18 years ago when I was coming out, y’all made the word “bisexual” so dirty that for years the only word I felt was accessible to me was “queer”, if I had any chance at having a community.
Queer was widely used at that point among LGBT+ people to refer to ourselves and our community, and while you’d look askance at a straight person using that word, it was most definitely acceptable to call another LGBT+ person queer.
And now y’all are telling me “Queer” isn’t an acceptable umbrella term to use and it just feels like another way you’re using subtle language policing to tell me that really the only people you want in your community are gold-star LG folks.
Those of us who like the word queer because it accurately reflects our misfit status are basically being told that this self-identifier is dirty and wrong, this is no longer the “queer community”, and the message yet again is that we don’t really belong.
I get it if someone doesn’t want to be called queer, and I would never call another person queer against their will but holy hell please stop acting like it’s common knowledge that queer can’t be used as an umbrella term for our community when it was for DECADES
“q-slur” is a very new concept, kids.
This is something
that’s completely overlooked, by the same people who fling the word
“ahistorical” at every viewpoint they disagree with.
When I first started
participating in any kind of LGBTQ+ stuff online (so, 10 years ago),
“queer” was by far the most common descriptor. It was pretty much
agreed it had been reclaimed enough to be safe (I mean, show me an
active slur that has academic disciplines named after it?) and people
seemed much more keen to explore the ambiguity the term offers,
rather than sticking with predefined categories. By “q-slur”
logic, we should’ve been much less accepting of it back then if we
simultaneously believe that LGBTQ+ rights are advancing over time,
but the opposite is true.
So I would say that the current
stigmatization of queer is based on two things: 1) reactionary
essentialism (seeing “queer” as too dangerous for the more
clear-cut categories), and 2) respectability politics.
Now by taking away
“queer”, we don’t have any other term that’s both catchy (no
version of the abbreviation is) and broad enough to actually be
inclusive. Gay is not an umbrella term. It always has a default
connotation that’s very specific. It only reminds me of all the time
I wasted on bad gay-only discourse when I was first questioning my
own identity, and for this reason it took ages to arrive at the
conclusion that I’m just attracted to multiple genders and also trans without dysphoria (because the other bullshit I had to
contend with was the truscum narrative of transness). So, gay is not a safe
term for me. It doesn’t describe me and if I used it, it would
actually misgender my own relationship. I’m not doing that for any of
you, sorry.
Do you know who the
majority of the people who still use “queer” are? Trans and MGA.
Yet again, we have a political line that privileges cis LG people who are fine with binary categories
over the most routinely erased parts of the community. Of course.
This, I imagine, is also
why so many bi/pan and trans/nonbinary people aren’t against aces
being included. Chances are most of us, at least those who are 25+ or so,
have experiences like this, with either being actively policed out
or just unable to find the right identifiers for ages because of the
stigma and general ignorance surrounding them.
And now you’re
telling us we HAVE TO use gay, which isn’t a functional umbrella
term, because queer suddenly isn’t acceptable based on this new logic?
Do you even hear yourselves?
–
“But!” I can already hear the gatekeepers protest, “This all
relies on a bunch of personal anecdotes!”
In which case,
buddy, I have bad news for you about the vast majority of all modern
LGBTQ+ history.
I first came upon Queer as both an umbrella term and a field of academic study. This was in the early 90s. There were queer studies, queer histories, “queering” of the text, queer theory…
And Queer, more so than other words, felt inclusive of people who, at the time, referred to themselves as “genderqueer” as well as people outside the binary, as well as bisexuals, who couldn’t claim gay or lesbian.
It was, at the time, being reclaimed at a time when all the words were being used as slurs, so there was a real reason to reclaim them.
I’ve problem with using words that people are comfortable using, but not at the cost of erasing parts of our history.
I guess now is the
time we’re hitting New Essentialism and Respectability Politics 2.0
from people who aren’t old enough to remember any of this.
Yeah, that’s something a lot of folks in the younger generation don’t get.
When you campaign against words like “queer”, to those of us in the older generations, what it looks like you’re doing is trying to roll the nomenclature back to the bad old days when cisgender gay men were treated as the only “real” members of the community, and everybody else was lumped together as this peripheral pack of weirdos who were expected to be slobberingly grateful to their betters just to be acknowledged at all.
Hell, I clearly recall a time when the leaders of mainstream gay rights activism would routinely castigate even lesbians as parasites and invaders – and be applauded for doing so. It’s difficult to overstate just how deep it went.
And, like, that wasn’t all that long ago – I’m only 33 and I’m old enough to remember that horseshit.
Hey there! Hi. You’re probably in a really good mood right now. Woah, Dany flying off on Drogon, that’s cool! Or did you think it looked shitty? Idk, but I mean, hey, dragons! This is what we’ve wanted from Dany’s storyline since the Season 1 finale! And can you believe what happened with Jorah in the pit? Or Tyrion’s quips as he watched from his place of high honor?
I actually have zero ideas of what Jorah did, or if this scene landed or not in general. I expect it did, in the way the Battle Spectacular! of Hardhome managed to. If it was done well, then it was quite the “omg” moment, and probably pretty cool-looking to boot. I was not able to watch this episode live, however. So what am I even doing here? Why am I insisting on shitting all over such a fine moment?
For a while now, Game of Thrones has made it perfectly clear that it is doing whatever it damn-well pleases. Calling itself an “adaptation” of ASOIAF is getting less and less appropriate, given the complete divergence in plots (or the stripping down of all nuances in the ones it left the “same”), a casual dismissal of all themes, and the utter disregard to characterizations or internal logic. In fact, Hardhome, the episode praised by many, was the final nail in the coffin for anyone thinking these two mediums even remotely resemble each other.
So then why am I not content to “let the show be the show and the books be the books”? Because here’s the problem: at the end of the day, GoT comes back to rely on the work that Martin’s done to get them through. Whether it’s to cower behind the books and say “well there’s nudity and violence against women in there,” or to use Martin’s world building to deliver a super duper fight scene (however out of place it may be), showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss (D&D) continually profit off of another’s work, yet it’s within their own divergent and incredibly problematic narrative. My good friend theculturalvacuum said it best: “it’s not an adaptation, it’s identity theft.”
And that brings us nicely to Daznak’s Pit (did the show even call it that?). Yes, Dany finally hopping on Drogon’s back and taking off was indeed an amazing moment to read about, and I have no doubt something that was really cool to watch as well. But like most of Mr. Martin’s best ideas, D&D only chose to adapt the bare bones of the plot, without actually providing any context. To them, Dany’s arc was “girl tries to rule Meereen. It’s hard. She makes some good decisions, some bad. Then she gets engaged, opens fighting pits, and flies off on dragon.”
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