"Queer" - quick question

[CallMeCleo]

Sorry if I seem naive but I am in my 60s and clearly am not too hot on ever changing meanings.

I belong to a neighbourhood social media site and a young woman (19) has joined and posted in the women's section asking to make new friends. She describes herself as "Vegan, queer, artistic."

I don't understand what she means by queer. If she is a lesbian, why not put "lesbian"?

Am I missing something? Can someone bring me up to date, please?

Why on earth is there so much vitriol towards how someone else identifies their sexuality?

I think that’s the point. There isn't so much vitriol about anyone’s sexuality anymore. We’re all just sick of the clamour to be special and interesting and the need to announce it. Back in my youth it was piercings and tattoos. Now it’s proclamations of varied sexual orientations, pronouns and poor mental health. Sod that my grandmother’s generation were dodging bombs on the ground, there’s literally violence in words now. I just can’t roll my eyes hard enough.

The OP says it’s a neighbourhood social media site. Where people normally moan about dog shit and selfish parking. You’re average Joe just joins these sites and cracks on with the moan fest. No one needs to know whether your straight, gay, bi, pan sexual, kink or queer. There are times where I’m sure that’s entirely appropriate. A neighbourhood Facebook page wouldn’t be one of them.

"Queer culture" is a bit more inclusive than "lesbian culture", for example, since it includes a lot of different people with a lot of different preferences. You mean it isn't a lesbian culture. It's bi, pan or whatever?

If it has been appropriayted by the young to mean something different then they will just have to put up with the older generation looking askance as we have history with the word. And as we all know history matters (see statues etc). You cannot simply erase that!

Jesus Eresh where did you find that?

I doubt anyone aged 19 would describe themselves as a lesbian these days as it just leads to a barrage of further questions or negative assumptions from both TRAs and GC people.

Queer is deliberately vague, non controversial and I can see why the youngsters use it.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/12/young-queer-women-dont-like-lesbian-as-a-name-heres-why.html

This is a doozy of an article.

I was agog reading that! From its 'lesbian issue' as well?

"Maybe, instead of depending so hard on labels to give us identity and meaning, queer-not-cis-men should..."

Sorry but queer also includes some fairly extreme fetish stuff.

@Babymamamama

Sorry but queer also includes some fairly extreme fetish stuff.

Says who? Surely that would be kink?

Kink is part of the alphabet soup definition, included under the "+" or as it's own "k".

I hate the word. It’s a word I would say (like a racial or misogynistic slur word). I grew up when it was followed by ‘-bashing’ and was only used as an insult.

People using it today are often (in my observation) young (or wannabe youth), straight and flipping annoying pains in the bahookies.

I know lots of lesbians, old and young who prefer 'queer' to lesbian or gay. It's a word that many in the LGBTQ+ community feel has been, or still needs to be, reclaimed from the bigots.
I occasional use it, though my preference is for just 'gay', I've never particularly liked lesbian.
If you're genuinely interested in why she used that word, you could always ask her.

If I called my sister or her girlfriend this (or our niece or her wife, or our cousin or his husband) they’d punch me.

I still remember them getting dogs’ abuse and having it hissed at them (curiously enough once in an almost deserted lesbian bar by a gaggle of straight young women - I guess they didn’t know where they were).

@SapphosRock

I doubt anyone aged 19 would describe themselves as a lesbian these days as it just leads to a barrage of further questions or negative assumptions from both TRAs and GC people.

Queer is deliberately vague, non controversial and I can see why the youngsters use it.

Plus of course if you declare yourself a lesbian you might end up having to grapple with a lady-penis so as not to offend. Queer might dictate you’ll only sleep with aliens from the planet Crypton and hopefully that will rule out all the people you don’t want to touch with a barge pole.

Straight but likes to think they are a bit different, often has blue hair

@justanotherneighinparadise

Why on earth is there so much vitriol towards how someone else identifies their sexuality?

I think that’s the point. There isn't so much vitriol about anyone’s sexuality anymore. We’re all just sick of the clamour to be special and interesting and the need to announce it. Back in my youth it was piercings and tattoos. Now it’s proclamations of varied sexual orientations, pronouns and poor mental health. Sod that my grandmother’s generation were dodging bombs on the ground, there’s literally violence in words now. I just can’t roll my eyes hard enough.

The OP says it’s a neighbourhood social media site. Where people normally moan about dog shit and selfish parking. You’re average Joe just joins these sites and cracks on with the moan fest. No one needs to know whether your straight, gay, bi, pan sexual, kink or queer. There are times where I’m sure that’s entirely appropriate. A neighbourhood Facebook page wouldn’t be one of them.

Self-describing as queer isn't a clamour to be special and interesting though - it's a valid identity, and for you to suggest otherwise when you don't know anything else about this person seems pretty vitriolic to me.

Presumably she put it in her description to draw like-minded people her way, with the added bonus of keeping other types (like plenty on this thread) at bay. Nowt wrong with that!

Funny how when I was little my grans friends (Agnes, Mary and Vera) were knowns as the ‘blue rinse biddies’

It's supposedly more 'inclusive', by which I mean 'queer' also includes people like demisexuals (straight people who like to get to know someone before shagging them) and they can therefore identify as oh so speshul and totally not boring at all.

I find it profoundly offensive - I'm bi and it was a word of horrific abuse when I was in my early twenties. It was the word my attackers used when they beat me up for daring to hold my girlfriend's hand , and it is not a word I would ever ever reclaim.

Self-describing as queer isn't a clamour to be special and interesting though - it's a valid identity, and for you to suggest otherwise when you don't know anything else about this person seems pretty vitriolic to me.

🙄

But what exactly does it mean - and why should I care?

@BlackForestCake

It means she's straight, but has short hair and wears those thick glasses like Vic Reeves used to have

omg how did you know? That is exactly what she looks like in her profile pic.

@Errolthedragon

"her queerness probably doesn't extend to wanting a sexual dalliance with someone the OP's age so maybe it's best considered an irrelevance for this social context"

I'm straight. My interest in asking this is partly curiosity about what the term now means, but mostly so that I don't offend her by putting my foot in it IF I was ever to meet her in person. It's a small town and I meet a LOT of people through my business.

@ErrolTheDragon

As a fellow 60yo ... It seems to me to be rather a nebulous term which might mean different things to different people. Maybe you should ask her what she means by it? Something like 'I hope you don't mind me asking but there may be a generational difference in what exactly 'queer' means and I don't want to accidentally put my foot in it - in my day it was essentially just g/l/b but I don't know whether it has any other nuance nowadays.

Otoh maybe best to ignore it and ask about her art and vegan recipes.

I'm going to copy and paste that into a response to her thread. Thanks!

Queer is a reclaimed word in the LGBT community. It's a kinda funky cool term loads of LGBT+ use rather than the full alphabet or parts thereof! Shows she is probably quite a nice and out there individual. Enjoy being their neighbour!

Did the entire LGBT community get asked?

Because plenty of homosexual men don't like it at all.

@MishyJDI

Queer is a reclaimed word in the LGBT community. It's a kinda funky cool term loads of LGBT+ use rather than the full alphabet or parts thereof! Shows she is probably quite a nice and out there individual. Enjoy being their neighbour!

Alternatively, its a term of homophobic abuse now being used by straight people who identify as 'LGBT', by virtue of being 'ace' or 'aro' or 'demi' and is horrifically offensive...

It identifies someone who has only a superficial understanding of why it is so offensive and who shows a distinct lack of knowledge about the history of the word.

There was a post on Twitter recently where someone was trying to make a good point, basically trying to say that the gay men who died in the 80s of AIDS / HIV were not some kind of martyrs who were responsible for Pride, but were the victims of a homophobic medical and social system that completely ignored what was happening to their community. It was phrased as "The queers who died of AIDS / HIV...." I thought that showed real disrespect to a community that would have hated that terminology.

@sailmeaway

I know lots of lesbians, old and young who prefer 'queer' to lesbian or gay. It's a word that many in the LGBTQ+ community feel has been, or still needs to be, reclaimed from the bigots. I occasional use it, though my preference is for just 'gay', I've never particularly liked lesbian. If you're genuinely interested in why she used that word, you could always ask her.

This, entirely. I've always used gay but that's not always accurate. My girlfriend is bi so I would describe us as queer not lesbian/gay. We're comfy with that- why is it anyone else's business?

But you should also feel sorry for her. This is the world she has grown up in.

lovely thoughtful post @stumbledin putting ourselves in other peoples shoes