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Everywhere I look and listen, I'm noticing that LGB has been replaced by Queer.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

There is currently a very strong drive to disconnect young people, especially girls, from the wisdom and knowledge gained through decades of 'lived experience' of older women. Maybe the youngsters should try thinking about who this disconnect serves.

I don't have much choice but to name myself a female homosexual, since lesbian now means someone of either sex with an expectation of being willing to have a sexual partner of someone of either sex. <Insert insults here if you say no> And I've been called homophobic on this forum for arguing that lesbian has a specific sex based meaning. So what would you have me do? Shut up and go along with it quietly?

The 'letting live' bit has to be reciprocal. If I wasn't being harassed to redefine my sexual orientation and 'learn to cope' with straight sex, and to 'overcome my genital preferences' with reproach about my practicing homosexuality being a kind of racism, I wouldn't have ever got involved in this conversation. It's rather like being asked not to react or mention that someone is jumping up and down on your foot.

I think homosexuality is a right worth standing up for. YMMV.

Absolutely this. I'm in my 50s and have over three decades of experience. I was the only out lesbian at uni when I got there and came out aged 19, I set up the first lesbian and gay groups in various workplaces, and I worked supporting gay men affected by HIV in the 90s amongst other things, but apparently my belief that humans can't change sex and that lesbians don't have dicks invalidates anything I might have to say 🙄.

I've no issue with you using whatever terminology you like. I do have an issue with you saying you've gone 'a step further' by using this terminology. You are not somehow advanced and better than other people because you've turned your back on 'lesbian' as a term.

Sorry, I missed your post earlier. But no, my friend is not calling herself queer because she thinks it's trendy and acceptable. She has decades of experience in activism, and decades of experience of enduring violent bigotry. And she does care. She is very aware of the debates.

I was only a baby lesbian in the 90s; I only came out in 1999. But at that point, she would have been out for over 20 years. I don't think you are fair to say either of us are 'not directly affected'. Where do you get off deciding who is affected and who isn't?! Why do you think she and I don't count as lesbians?

I do have an issue with you saying you've gone 'a step further' by using this terminology. You are not somehow advanced and better than other people because you've turned your back on 'lesbian' as a term.

I think you're reading something into that terminology that isn't there. What I meant was, if you like, that I have retreated further. Believe me, it's defensive, I find this whole thing extremely threatening and unpleasant. It's not a powerful place to be, and it isn't me busy being righteous at others, I'm the one being scolded, lectured, told off and harassed for daring to be homosexual and have boundaries, and now told that to try and keep a word that I can live with is calling myself 'better than others'. So thanks for silencing me on that too.

Frankly it's no longer safe to be out on MN or anywhere else.

I think you'll find that 'Grey' has been appropriated by pansexual or asexual or some other kind of 'sexual' group...people that don't want sex at all, or only if they fancy someone first, or they only want sex with a very small number of people, or they'll only do it on tuesdays, or if tottenham had a score draw...or something.

Ah, ok. I read it as you saying you'd gone further, and I felt as if it was a bit smug.

I'm sorry you feel rotten about being out. And I get why you feel unsafe. It's not a hopeful world at the moment.

not irrelevant at all

Did anyone hear an interview on Woman's Hour this morning about being bi-sexual? It was about a book by I think an American woman about how bisexual people get lost between hetero- and homo-sexual categories, experience a degree of disapproval and are mostly not out. This thread brought it back to me of it and I'm not at all certain but I had a feeling the q word might have been said in passing.

This is exactly how I feel.

Slightly off topic, but given that "women" is seemingly no longer used by the NHS to describe cancers affecting the female reproductive system, whilst prostate cancer is still described as affecting men, you've got to wonder about whether the last 50 years have really brought any progress at all for women. Seems like the T has wiped out the W but not the M.

you've got to wonder about whether the last 50 years have really brought any progress at all for women. Seems like the T has wiped out the W but not the M.

It seems women's rights and progress were a polite social fiction that could be removed at any moment when it was convenient because they were only ever for show or until it became inconvenient to Real People.

Because back then it would be young adults on T-shirts and jeans with flags. Actually at risk of being ‘outed’ and having hassle at work.

Now no one bats an eye at man babies and rubber doggies, and we are expected to cheer and say ‘how brave’? Let’s not forget the NSPCC attacking those who protested at a man with a rubber fetrish entertaining himself at work and posting the video online (making it very clear where he was).

Pride in that - really?

I love this post so much I want to put it on a T-shirt. This is exactly what is happening right now, exactly.

👏 👏

Was that Dr Julia Shaw? I might listen to that. I can relate, I’ve had a couple of relationships where there’s been a bit of apprehension from my partner. A woman thinking I might leave her for a man … a man thinking I might cheat on him with a woman. I’ve never cheated on anyone, but for some people finding out you’re bi makes them insecure that you’re going to ‘go the other way’ - like you can’t be trusted to be faithful or something? It can be a bit tiresome 😳

I'm in this situation, too. I'm being shunned and sniped at by lesbians who came out and found a supportive community and partners and social lives via the women's and lesbian groups I and other older female volunteers founded and publicised and ran. In every town and city I've lived in, for the last 35 years, I've volunteered for local women's centres and organisations and launched new groups.

Now I'm persona non grata to at least 50% of the women in my circles because I don't believe lesbians can have penises. I regularly meet lesbians I've known for years in the supermarket. They won't say hello or look me in the eye, even though we've known each other and been friendly for years. The TRAs are exploiting ageism as a way of cutting younger women off from older women who model radfem values.

On social media it's also very noticeable that many of the lesbians who are associating with groups that are run by or encourage TQ+ are growing their hair and looking more traditionally feminine. Some of my short-haired, fleece-and-walking-boots friends are unrecognisable now. Long hair, make-up. I guess it's hard if you join a lesbian, bi and transwomen's group and realise you look more masculine than the males.

yeah it seems to have gone a bit like this, people were homosexual bisexual or heterosexual => then people were lesbian, gay men, Bi or straight, with a simple 1:1 correspondence between the categories. Some people were fighting to take over queer as a word they controlled rather than a word which was used to hurt them, then people started acting like there was a straight / queer divide and straight started to mean something more like vanilla/boring. Ergo heterosexual men can be gnc lesbians if they want to be???? Queer remains a homophobic slur.

Watching the news last night there was a piece on Monkey Pox.

They explained how the vast majority (I think they said almost all) of those who have it in the U.K. are recorded as males who are homosexual, bisexual or ‘have sex with other men’ (eh, what?)and were killing themselves NOT to say - hang on a mo here, is there some link we ought to be looking into (no it’s not sexually transmitted)?

So no actual real information given.