Gays: How do you feel about being called "queer"?

[JoeAg]

I mostly just use bisexual and gay as self-descriptors. day-to-day, I say I'm a bisexual man, but if i'm in certain moods i'll be casually like "oh yeah I'm so f*ckin gay!"

 

I think some people don't realize that "gay" can also be an umbrella term. like yes I'm pretty f*cking gay, but i don't ONLY like men! I'm into women, non-binary people... my ex best friend (who I also would hookup with) hated when I said that I was gay because it confused her! but she's also bi so I was expecting her to understand but she just couldn't get a grasp on it, kinda frustrating tbh

 

i digress. yes, I feel fine with being called queer! I don't usually describe myself that way but i definitely don't mind it at all

[JoeAg]

oh i also definitely say "the queer community" most of the time, but also sometimes "the gay community" and "the LGBTQ community"

[Pop Life]

In my experience this almost feels like a generational divide within the community. Alot of gay men over 30 grew up during a time when that word was still used as a slur.

 

I think it's a useful umbrella term for talking about the community as a whole and about individuals within it who might not neatly fit one box. I personally also have a fondness for reclaiming slurs, and see no problem with "queer" also meaning "weird" or "different." I am different, and I'm also kind of weird – what's wrong with that?

Edited February 7, 2023 by Pop Life

[iconicyayo]

46 minutes ago, feelslikeadream said:

I study/teach queer history and literature for a living, so I'm obviously fine with it (and also find it kind of bizarre how people are opposed to it )

genuinely curious, surely studying / teaching queer history would make it very apparent to you why people would be opposed to it? since traditionally, at least in older gen z (like myself) and probs millennials too, it was used only as an insult to mock and degrade gays / effeminate men. in the uk it was a much more common insult than f*g actually since f*g is used more for cigarettes here lmao. 

 

personally, i don’t identify with the label and ideally wouldn’t be called queer. gay is fine enough. but i wouldn’t get offended by someone saying it with good intentions, maybe just give me the ick a little.  

[velocity]

hate it and lowkey side eye everyone who uses it

[niiall]

Some people are very eager to reclaim a slur they were never actually called, it just feels weird

 

Besides that it doesn't bother me but there is much more nuance to it than the corporate pride logo'd "accept everyone!!!" crowd believes

Edited February 7, 2023 by niiall

[loveisdead9582]

Queer was used as a slur for a long time. I do not like hearing it - especially as a blanket term. 

[Subzero]

3 minutes ago, niiall said:

Some people are very eager to reclaim a slur they were never actually called, it just feels weird

^ 100%

 

Hate it and would never use it. Don't care if anyone else does, go for it but I don't and don't wish to be referred as it either. And I don't like it being used as a blanket term either, I just say gay or lgbt.

 

I grew up with bullies calling me it, once even at knife point. It's no different than the word f*ggot to me and I have no interest in reclaiming words that were used as abuse to me, but that's just me.

 

But like I said, call yourself whatever you'd like but don't call me it and we're all good. 

[BGKC]

I just think it’s just simpler to refer the community as the Queer community than it is spelling it out. Seeing straights with good intentions struggle to string together LGBTQ+ is hard to watch. It’s already bad enough to watch homophobes intentionally butcher it like it’s a joke. 

[Into The Void]

Id prefer to be called gay i never really identified as queer idk

[Redstreak]

I like it and think it’s a great umbrella term. I’ve never really understood the “it’s a slur” discourse. The word “gay” was the big insult for me growing up but it would be ludicrous to use that to tell people to stop using “gay” as an identifier

[Richmond]

2 hours ago, Beyonnaise said:

I feel the same way as him. I just don't like being called the term. It basically still feels like "f*g". Queer was a word I only ever heard used as a biting slur against gay effeminate men until about five years ago, and I will never adopt it in a reclaiming way. I understand why some gay or bi people use it, but it's also simultaneously being used as a catch-all for "outside the norm" behavior, like a straight guy wearing chipped nail polish. I have no desire to distance myself from trans people and think there's usefulness in us joining together against conservatives, but I think "LGBT" does that job fine as a sociopolitical grouping.

Wheew not this perfectly articulating my thoughts on the topic

[CBC]

ugly ass term 

[JustLikeHoney]

As a community it's fine because it describes us as a whole but individually it seems derogatory. 

 

[Sergi91]

It’s offensive 

[feelslikeadream]

1 hour ago, iconicyayo said:

genuinely curious, surely studying / teaching queer history would make it very apparent to you why people would be opposed to it? since traditionally, at least in older gen z (like myself) and probs millennials too, it was used only as an insult to mock and degrade gays / effeminate men. in the uk it was a much more common insult than f*g actually since f*g is used more for cigarettes here lmao. 

 

personally, i don’t identify with the label and ideally wouldn’t be called queer. gay is fine enough. but i wouldn’t get offended by someone saying it with good intentions, maybe just give me the ick a little.  

That's a very fair question. What I meant more specifically by my comment is that researching queer has helped me understand more fully how the term has been used historically, and this knowledge has made me very comfortable with the word. Based on what I know, I have trouble seeing it as a problematic term. However, I also understand that many people do not know much queer history, which is understandable—it isn't taught in schools much, except in special topics courses like I teach. In other words, knowing its history does not make it apparent to me why people are opposed to it; rather, I think people are opposed to it because they do not know its history.

 

For example, you note that the term was "traditionally... used only as an insult." Another user said, "Alot of gay men over 30 grew up during a time when that word was still used as a slur." Another said, "people in the LGBTQ+ community want to reclaim the word" (emphasis mine). These comments speak to what I see as a mistaken understanding that reclamation of queer is a recent phenomenon, that the term enjoyed decades of use as a slur, but that the community has recently decided to reclaim it. This is very far from true, which brings up a few important points as to why I think queer is an appropriate word to use for the community and why its use is historically important.

 

1. Black Feminism & Queer Reclamation

The entire field of queer studies/theory is rooted in the Black feminist thought that emerged most legibly in the 1960s and '70s. Frustrated with the whiteness of the women's movement (i.e. second wave feminism), queer Black women formed their own groups to advance a politics that accounted for what the Combahee River Collective called "overlapping systems of oppression" (and what today we think of as intersectionality).

 

They also had a lot of issues with the gay liberation movement, most famously framed around the Stonewall uprising (1969). Their issue was that the politics of gay liberation so often focused on white gays; white gay men were in leadership positions most of the time and refused to apply an intersectional framework to their political agenda. Many of the Black feminists in this period thus described themselves as queer specifically because gay carried connotations of cis white men. (Many identified as lesbians too, of course, but that term was actually not as embraced as we might assume now; because the term was often used as a slur by white feminists, many of the queer feminists at the time still preferred the umbrella term queer.)

 

My point here is that the term was "reclaimed" in the 1970s by Black feminists, whose work forms the foundation of modern queer studies. As a contemporary queer scholar, I see it as important to continue thinking capaciously about queerness, and not to limit my sexuality to the simplicity of "gayness."

 

2. Queer Nation & the Radical Potential of Queerness

While queer was being used casually by queer writers and activists in the '70s (the era of gay liberation), it wasn't until the AIDS crisis hit the US that the term really became mainstream not only as an umbrella term for the LGBTQ+ community, but as a reference to radical, anti-assimilationist politics. Queer Nation is one of the most important activist groups in queer history, formed out of ACT UP!, a group that challenge Reagan and the government's inaction on HIV/AIDS. As activists in this period used queer so often, it went beyond its niche use in queer activist circle and became mainstream.

 

 

Groups like Queer Nation didn't use the term solely because it worked as an umbrella term, but because it challenge the status quo in other ways. We can see how queer became a verb in this way: to queer something is to call out and challenge its normativity, to make it more complicated, diverse, and open to change. I personally embrace this use of queer, both in noun and verb, rooted as it is in the queer progressive politics of the late 20th century.

 

3. Most Simply of All: The Convenient Label of Queer Studies/Theory 

Given the mainstreaming and reclamation of queer in the 1970s and '80s, the growing field of queer theory used queer to label its work. Queer of color critique followed at the turn of the 21st century. To do any work in queer & queer of color theory, you have to read and say the word constantly. I understand not everyone here is interested in queer theory, has ties to the academy, etc., but the term is needed to talk about these fields and useful in discussing the politics of non-cishet people, as other terms/phrases are a mouthful  

 

Hopefully I explained this clearly enough, but basically, I see both my own queer identity and the study of queerness via its history, where it has been wielded in various conditions as a statement of nonconformity, even within LGBT subcommunities. I understand that I have a very Americanized lens on the issue, as an American myself; I don't know how queer was used in other countries, so your perspective may certainly be shaped by your being raised in the UK. I also know that in some places, people use the word as a slur, but mama, the term was reclaimed 50 years ago, so those people are just out of touch! I can't let them efface my queerness just because they're living in the past 

[fountain]

Queer is the most useful and applicable term that there is. I think some people might have missed the point because I don’t really understand why someone might feel the need to have to pick between gay or queer… like, you can identify as gay and still be queer; you don’t have to pick one over the other and it’s an odd train of thought that you do and are only allowed to use one… like that’s literally the point of the word, to be an all encompassing term (while the more specific identities are a part of that overall). The argument that queer shouldn’t be used due to its association as a slur is pretty nonsensical too since gay is also used as a slur, so I’m afraid absolutely no points were made there. Typically from what I have seen a lot of the people who want to distance themself from the phrase queer usually have bigoted views (whether they are conscious of it or want to admit it or not) against the other parts of the community that they are not part of. So, there’s that too. 

[Sweet Sexy Savage]

As an individual? Nope

as a community/plural form yes

 

[Abracadabra]

It doesn't bother me, but I wouldn't use it to describe myself

[Jack.]

I have a life with more important things to worry about so couldn’t care less 

[Obsession]

Sometimes I call myself "queer". I mostly date and/or am attracted to men, but I am still open and attracted to people of any gender. 

 

Sometimes I call myself pansexual, or bisexual. Sometimes I just call myself gay. I think we put way too much stock in labels but I do think "queer" has a political subtext to it that a lot of other labels don't and sometimes, I purposefully identify as queer because I'm interested in the political discussion. 

Edited February 8, 2023 by Obsession

[brazil]

I like how we're reclaiming it and it feels good term to include the whole community 

[rebeltwat]

I use it as an umbrella term, much better than LGBTQIA2S+ 

[Raphy23]

I like it because it’s inclusive of all sexualities.

 

Also for me “gay” was used as a slur more than queer. Like ****** was definitely #1, but the “are you gay?” was a close second. Which is why gay still makes my heart drop into my stomach. 

[Bubble Tea]

I hate the term queer for myself, it sounds undecided or unsure which I am not. However I do appreciate the function of labels and its better to have a word than the whole alphabet mafia acronym.

 

I guess I just hate it because "queer" to me means weird or strange, so I always feel that when people say it. "The queer community" makes me think of like, mutants or something.