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I agree that it definitely seems to be a generational-type divide in terms of who finds it offensive. As a child of the late 80s/early 90s, it was basically non-existent as a slur in my environment. What you never wanted to be called, under any circumstances (particularly as a male-presenting child), was gay. It was always deployed pejoratively, whether referring to a person or something which the speaker found disagreeable. No one ever used the word descriptively to refer to a man who is attracted to other men. It was pervasive and ubiquitous, and still is in some circles. Certainly more than queer is these days.
I know that there are undoubtedly a lot of folks for whom the word queer has a deep association with trauma, but the same is also certainly true of the word “gay”, and I don’t think anyone has moved to strike that from the lexicon. I think if used appropriately and respectfully, queer is a perfectly valid word to use as a blanket term for the alphabet soup of non-cis-het folks in the world, regardless of whether you’re part of the community or not (in fact I thought that was what the “Q” part of “LGBTQ” meant before more letters got added on and then we all just sort of gave up and ended it with a +. “Questioning” is certainly what it means now, but I could swear it used to be “queer” as the catch-all at the end.) Using it reclamationally (ala Clerks 2’s “I’m taking it back” joke) is where I would perhaps draw the line for The Straights.
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[sighs deeply]
I know vidya essays are kind of frowned on by the olds, but this older video from Philosophy Tube, back before Abigail publicly came out as trans, is still an excellent fuckin’ history of the term and a great introduction to Queer Theory.
queerness is a pretty great umbrella, encompassing both sexual orientation and gender. it’s a great label without getting really granular, and great umbrella term for describing how we differ from the social construction of straightness. what makes us similar under the queer umbrella is that we’re all… different than the “default” assigned mold.
other terms, like gay or lesbian, used to be hurled as pejoratives. even today, regressive theocrats still hurl the term homosexual as a pejorative.
the history of queerness goes back as far as the Institute for Sexual Studies back in weimar berlin, though it was reborn in the 90s as militant queers seized the means of textual reproduction and declared that we weren’t going to be stuffed in boxes or coffins any longer.
anyway. video essay! it’s a great listen.
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I was born in 1980, so similar time period. The gay kids in my high school did end up self identifying as gay despite the general use of the term as a slur, and a general synonym for “dumb or lame” which of course are also not great words. The guys always called themselves gay and the girls would call themselves lesbian, gay, or occasionally d*ke. As a bi women I still treat that last word as mostly off limits as well.
My uncle and his husband also would use the world gay but they mostly talk around any terms. They are of the generation where talking around everything is just ingrained. They openly refer to the husbands or boyfriends of their friends now, but when I was a kid it was always “friend.” I thought it was cute that they also always referred to my boyfriends as just my “friend” in the same way.
Unfortunately you get the other inter generational problems like, my uncle is weird about my trans aunt and doesn’t actually believe I’m bisexual.
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YES. The anti-heteronormative element of “queer” is always lurking in the margins of this discussion.
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I was chatting about this thread with my partner and he reminded me that “queering” is also really important as a verb.
That is also important to academic discussions and as a verb nothing really means quite the same thing at all.
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I’d go back a few years further than that
But even then Queer was well on the way to being reclaimed.
It went from questioning (as I was told in the late 90s-early 2000s) to queer, and now it is going back to questioning. I think the Q in QUILTBAG stands for queer though, as it describes everyone and stops anyone claiming priority by being the first mentioned.
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TIL. I had never heard of the Q being anything other than “queer.” (Still can’t type that without a twinge) Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, I suspect I am far behind you young’uns in this newfangled slang talk y’all do now-a-days, though.
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Wow, that’s surprising. I’m about the same age and I’d say it was the dominant slur I heard in rural NW Missouri. That or f****t, both of which I heard (and was called) daily. Of course, NW Missouri is still currently stuck in about 1996, so I can definitely see a generational shift affecting usage.
Thanks for the excellent discussion, all. This is why I love BBS so much and feel like I can bring weighty topics and have them seriously and not-so-seriously discussed for everyone’s enlightenment. I’m so happy to be living in an era in which this topic can be discussed openly at all and am so very grateful to everyone for sharing their insight and stories.
*just realized that there are now white, brown and black hearts. Neat! Now where are the pastel pink and blue?
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Speaking as a cishet dude, my position (learned mostly from following various non-cishet people online) is that queer’s not a slur. I’m not going to be slinging it around, but neither will I shy from using it if it’s the best descriptor, and it often is. Of course, if someone’s uncomfortable about using it themselves, I definitely don’t want to press it; and if someone fitting under the label, so to speak, is uncomfortable about me using it, I’ll stop using it around them.
I’d be careful who you use it around, A lot of LGBTQ+ people over 70 associate queer with the slur. I don’t, but I’m around 40. I also react badly if people call me a t****y and I know some trans people are trying to reclaim that, I don’t think I will ever be comfortable hearing that word though. Under 40s generally didn’t grow up with queer as an insult so they are fine with it, and it’s the 40-70 age group who did the reclaiming, some of them are OK with it, some of them aren’t.
The general rule is “if in doubt, don’t use it”. If it is something like queer studies or queer anarchism that’s OK, because they have already self identified as queer.
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I think that’s the average around these parts Doc…
Rupaul got in trouble for using that once on Drag Race. In addition to trying to reclaim it, I heard it used in the LGBQT+ community some back in the day as insults to each other. But that is a word that I think will be much harder to reclaim than queer…
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The Q word was a slur through the 70s and 80s when I was growing up. Like @Mindysan33, I associate it with ACT UP. Reclaimed or not, it isn’t a word I am comfortable using even when people self-identify with it.
I asked a gay gen z family member about it; she knows its history, but sees it mostly as a convenient shorthand. Dependent on context and tone, she said she had no issue with its general usage.
FWIW, she is skeptical of efforts to reclaim d**e, which she said has only ever been applied to her as a slur. Personally, I think Alison Bechdel’s long-running and excellent comic strip should have defused that word a long time ago, but I suppose that isn’t how any of this works.
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I suspect there is a fairly large difference between saying “That person is a queer” and “That person is queer” in terms of how offensive it is. The first is reductive whereas the latter is merely descriptive.
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Yeah, context is everything…
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I’ve seen this a lot when it comes to promoting more inclusive language across the board (especially around avoiding ableist language). Seems like good advice for many things when describing a person.
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That’s interestingly a very different life experience from my own. In the late 90s and early aughts, I was very active in the lesbian community, and already “dyke” had been thoroughly reclaimed and defused by then. I mean, the best part of SF Pride is the Dyke March, which I did many times (and is publicly advertised as such). We regularly used the word to categorize each other- bull dykes, diesel dykes, baby dykes, soft dykes, etc.
I’m not questioning her experience of course, just noting it is very different than my own. I will say that I don’t love it when non-queer people use the word, but it doesn’t even make me flinch at all otherwise. It’s a fun word in lesbian circles, honestly! Easy to say and fun to modify.
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The gay community in exurban Massachusetts high schools is… sparse and cautious. What you describe sounds like everything she is hoping for when she gets the heck out of here.
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