Please help stop Queering and TQ+ing LGB people

[Pluvia]

Everywhere I look and listen, I'm noticing that LGB has been replaced by Queer. This review in the Guardian has 'gay' in the title but uses the catch-all 'Queer' and LGBTQ+ much of the time.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/may/31/young-gay-people-being-out-and-happy-its-revolutionary-meet-the-heartstopper-generation

On Monday Front Row had a feature on Queer Poetry.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00180cy

They didn't bother to define what Queer was, just classified poets such as Rupert Brook (gay) as queer. Rupert Brook would have lived in fear of being publicly identified as being queer, I suspect.

The Q category in LGBTQ+ is mainly straight people. The takeover of LGB by Q is strategic. Like the takeover of 'woman' by transwomen, it's all disappearing the LGB.
Can I ask you, when you hear Queer used in an 'LGB people and people with blue hair who've read Judith Butler at university' way to challenge it. Ask people what they mean by Queer. Ask them whether they realise that in using it to forcibly link LGB people to a group they have nothing in common with, they are oppressing LGB people.

Well I don’t understand why we would use the word Queer to encompass all LGBTQ+.
it’s such a disparate group with different needs and attitude.

For me, it’s a bit like saying that when one talks about men they mean men and women together. It’s assuming that men and women are the same and have similar needs and issues, which is clearly not the case.
Why doing the same thing with LGBTQ+ Unless of course, one group has decided to be the ‘dominant group’, the reference by which all the other members should be evaluated.

trying to informa myself more about Emily Bridges, I came across this magazine, Diva, “for LGBTQI women and non-binary people”. Such a range of target audience adds to the confusion (for me) as to what all these initials mean.

This is irrelevant but when I were a lass in the 80s, the word queer was used as a sneer, a nasty name.

Same growing up in the 90s and still used as abuse now, to a lesser degree.

I think it's bonkers that a newspaper uses a term of abuse to describe gay people, no matter that some want to reclaim it.

Very irritating. Also irritating that gender and sexuality is bundled into one. Gay + Trans is not an automatic association..... one is sexuality, one is gender....

Interesting discussion, thank you - which I’ll join in properly when I’m off my crappy little phone.

I agree in most instances the use of ‘queer’ could be replaced with ‘alternative’. I was at university in the 1980s and comedy, music, theatre, dance, our dress and presentation, clubs and pubs, were all ‘alternative’.

Even our politics was ‘alternative’ in the sense of, say, Greenham being female only (unusual) - of course that would never be allowed now; it would be ‘queered’. Which makes me sad.

Thank you for this. You've identified the political and commercial overtones that I've been aware of but haven't been able to articulate.

And Sarahandquack, I ask as a lesbian, who sees lesbians less and less represented, who feels the stigma of being a lesbian more strongly now than I did in the 90s, when we were out and proud and 'queer' was an insult, that those of you not directly affected show some solidarity. Your lesbian friend is calling herself queer because she will have picked up the feeling that being queer is more trendy and acceptable than being a lesbian. She may not care, but many of us do. We don't want us, our word, lesbian, erased.

I keep wondering why this word has ceased to become an insult!! Not too many years ago if you called someone the "Q" word you could find yourself in trouble.
I have several gay male friends and all of them.have said they hate the word (perhaps it has been used to abuse and insult them in the past?)

This. Yes!

Because, a few decades ago, people (mostly gay men IIRC) started very emphatically trying to take the sting out of it with chants like 'we're here, we're queer'. It's been mentioned on the thread already - surprised it's not common knowledge.

Fond memories of university LGB society marches shouting "we're here, we're queer, we will not disappear."

I remember being very confused in the last year at uni when it became the LGBT society. I never felt like the T issues had anything in common with the LGB issues. Now I feel like they are almost in opposition to one another.

I'm in my 50s. All through my 20s and 30s I would use 'gay' to describe myself, I didn't like using the word 'lesbian'... I don't know why - possibly internalised homophobia.
For the last however many I will ONLY use 'lesbian' as I feel I am now in a dying breed! And a group whose rights are being eroded before my eyes.

I'm a step further on in that I've stopped calling myself 'lesbian' mostly and gone to 'female homosexual' since 'lesbian' is now regarded as a nasty transphobic thing to say (unless you are biologically male, then it's applauded) and naice female homosexuals call themselves 'queer' which has no overtones of 'I have sexual boundaries and won't sleep with anyone male regardless of their identity'.

It's very sad. More and more people are being forced out of their words, categories, groups and legal protections by this fantastically self centred movement. Who scream 'be kind' and aren't.

Whoever thunk we’d see a day when gay has been rebadged as ‘boring straight kiddos’

As 'queer' has been rebranded from insult to badge of honour to some and others feel the word lesbian is being erased could 'lezza' not be rebranded too as a more upbeat, version of lesbian so the word and femaleness of it is still used?

I really hope this doesn't offend anyone, that's definitely not my intention.

Or ‘oi dy*e’ maybe?

Isn't that really rude/insulting? I'm no expert though as I'm not a lesbian/gay.

I'm a step further on in that I've stopped calling myself 'lesbian' mostly and gone to 'female homosexual' since 'lesbian' is now regarded as a nasty transphobic thing to say (unless you are biologically male, then it's applauded)

Really! Bollocks to that! Utterly ridiculous. Even more reason I'll keep using lesbian then!

Queer is also utterly useless as a label. If I want to read a book from the "queer" section of the library, I'll have no idea if it's a book about a lesbian or a blue-haired straight woman (and even then I won't know if the lesbian really is a woman...)

L, G and B are understandable. They makes sense. The rest of it? No, thank you.

I’ve heard this view expressed by a male gay colleague. Basically put, “I’m a gay man. Why am I clumped together with all these other identities and presumed to share a community with them?”

I recently read a post on a Facebook page for neuro diverse people I'm a member of.
The mods put out a call for everyone to post their "flag" in the comments on a post about Pride.
One defensive young woman posted about being a demi-sexual and moaned about people not thinking she was "valid". Much reassurance was forthcoming.
So, I saw it with my own eyes, a young straight woman claiming to be Queer because she wasn't into casual sex. 🤔

Wbeezer, one of my acquaintances posted a gushing 'coming out' message for Pride. She came out as demisexual. She's a straight married woman. Straight people having particular tastes is 'queer' now.

That’s the point - q Is pretty hideous.

There is no need to try to ‘rebrand’ anything - especially when one group is taking a horror or a word, stealing it (to be all dramatic) for themselves even though they are asked not to be a lot of those who suffered or as a term of abuse).

I just don’t get it. They really think the ‘community’ is all sparkles and parties.

I think one of the reasons it's gained in popularity is pragmatic - no one knows had to deal with the ever increasing acronym in everyday speech. So people who have a vague sense they are supposed to acknowledge all the letters are happy to have an alternate that seems to mean the same thing and is pronouncable.

They have turned it, quite intentionally, into meaning 'a group of people of any sexuality who are committed to a certain political belief system'.

Yeah, that's vey insightful and I think you have connected something that I've been feeling but not able to articulate. And I think it may relate to the over the top policing of all kinds of communities, trans people who step out of line, but also black conservatives being called Uncle Toms or other examples where people are "supposed" to have a certain set of political views that actually aren't intrnsically related to their shared charachteristic at all.

This is also the term that was used when I was in my late teens.

Most of us at some point realized that a lot of it was a different kind of conformity, and based in some pretty shallow things like clothing choices, and that it wasn't really where you could find a stable, robust sense of identity.

I really find it so weird that adults now are completely bamboozled by something most teens then understood by about age 20.