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Everywhere I look and listen, I'm noticing that LGB has been replaced by Queer.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'm straight and have never been to a Pride anything, but older sister is a lesbian and used to love it. Now, what she tells me about it says it all- she's no longer welcome. She's in Canada , a country further up the track, I believe, than we are towards the obliteration of women, and she says Pride now gives her the total heebyjeebies.

That's true actually.

But my point still stands, trans rights and LGB rights should not be conflated.

F**k me, this thread and others on this board are like watching people age and becoming more (small c and big C) conservative in real time.

You're turning into your parents, just as they turned into their parents etc...

What on earth is that supposed to mean?!

Oh noes, we're aging!!! Squeeeeeeeals of horror, we're aaaaaaaaging.......

Grey Power! We're old, we're pissed off, get off my lawn.

And you are how old? And intending never to age I suppose?

A teenager throws the 'you're old and conservative' bomb and slams the door.

And only the ‘yoof’ expect the world to revolve around them and their inexperienced ideas.

Queer is no longer a slur, it has been ‘reclaimed’ It is the most used description young people use to describe themselves.

However, I don’t know any heterosexuals who use this term to describe themselves, so that’s a new one for me.

Many of students in the school I work identify asnon-binary, but they are for all intents and purposes mostly straight. Then we have the ones who describe themselves as gender queer who are generally same sex attracted. It’s an absolute minefield.

One if our students is a trans girl, and describes herself as a lesbian, but is in a relationship with another (lesbian) trans girl. The mind boggles!

no it’s still a slur. Trust me - there are people - some not even old - who remember having it screamed at them (sometimes as kicks were being delivered).

so these kiddies who have only seen it thrown around by ‘sassy drag queens’ and desperately boring celebs haven’t a clue.

"Queer" is a completely different ideology that emphasises difference and aims to break down structures and boundaries. It's very different to those of us who are LGB but want to just get on with our lives just like everyone else with our sexual orientation saying nothing about our personality or interests and not being a particularly noteworthy thing about us. That is why I'm bisexual but definitely not queer and why queer is not an umbrella term for all LGB people.

The rate at which language is becoming opaque really is increasing, isn't it. Hard to have conversations when the participants have different definitions for words.

Old time feminists used to say that naming has power and that women should take back the right to name themselves.

That didn't quite work as it's not enough to try to name or rename some concept; other people must be forced to accept the new definition and use it widely, too. 'Queer' is one of those words which is now in the process of being redefined but right now is just confusing and open for appropriation.

Let them have their own word then. Why pick on one that is so loaded?

I find the use of the word queen to be... interesting. I'm not sure it's being 'reclaimed' if the people doing the reclaiming don't remember it being a slur.

DS1 is gay. I don't know what his opinion on the word queer is, I'll have to ask. He knows TWANW but thinks the trans issue is "complicated" and is fully on board with LGBTQ+ being one group.

DS2 is bi. He hates the term queer. His actual words were "queer means weird or abnormal. I'm not word weird. Well I am, but not because I'm bi." He's very gender critical, totally gets why women don't want trans women in their spaces and thinks LGB and TQ+ are separate groups.

My best friend has always identified as bi. She's married to an NB (who is female) and now identifies as queer. She's fully on board with TWAW, doesn't understand why "GC t**fs" want to "reduce people to what's in their pants" and refers to "sex" (in air quotes) as if it's some made up thing.

I mention their varying opinions on 'the trans issue' because I wonder if there's a correlation between using the word queer and believing TWAW.

DISCLAIMER: I'm aware "GC t**fs" is a slur. I'm just quoting the language used by my friend. I'm also aware it's not the GC 'side' who are reducing people to body parts.

Queer not queen obvs.
Thanks autocarrot!

Are you saying that all the seedy fetishy types that now frequent Pride come under the 'queer' banner? I've never quite understood the terminology and why there are adult men in nappies and others dressed as dogs being led around on leads at Pride, But it does feel like they're trying to push boundaries rather showing pride in being LGB. It feels at odds with the original aim of Pride, like they're equating sexual deviancy with being LGB and that's wrong.

100% this!

I saw a tweet by a gay man which described his experiences of the word queer, where his attackers screamed the word over the sound of his bones breaking. He certainly regards it as a slur.

I'm sure there are other people with similar experiences who will never see it as a reclaimed word because of how it was used as part and parcel of violent attacks.

Well if you mean in terms of being afraid to be 'out' as openly homosexual?

Yes, I think the clock's turning back.

But I'm afraid the whole 'you're old, you'll die soon, you don't matter' bit is ageism and prejudice, and you may one day realise this when you're no longer a bright young fashionable thing. It will also dawn on you gradually that life experience is a thing, and you look at life very differently as you gain more decades of learning about it, and gain insights and understandings that they didn't have earlier. And experience life in a different way that again brings insights.

I also think there will come a time when you realise that you don't actually want your voice and experiences and perceptions dismissed by someone younger than you on the grounds that you're past it and that makes you worthless. I suspect you'll come to wholly disagree with that.

Ah ageism - funny how the beeee kinnnd brigade recoil at any suggestion of racism or homophobia or ableism but are totally fine with being ageist

I think you missed a memo, eyeballs sorry- I know it's so fast it's hard to keep up with, but homosexuality is now apartheid apparently.

Which being openly homophobic and really rather trivialising and using the experiences of black people for political point scoring....? Yeah, I'm afraid homophobia and racism seem as 'in' as ageism and misogyny.

All jolly 'kind' and 'inclusive' isn't it?

"you may one day realise this when you're no longer a bright young fashionable thing. It will also dawn on you gradually that life experience is a thing, and you look at life very differently as you gain more decades of learning about it, and gain insights and understandings that they didn't have earlier. And experience life in a different way that again brings insights."

Isn't that what the PP was saying?

You're turning into your parents, just as they turned into their parents etc...

My parents didn’t treat their parents like doddery old idiots and I certainly didn’t treat my parents like fools either. I never threatened them or tried to tell them night was day.

I don't get the sense anyone is 'turning into [their] parents,' and I agree the ageism is pretty obvious.

But I do think there's a slightly odd, try-hard vibe to boasting that you've gone to a level beyond other people by calling yourself a 'female homosexual,' or to the faux-shock about what 'queer' might mean. I would think it is adolescent rather than OAP. I am aware it is very trendy to go on about how we're all past 'queer,' but why on earth can't we just live and let live?

I don't think that's true. 'Queer' has no meaning without reference to a norm. I would say that radical feminism really seeks to break down boundaries - so does (genuine) gay rights activism. These movements are trying to change the whole structure of society, because they don't see being a woman, or being gay, as fundamentally abnormal. By contrast, I think queer theory starts from a presumption that to be queer is to be opposed to the status quo. Queerness cannot exist without straight culture.