The erasure of LGB: just Q and T in the future?

[Shedbuilder]

I've noticed an increasing number of young academics 'queering' lesbians and gay men. The most glaring example I can lay my hands on was on Radio 4 recently, when an interesting Front Row feature on the Scottish artist Joan Eardley was dominated by a young female academic who mentioned Earley's female 'life partner' without using the word lesbian and then went on to tell us, and her fellow expert, that we should look at her through a 'queer lens'.

I've no idea what a 'queer lens' is. Does it just mean acknowledging that being an out lesbian in the 40s and 50s was a brave and unusual thing and influenced her art? If so, why not talk about her as a lesbian?
By making queer and not lesbian her female response to children and landscape (she painted mainly children and landscapes). This is a real suppression of male and female homosexual experience.

I've since heard other academics queering other LGB people on Radio 4 without correction. As I'm usually driving when it's on I'm not always aware of what programme it is or able to locate it, but here's the Front Row with Eardley:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000y7tr

I think the Eardley discussion starts at around 20 minutes in. The Scottish voices are a clue.

@RainbowPellet

People, both cis and trans, will continue to identify as gay, bi, and lesbian. And they will all be considered to fall under the queer umbrella.

What we will try to move past is the notion that sexuality must be strictly based on the "observed sex" at birth.

Did you mean to be so offensive? Especially when a number of posters have expressed how they feel about the term queer?

You're welcome to believe and label yourself any way you like. Just please don't force your beliefs, labels and boxes on others who do not agree and do not want to get in them and we shall all be fine.

What we will try to move past is the notion that sexuality must be strictly based on the "observed sex" at birth.

Is this the royal "We"?

Anyone getting a sense of deja vu?

And there we go from the presumably "be kind" advocate.

Personally, I don't use offensive slurs, no matter what someone has done. I wonder what other slurs come to your lips when someone from a marginalised community refuses to submit.

@RainbowPellet

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

Which trans people?

I've read articles and posts here and elsewhere by trans people who find all this as offensive as some women do. You're representing a political position, not a group.

Have we been deleted?

Good grief that was quick.

I reported them.

I am not doing the hokey cokey with anti-gay bullshit again.

twitter.com/SeahorseLt/status/1424169188302671881

The people on that thread suggesting the male does the housework are probably being overly generous to the “queer” couple.

Am I too cynical? I interpret the word as meaning “we practice kink to compensate for him being bad in bed.” I don’t think queer believers have any investment in overturning gender roles in a way that’s valuable to women.

Goodness, I do some work and in a flash posts have been deleted. I'm guessing I said something totally disagreeable.

I’ve heard gay and lesbian issues or culture being discussed as “queer” or that phase “through a queer lens” in the media more than once in the last few months. The first time it happened I thought it was just the particular person being interviewed, but it’s becoming pervasive.

Thanks for this thread OP. It has articulated better than I ever could certain musings I have had about what is fuelling all this ridiculousness.

I definitely agree that there is a cohort of young straight white people desperate to be somehow different or edgy or alternative. In my teenage days it was emo or punk, but now it seems to be gender bullshit taking over rationality.

The foundations of this have been laid for several years, every celebrity has a sob story about how hard their life is, mental health issues, when their cat died etc. We are then supposed to ignore the hugely privileged lives they lead and feel sorry for them.
Young white people have been told for quite some time that we were the bad guys of history, the oppressors, the big bad monsters. You can understand in a way why they would want to distance themselves from that.

I do wonder whether when most of them grow out of this in 10 years whether they will look back and cringe at the nonsense they have peddled. Or realise the damage they are perpetuating.

And yes to there always seeming to be a small number of people with their own personal agenda, ready to latch onto something and make a career out of it. Activism is now an identity for them, but really they are in it for their own reasons; sense of control, power, telling others what to do, take your pick!

I used to work in a charity, and there were several people like this, who would go on like they were in the thick of it, on the front line fighting a war or something (in reality they sat at a desk in a nice air conditioned office and sent some emails). You could tell they got a real ego boost from it all, and thought themselves so different from the other 'corporate stooges'. In reality we were all corporate stooges, we just happened to work for a charity, same shit. They were there for the paycheck just like I was. it was wearing.

It's just sad that formerly respectable institutions are playing along with this crap.

Looking at the Glasgow Museums link earlier on the thread, I decided to start a Pinterest board of Joan Eardley paintings, and what should pop up on Pinterest than an invitation to add pronouns "so others know how to refer to me".... :/
I was angry the other morning when Lauren Laverne, introducing Desert Island Discs guest lawyer Nazir Afzal, said he was well-known for fighting gender-based violence.......
It sometimes feels as if everyone but me is converted to the new religion (until I find refuge here :) )

@irresistibleoverwhelm Exactly this. “Queer” just relocates and creates a new binary somewhere else - but by doing so, it privileges those who have the (usually class and financial) luxury of thinking about themselves as “anti-normal/non-normies” when it suits them (but often not when it doesn’t).

This is interesting. I recently had a Discord discussion with some women who identify as queer about why they identify with that word. They agreed they do so because they like how uncomfortable the word makes straight people. It felt kind of childish, tbh. If the word makes straight people uncomfortable, they are uncomfortable that slurs and repression were and are a thing, not because you aren't straight. If they are uncomfortable with the word queer, it's because they really don't want to inadvertently abuse someone. So I don't know why any LGB person would actually want to make someone who is trying to not be hurtful, uncomfortable.

The thing that really got me about it though, was that these women were bisexual women married to men. In marriages they say are fulfilling, happy and monogamous. So while these women are not straight, they are now living lives that are straight presenting. I don't want to erase their bisexuality and attraction to women. Those are real things and it's good to acknowledge that not everyone is a heterosexual relationship is heterosexual. But I do think that if you are a bisexual person in a monogamous longterm relationship with someone of the opposite sex, it's fair to say that your day to day life isn't exactly 'queer' anymore. Some of them only realised they were bisexual after they married and have never had any some-sex relationships or even casual hook-ups. So they haven't even had any experience of how wider society treats them for being in a same-sex relationship. Again, this isn't to invalidate their bisexuality, but their lived experience is one where they were only ever 'out' within a heterosexual relationship. So it's not the same as someone who is in a same-sex relationship or only same-sex attracted.

It kind of came across to me as a high-stakes move for some people who's personal stakes are low. Backlash against LGB people isn't really going to hurt them. We're never going to be entering a Gilead style society where they are penalised retroactively for their past same-sex relationships. If LGB people become less safe and lose their current protections and rights, it won't affect them in any real way.

@ArtemesiaK

Looking at the Glasgow Museums link earlier on the thread, I decided to start a Pinterest board of Joan Eardley paintings, and what should pop up on Pinterest than an invitation to add pronouns "so others know how to refer to me".... :/ I was angry the other morning when Lauren Laverne, introducing Desert Island Discs guest lawyer Nazir Afzal, said he was well-known for fighting gender-based violence....... It sometimes feels as if everyone but me is converted to the new religion (until I find refuge here :) )

No idea of what the neighbours think but they will have heard occasional screams of 'Sex, you bastard' emanating from our house when someone on the TV or radio uses the G-word.

I'm really puzzled by the embracing of the word 'Queer'. It just seems another kind of attempt at 'othering'. But It's so elastic now it covers everyone. What exactly defines someone as not being 'queer'?
It could be seen as a signifier of non conformist independence except calling yourself 'queer' is the height of fashionable orthodoxy. It's pathetic as well as offensive to lesbians and gay men.

[quote lalalalalafeelingroovy]**@irresistibleoverwhelm* Exactly this. “Queer” just relocates and creates a new binary somewhere else - but by doing so, it privileges those who have the (usually class and financial) luxury of thinking about themselves as “anti-normal/non-normies” when it suits them (but often not when it doesn’t).*

This is interesting. I recently had a Discord discussion with some women who identify as queer about why they identify with that word. They agreed they do so because they like how uncomfortable the word makes straight people. It felt kind of childish, tbh. If the word makes straight people uncomfortable, they are uncomfortable that slurs and repression were and are a thing, not because you aren't straight. If they are uncomfortable with the word queer, it's because they really don't want to inadvertently abuse someone. So I don't know why any LGB person would actually want to make someone who is trying to not be hurtful, uncomfortable.

The thing that really got me about it though, was that these women were bisexual women married to men. In marriages they say are fulfilling, happy and monogamous. So while these women are not straight, they are now living lives that are straight presenting. I don't want to erase their bisexuality and attraction to women. Those are real things and it's good to acknowledge that not everyone is a heterosexual relationship is heterosexual. But I do think that if you are a bisexual person in a monogamous longterm relationship with someone of the opposite sex, it's fair to say that your day to day life isn't exactly 'queer' anymore. Some of them only realised they were bisexual after they married and have never had any some-sex relationships or even casual hook-ups. So they haven't even had any experience of how wider society treats them for being in a same-sex relationship. Again, this isn't to invalidate their bisexuality, but their lived experience is one where they were only ever 'out' within a heterosexual relationship. So it's not the same as someone who is in a same-sex relationship or only same-sex attracted.

It kind of came across to me as a high-stakes move for some people who's personal stakes are low. Backlash against LGB people isn't really going to hurt them. We're never going to be entering a Gilead style society where they are penalised retroactively for their past same-sex relationships. If LGB people become less safe and lose their current protections and rights, it won't affect them in any real way.[/quote]
Have definitely seen this kind of thing. Granting all your caveats about acknowledging bisexuality, it does often read that people like this are keen for the edgy cache of the Qslur, without any of the attendant difficulty and oppression involved in being obviously homosexual. They want to deploy the shock factor, but they view the horror stories of LGB people solely as exotic fodder to co opt because they've never faced it.

I've said elsewhere, people like this have a vested interest in the oppression of homosexuality continuing. Without that, they lose the leverage and frisson of the oppression they have played cuckoo with.

It's one of the reasons why I think Stonewall have done what they've done. Oppression of lesbians and gay men serves a useful purpose as a shopfront justification bait and switch, making it look like you give a damn about that, when actually you are more interested in pronoun policing and highlighting the struggles of the Ace spectrum, which is conveniently loosely defined and more widely marketable.

Back in the 80s and 90s, most of my gay (male) friends described themselves as queer, whereas none of my lesbian friends used queer to describe themselves. The difference, I think, was that the gay men liked being different to straight men, wanted to stand out from heteronormativity, and positively embraced the discomfort some straight men felt around them - even their friends; the lesbian women OTOH just considered themselves to be another version of normal. And none of the women were uncomfortable among any of the other women - sexuality was irrelevant unless we were interested in a relationship. (I appreciate that this might be a feature of my social circles and far from universal.)

Now, looking at my teenage dc and their circles, all the youngsters calling themselves queer have never actually had a relationship.

My eldest, at uni, says his circles include people in hetero, gay and lesbian relationships, but no 'queer' friends, "because they're all noise and no substance".

Which anecdata tells me that queer is about rebellion and attention-seeking.

This is interesting. I recently had a Discord discussion with some women who identify as queer about why they identify with that word. They agreed they do so because they like how uncomfortable the word makes straight people. It felt kind of childish, tbh. If the word makes straight people uncomfortable, they are uncomfortable that slurs and repression were and are a thing, not because you aren't straight. If they are uncomfortable with the word queer, it's because they really don't want to inadvertently abuse someone. So I don't know why any LGB person would actually want to make someone who is trying to not be hurtful, uncomfortable.

Yes that seems a strange way of justifying it's use, it makes me uncomfortable because it, to me, a slur due to historic use. (By historic I mean 25/30 years ago)

So, in the term LGBTQ... I get LGB, I even get T, so what is Q, exactly, as it's listed separately?

The people who use 'queer' to describe themselves seem to be desperate to be 'different' and 'edgy' and 'cool'.

Reminds me of Colin in The Fast Show.

a vested interest in the oppression of homosexuality continuing. Without that, they lose the leverage and frisson of the oppression they have played cuckoo with.

Excellent post, Floral

@JellySlice

Back in the 80s and 90s, most of my gay (male) friends described themselves as queer, whereas none of my lesbian friends used queer to describe themselves. The difference, I think, was that the gay men liked being different to straight men, wanted to stand out from heteronormativity, and positively embraced the discomfort some straight men felt around them - even their friends; the lesbian women OTOH just considered themselves to be another version of normal. And none of the women were uncomfortable among any of the other women - sexuality was irrelevant unless we were interested in a relationship. (I appreciate that this might be a feature of my social circles and far from universal.)

Now, looking at my teenage dc and their circles, all the youngsters calling themselves queer have never actually had a relationship.

My eldest, at uni, says his circles include people in hetero, gay and lesbian relationships, but no 'queer' friends, "because they're all noise and no substance".

Which anecdata tells me that queer is about rebellion and attention-seeking.

Yes, same here. I knew a few gay men who used the term “queer” as a comic self-descriptor; but very much in the mode of the way some black people used racial slurs — ie., they might occasionally use it themselves, but they were absolutely not on board with being called it by anyone else. They weren’t “reclaiming” it as a general term; they were using it for satirical purposes and in-group bonding.

And lots of my gay male friends actually disapproved of that even then, and really disliked it. Particularly those who saw themselves as quite socially conformist really, they just wanted a job and a house and to have a quiet life paying taxes and just happening to have a male partner.

There were always divisions in gay male culture between the idea of gayness as something outside the social norm, which challenged bourgeois social institutions like the family and so on; and those who wanted to normalise gayness as part of ordinary social life.

Lesbian culture was always a bit less hyped on the idea of standing against social norms - largely because even women committed to lesbian separatism also were often still quite interested in having children or in living an communal life, and the politics of lesbian separatism tended to be a more community-focused, woman-centred utilitarian politics rather than a radically individualist one. So even lesbian feminists who saw themselves as challenging bourgeois social norms were largely interested in communitarian and radically Marxist politics rather than capitalist-individualist politics. And that was of its nature much less hostile to the other kind of universalist lesbians who saw sexuality as a spectrum and were quite keen on same-sex marriage and so on. Hence why lesbian politics was always less aggressively “anti-normative” than gay male politics anyway.

BUT in general, with marriage equality and greater visibility of LGB people across all political parties, by the late 2000s LGB culture had largely turned away from wanting to “queer” things — probably also in the Anglosphere because with the New Labour and Obama administrations, the centre left were in power = “normie” culture was increasingly centrist/leftist!

It’s significant that “queering” everything appeared as a renewed fashion just after the turn back to right wing governments happened across the West in the 2010s - especially for young people who see themselves as leftist to make an anti-Establishment statement. Except they aren’t at all informed about the complex histories of all this stuff before they jump in.

Oh and I’m on several Discords with largely young women (often exclusively so if you count the trans men). Interestingly the young trans men, non-binary and straight women all call themselves “queer”, and can be constantly found policing that term and enforcing it on some of the actually gay young women who have been told off for calling themselves lesbian!

In one group the loudest “queer” person is a young woman, engaged to a man in the military, who bakes cakes for her fiancé and calls herself “queer” because she dresses “alternative” and likes tattoos - but she is entirely straight and will happily admit she isn’t sexually interested in women. Yet she and a young trans man police any appearance of what they perceive as “terf rhetoric” in the group, which includes any statement about men or saying you aren’t sexually interested in men. The young trans man is also only sexually interested in men. Yet they are the self-appointed “queer” ambassadors of the group, and will happily police the sexuality of lesbian women twice their age. I mean you couldn’t make this stuff up really, it’s so daft.

(And these aren’t even LGBT-focused Discords by the way - they’re for a niche but very heavily female-dominated hobby (think knitting, but it isn’t knitting). And yet the younger female people in the group are constantly bringing discussion round to queering things and policing and enforcing terms and boxes on others. It’s really very tiresome to be honest.)