LGB Alliance: 'Dont Call Me Queer' & Separate LGB and TQ+

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The LGB Alliance has just posted a short film on Youtube, launching their 'Don't Call Me Queer' report and, in parallel, are launching their campaign to separate LGB and TQ+ in law and policymaking. Links and info are here: https://lgballiance.org.uk/dont-call-me-queer/

That's my Friday night sorted then. Thanks.

the movement that I knew, the gay liberation movement, has metamorphosized into a gender identity movement that is quite misogynistic, homophobic — values that I can’t share,” Sergeant, 75, told reporters at the time. “I don’t recognize it any longer.”

Yup.

Thanks for sharing!

Are ‘LGB Alliance’ going to allow the very many gay people who do use the term queer to do so?

And how about gay people who hate the term gay more than queer, because they grew up with gay being much more commonly used as a pejorative than queer?

And how about the many gay people who find the term queer perjorative and distressing/triggering? Will the 'Stonewall' and other representatives of the TQ+ lobby allow them to be homosexual without pressure, harassment and calling them sexual racists, or permit their voices to be heard as well as TQ+ ones?

We're not going to reach 100% agreement here are we? Nor is anyone suggesting that Stonewall et all 'not be allowed' to do anything: that's quite an interesting twist of what is being said.

It's how do we find answers that work for everyone, and not requiring that everyone does what TQ+ politics wants all the time regardless of how they feel about it. Hence why some LGB people are seeking for their own separate groups and representation. This wish for own separate representation and groups is no skin off the nose who wish to stay with Stonewall and TQ+ focused provision. Is it?

Had Stonewall and the TQ+ lobby done a bit more listening and caring about the members not embracing their way of doing things, they wouldn't have driven them away.

I’ve never once seen someone attack others for using the term gay. LGB alliance or anyone else can call themselves what they want. But people who use the term queer are routinely policed and told not to use that term.

Also the persistent insistence on describing LGB people as a distinct category from queer people shows massive misunderstanding of the issue. The vast majority of people who describe themselves as queer are cisgender gay or lesbian people.

All those groups are different from one another with different histories and wants. And within those groups different people have different views on things. You can choose to be part of a smaller more accurately labelled group but I prefer to be part of the larger and therefore more influential conglomeration of identities of "not straight", even if some don't apply to me.

The vast majority of people who describe themselves as queer are heterosexual.

Heterosexual people don't have a problem with using the term queer because they've never faced any homophobic bullying or discrimination where that term is frequently used.

I've lost count of the amount of heterosexual celebrities claiming to be queer and do not have any same-sex attraction.

It's an easy way to buy into victim-hood by aligning yourself to a community that has faced a lot of real discrimination.

This is bollocks.

The vast majority of people who use the term queer to describe themselves are cisgender gay, lesbian and bi people. And it is a term that have been used by gay and bi people for fifty years - not some new thing as is often implied.

And many of us do so in part because it is gay, rather than queer, that was used as a pejorative term when we grew up.

The focus here as usual seems to be an attempt to stop unwilling, unconsenting people escaping the TQ+ control to live alongside them under their own beliefs.

I don't wonder why; I know. But it's always interesting to see it in evidence.

Women and gay people are not allowed to have feelings or wishes or words that the TQ+ lobby find inconvenient and they're definitely not allowed to escape control. Or set up in a way that divides the power of the TQ+ lobby and provides other views and voices. Wishing to do so automatically makes them bad, which makes them subhuman, which permits the dismissal of them.

Interesting political lobby, this. Not much for handing out the respect and care it so loudly and constantly demands be given to it.

They don't like it because it exposes the misogyny and homophobia they are pushing and if they were separated there would be no justification for tq rights.
I'd even go as far to say the tq movement are going against the whole pride movement goal of showing gay and lesbians to be a diverse population of normal people who are no different and should have equal rights, by pushing the idea of Queer as something different and uniquely vulnerable, mentally ie needing support animals amd their mum to sit with them in a court case as a witness, are undermining the public perception of lgbtq as a whole.

Are ‘LGB Alliance’ going to allow the very many gay people who do use the term queer to do so?

LGB Alliance will allow (strange way of putting it, they're not the police) people to call themselves what they want, but I imagine they're unlikely to embrace the Queer population because no one, not even people who call themselves Queer, can say what Queer means. Only what it means to them, and that differs. And the LGB Alliance is there to represent homosexual people. Queer people can set up the Queer Alliance of they want. I'm a member, by the way, of the LGBA Alliance.

More than a decade ago I sat on a committee with a man who called himself queer but who was delivered to and collected from meetings by his wife and their small child in the family Volvo. A more conventional middle class set-up was difficult to imagine. He was one of the myriad spicy straights — straight people who thinking being normal is boring — who think that calling themselves Queer makes them something special.

I would encourage any homosexual to embrace the words lesbian or gay because everyone knows exactly what that means. I would ask anyone who bridled at that why they aren't getting some help for their internalised homophobia.

I don't know the UK-wide figures sorry, but according to Stonewall Cymru only 500 people in Wales identified as Queer in the last census - a tiny fraction of a percentage point. Everyone else who wasn't straight was happy to define themselves as L, G or B. It's an imprecise term favoured by a tiny minority (many of whom are heterosexual anyway), yet Welsh Government insists on adding the Q+ to policy documents and trying to get the reclaimed slur onto the statute books.

Fine if you want to describe yourself as Queer, but it tells us very little about your actual sexual orientation, or your needs or which of of your rights might need protecting. People can choose to call themselves all sorts of things that would be disrespectful or even grossly offensive if someone else used those words. A very small minority of (usually younger) black people use a reclaimed slur within some contexts. Everyone can see that it would be bonkers and offensive in the extreme for governments and organisations to start using that term formally in race equality work. Why are some people so determined not to see parallels? I know far more lesbians who call themselves dykes than same sex attracted people of either sex who call themselves queer. But most of us know that putting a D in the umbrella acronym would be inappropriate and pretty pointless.

No. And you know full well, because that is why a campaign group like the LGB Alliance made up of many gay activists with 50 years of activism don't like the word "queer".

Perhaps you are very typical of the type of person who describes themselves as "queer" because you don't want to label yourself as "gay/lesbian/homosexual/same-sex attracted" because those labels are too specific?

As others in this thread have pointed out, we are all too accustomed to meeting "queer" people who are really just heterosexual.

You’re just showing again that you don’t understand what you’re talking about. You’re going on like being queer and gay are mutually exclusive - like one is one or the other.

But lots of people use both words to describe themselves.

There are plenty of 'queer' groups and organisations grifting off the public purse. Lesbians, gay men, bisexual and heterosexual people who enjoy labelling themselves as 'queer' are welcome to align themselves with these groups.

The rest of us lesbians, gays and bisexuals are happy that LGB Alliance is the one organisation that represents us by rejecting the derogatory label.

Absolutely this.

I think there's a lot in what you've said, Lime Viewer. IME there is definitely more low-grade homophobia seeping out now that people are turning against the T and some of them are blaming the LGB for the damage done.

As an example, I'm a member of the Labour Party and an active member of my Women's Branch. I've had a number of critical WA messages on our group chat including 'Will you get off your LESBIAN high horse!' and 'Don't need to hear about lesbians, this affects all women'. I'm pretty careful not to mention mention the L word unless it's relevant and those responses came as a result of someone in the group saying she hadn't encountered any TWs in the women's groups she knew and me pointing out all the established local lesbian events that had stopped functioning because they'd been targeted over the years by TRAs. I should also say that other women in the WB have challenged those messages and offered me support.

At Filia last October I struck up conversation with an unknown woman who, not realising I was one of them, littered our brief chat with complaints about the 'bloody lesbians pulling rank' and lesbians dominating the conversation even though they're a tiny minority yada yada... It was like being back in the 80s.

I imagine we've all found ourselves standing shoulder to shoulder on the gender frontline with women with whom we have nothing else in common. Some of those women will inevitably be homophobic. I'm aware of two GC women's groups in different parts of the UK where the lesbians who got them started have left because they've been marginalised and in some cases openly and loudly despised by the women who joined. A growing number of people are angry about the T and they don't distinguish between them and the LGB when they lash out. They assume LGB people all consented to being force-teamed with the T.

Great post. The point about having to be definable is key. As you say, Enfys, if you can't easily and clearly define what makes you distinct from the dominant population you can't be accurately counted, legislated for or protected. Lesbian, gay and bisexual people have one clear thing in common: they are all same-sex attracted. Self-defined T and Q people attaching themselves onto a clearly defined and discrete group was a means of fudging the fact that there's no definition of what T and Q mean.

I must be being a bit thick today. If Queer is just another word for Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual and most people who are L, G or B are happy to identify as Queer, why does Stonewall advocate for LGBTQ+ communities and not just TQ+ communities? After all, the LGB bit is redundant.

Separately, I'm not convinced that LG and B people prefer to be called Queer rather than Gay because of the historical negativity of the word Gay. I can remember hearing and reading the revolting expression 'queer bashing'. I don't think I ever heard or read 'gay bashing'.

And what’s the last thing LGB Alliance actually campaigned for that benefitted lesbian, gay or bi people that wasn’t just about gender issues?

Campaigning to stop this nonsense over "same-gender" attraction.

They understand a lot of the gender issues are rooted in homophobia. Iran has conversion therapy for gay people, do you know what that is? Sex reassignment. Gay men in Iran are heavily influenced to become women.

The internal joke at the Tavistock was that there would be no gay children left after all their work.

Try reading my post again and then try your answer.

Youre rather proving the point I was making.

I know very well what I'm talking about, yes in schools 20 years ago "that's so gay" was a negative phrase, but people got over it.

Before any of this trans (and consequently queer) business came about you had LGB groups who knew the term "queer" was abusive. It went through a period of reclamation, but now it's known as a term heterosexual people use to pretend to in the gay community.

You are forcing "cis-gender" on everyone and forcing "queer" onto LGB people, who are happy to use LGB terms instead of the deliberately ambiguous "queer" label.

Andrew Doyle explains it well that people who act like 1950's heterosexuals (no sex before marriage, long courtship etc) think that they are "queer".

Highlighting the dangers of 'transing' young lesbians, gays and bisexuals that can leave them permanently infertile and with long-term health problems is a pretty damn important job. Eugenics of homosexual and autistic children is abhorrent.

I'll take that over grifters wasting public money to throw around rainbow confetti and parade BDSM gear in front of children.