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Everywhere I look and listen, I'm noticing that LGB has been replaced by Queer.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.

I was at university in the 1980s and comedy, music, theatre, dance, our dress and presentation, clubs and pubs, were all ‘alternative’.

Isn't it strange how 'alternative' involves so very much conformity?

There was a highly insightful quote the other day on here, and I apologise for not remembering who or where - it was a comment about how someone at a Levellers gig was watching a crowd of kids passionately singing 'there's only one way of life... and that's your own, that's your own, that's your own' - and every single one of them was in the uniform. Little carbon copies.

I do also think that a desire to be part of (what used to be) the happy, joyous freedom of Pride formed a part of it. Again it's the 'I deserve it' mindset that shoehorns self into a desired situation to be part of it- and ignores that this forces out people who formed this, fought for it, created it and continue to need it instead of just quite like the feelz and the optics.

What for example do we now do with all the homosexual people who aren't considered LGBT any more because they don't conform politically and won't believe that being homosexual is as deliberately harmful to others and as ethically indefensible as apartheid?

What do we call them? I mean, other than the obviously apparent terms of abuse?

It's rather like what do we call the group formerly known as women?

The world that, somewhat ironically, refers to a stone wall in my part of the world. (Which is the only context in which I use the word).

Word. Damn you lack of edit function.

And what do we do about the fact that the legal protections formed specifically for those people now in fact cover a very different and unplanned for group, and are being gently adapted and shifted over to better fit this unplanned group and exclude and cease to protect the original groups, particularly in regard to their having boundaries that the new group find inconvenient?

And that none of this has happened openly, democratically or with any kind of consultation of the affected groups?

Lesbian, gay and bisexual. These are the terms. I am a lesbian who is proud of what I am. I hate the way the name lesbian is being replaced by gay. Well of course it goes deeper than my name. What I am is being erased by transactivists. I'm a woman who is sexually attracted to other women. That's my living breathing visceral physical reality. Please help to stop us being erased in how we are named and in how we are defined.

So funny to read this thread just now. I've said recently "What?!, I'm sorry what?!, queer? How odd, my same sex attracted family members and friends completely reject that term, they actually find it really offensive so would you mind not using it please?"

The person was confused and embarrassed and couldn't get away quick enough. It's the only time I have ever heard it used in RL, so my shock wasn't actually exaggerated.

That was me I think.

I do think, however, that "alternative" did used to mean something. The Levellers - appalling as they were - were an alternative to mainstream pop. And the world of alternative music did feature all sorts of styles which might have been very modern sounding, or very retro, very noisy or very relaxing... but they did share something, they were a "genuine" alternative to mainstream culture, even if some of the alternative groups were quite homogenous. Nowadays "alternative" in music seems to pretty much mean "it has guitars!" It is an "alternative" to the majority of pop which is electronic, but it is not an alternative to mainstream culture, or corporatism, or anything really, it is just bland.

There's also a huge difference between the historic British use of the word 'queer', which gay rights activists did use along with the Nazi concentration-camp-derived pink triangle in the 80s, in a deliberately challenging way, and the current USA campus, Foucault and Butler-derived usage of 'queering' which is about blurred lines and destroying boundaries.

Life of Brian got here first, as well:

’Yes! We are all individuals!’

Funny, really, when I was young, back in the Palaeolithic, same sex attracted (hope this is okay ) people and those drawn to the wilder shores of Aphrodite used to pretend to be ‘normal’. Now the normal pretend to be ‘wild’.

Personally, I identify as the plus sign. Always good to assume superiority.

I think it became difficult for people to maintain this idea of an alternate to corporate culture Because now, if such a thing appears, it becomes corporatized very quickly. It's like the same company owning gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy, you make more money if you have shops that cater to different pice points. In the world of pop culture you don't want to own only mainstream acts but the "alternates".

Maybe we could call it the Nirvana Paradox?

Well it's strange and somewhat confusing, because I was flicking through Instagram the other day and you know where it gives you 'suggestions' of people to folllow?

Where account of a young woman popped up where she stated that she was proud to be 'Lesbian, Non-conformist and Queer'. She used all 3 words as separate descriptive titles. So I assume she means Queer in a different sense unrelated to being a Lesbian?

I am reaching back to my teens years. Is queer being used by the young in the same way being a 'Goth' was? Like edgy and into non-normative social circles, paraphernalia and art but this time including sexually diverse?

So you can be a Queer Lesbian or Queer Gay? Is this why it's being used interchangeably in the Guardian article linked above?

I'm stumped otherwise.

*An account.

It's long fucked me off that trans rights is lumped in with LGB (I'm B). If you do ascribe to trans ideology, then it's clear that trans people can be LGB or straight. Gender and sexuality are not linked in that way.

It's makes as much sense to me linking trans & LGB rights as is does LGB and black rights - there may be overlap but they have clear and significant difference which need tailored approaches.

I had a very assertive female customer march up to me once, and ask “Where are your queer books?” - not even a ‘please’ 😲. For me, growing up ‘queer’ was a slur, so my jaw hit the floor, and I must’ve looked horrified: I was horrified. Thankfully during the Plague era, my facial expressions were partially hidden by a mask. I then had to regain my composure, and very tactfully try to elicit more information about which of the L,G,B or T or Other -type books she wanted, whilst trying not to offend by asking too direct questions … ooooff. It was hard work, felt like I was about to step on a land mine with every utterance 😳

I don't know if it's just me getting older and more prudish but I feel like Pride has been overtaken too. When I was a teen in the 80s if was about pride in being LGB and I was happy to go along and support my friends. But now it feels seedy. Like it's all about fetishes and how sexually outlandish and shocking you can be. I wouldn't go anywhere near it now.

I'm one of a growing number of LGB people who think that Pride is a straight corporate festival mainly for people who want to virtue-signal to the world how cool and progressive they are. Pride ceased to be of any interest to women some time ago. It's always been dominated by men and drag but it's got worse since the BBC mainstreamed drag. It's sponsored by banks and oil companies and financial services firms. It's a million miles from what its roots and has lost its way.

I'm hoping that as a response to this we'll see Lesbian Pride next year. The big problem will be keeping the men out of it.

Yup. Agree with all of that, I feel much the same way.

Used to love Pride. Wouldn't now go near it. I'm not proud at all of what it has become.

Pretty much agree with that, just how extreme and shocking you can get

I agree @BringBackCoffeeCreams
Back in the day Pride was all about, well just that pride in being who you were (gay/lesbian) and showing that you weren't going to hide away and that you were an active, normal member of society as much as the next person (in my mind it was this at any rate).

Now it's all become very much 'look at me', I'm special and been totally hijacked by all sorts of attention seekers AND large amounts of corporate cash.

On a different, but similar note I've just googled demi-sexual as mentioned up thread. WTF its just someone giving themselves a special title for not wanting to put it about all over the place, bet there's a demi-sexual float at Pride though 😂🙄

Presumably this is why Allison Bailey set up the LGB Alliance?

As a straight woman I really don't mind what word people use to define themselves, or call themselves. But once it progressed beyond LGB I confess I did start to find it all very confusing. Especially one I saw recently which was LGBTQ+2S.

Andrew Doyle says that a lot of the queer people think they are queer because they behave like 1950's heterosexuals.

Apparently wanting a romance with a member of the opposite sex before sexual intercourse is considered "queer".

It makes less sense. There is nothing about being black which impinges on the rights of LGB people, but there is something about being trans which impinges on those same rights (unless the trans person is 100% clear that they are their birth sex and playing at being the opposite sex).

Same here. It was a nasty insult. I still can't bear to hear it used tbh.