sudden rise and adoption, bandied about by homophobic straights...

Makes you shudder.

ok, i think we disagree about the usefulness of umbrella terms.
But thats ok, thats the whole point of conversation right? :)

i dont understand why you think there is a value judgment on it though?
" Queer these days means 'straight but special, not like you boring non queer straights' doesn't it?" - im not convinced people use it like this?

Queer feels more akin to a lifestyle choice like being goth or emo or punk. It’s a way to recognise your ‘otherness’. Gay, by contrast, feels permanent and an innate aspect of your being.

I don’t even think of queer as having anything to do with same sex attraction and the word is used very differently to what it meant when it was intended as a slur.

Yes. Many middle aged married straight couple call themselves queer. Because the umbrella terms of middle aged married and straight aren't all that exciting.

Agreed. I'm a lesbian and the idea the idea of using the word for myself is laughable under its new meaning. I'm just a normal person.

To me it's also not useful as an umbrella term. I do have commonality with gay men, particithe experience in childhood of realising who you are. I also have commonality with straight men attraction to women also supporting my wife through pregnancy and my role in my babies life. By far I have the greatest commonality with all women, I don't feel in any way 'other'. But when you get to queer, it's such a meaningless word I could share it both with other normal boring lesbians, as well as the multi-gender, greysexual, polyamourous pansexual down the road.

"I think we should be interrogating what it even means to be gay in the first place."

What do you mean by this? I'm confused on what definition it has outside of attraction.

I don’t feel straight or gay. I feel both and neither. I feel “gay” has become a defining political identity and people like to put you in a box, partially as an exercise in black-and-white thinking (anyone who has ever had a same sex relationship is now this thing called ‘gay’ and their entire identity must spin out from there, and it will be one of the first things people think about when they think of you) and partially as a result of ongoing internalised homophobia in society (YOU’RE this thing called “gay”, not me!)

I don't really agree with this honestly. Being gay is just a fact about yourself, like having brown hair or being short. It's not a "feeling", it's sexuality.

To me it goes no deeper than solely being attracted to X if you are X. You aren't gay if you're attracted to X and Y.

From my memory of what the "Q" stands for, wasn't it originally "Questioning", which would suit her description of themselves.

Its also a much nicer term with a less controversial history than queer.

As you describe it, I wonder if the issue is more identity politics than the label of gay. It seems to me that a lot of people who claim the LGBT label make it their entire identity. They will wear badges about it, its the first thing they tell anyone, their birthday cake will be of a rainbow etc. etc. Not that there is anything wrong with these things but it seems to become their entire personality.

I mean, I'm from Yorkshire but I don't wear badges about it, introduce myself as a Northern Lass or make birthday cakes in the shape of flat caps. Obviously I'm being OTT here but it sounds to me like youre saying that who you're attracted to - men or women - is just one small facet of who you are and it doesn't define your entire being. And so when taking on the label or gay or queer seems to have become so all-encompassing youre understandavly rejecting that label?

Queer just means spicy straight, doesn't it?

People like Laurie Penny, who is a privileged white heterosexual woman but thinks this is deeply uncool and wants to be part of the alphabet gang.

Everything to the right of the L, G and B just means straight people.

I'm a lesbian. I've never identified as queer and hate the term.