“queer” is such a useless term. if i tell someone im bisexual, they know i am attracted to men and women. if a man tells me he is gay, i know he is a man exclusively attracted to other men. if someone tells me they are queer, it tells me nothing about them. it doesnt tell me who they attracted to. it tells me nothing about that person.
It tells me they’re trying to be a extra lil bitch and that I shouldn’t be friends with them
No, you probably shouldn’t, for their sake.
yall realise thats exactly the point, right
queer covers everyone who is noncis or nonstraight
it covers the identities you want to erase or disallow from the community
it doesn’t immediately tell you private information about someone’s sexuality or gender that you aren’t entitled to
and the person in question may not even know themselves, but queer is what they know they can always use if they’re not sure except they know theyre definitely not cis/straight
you hate it because it’s too inclusive and too broad. It’s supposed to be inclusive and broad. If someone tells you they’re queer then all you need to know is that they are in some way not cis or straight and other than that it aint your business. If being told someone’s identity is none of your business pisses you off, thats a you problem
Imagine saying you wont be friends with someone unless they disclose all details of their gender and orientation immediately upon meeting you and still feeling that you’re morally superior
I wonder if lgbt people’s love for elves is that strong bc it was our only way to play gender nonconfirming characters. Even when we didn’t know that its even a thing.
Some basic fantasy rpg in 2003: theres not much difference between male and female elves physique. Also women can fight and men can have long hair. Not like us normal humans amiright! Wink wonk
10 old me: SLAMS PLAY ELF BUTTON
Additional game theory: many LGBT people in their adult lives switch over to loving dwarves because they are also gender nonconforming but in the less “acceptable” way (Not the tall, skinny, femme-androgynous type society considers the “good” androgyne) and instead explore the more masculine/“low effort” form of GNC (less lithe/More body fat, body hair on femme individuals, loud/unashamed behavior) which we were too insecure to explore in our adolescence
“Queerness, to me, is about far more than homosexual attraction. It’s about a willingness to see all other taboos broken down. Sure, many of us start on this path when we first feel “same sex” or “same gender” attraction (though what is sex? And what is gender? And does anyone really have the same sex or gender as anyone else?). But queerness doesn’t stop there.
This is a somewhat controversial stance, but to me queer means something completely different than “gay” or “lesbian” or “bisexual.” A queer person is usually someone who has come to a non-binary view of gender, who recognizes the validity of all trans identities, and who, given this understanding of infinite gender possibilities, finds it hard to define their sexuality any longer in a gender-based way. Queer people understand and support non-monogamy even if they do not engage in it themselves. They can grok being asexual or aromantic. (What does sex have to do with love, or love with sex, necessarily?) A queer can view promiscuous (protected) public bathhouse sex with strangers and complete abstinence as equally healthy.
Queers understand that people have different relationships to their bodies. We get what it means to be stone. We know what body dysphoria is about. We understand that not everyone likes to get touched the same way or to get touched at all. We realize that people with disabilities may have different sexual needs, and that people with survivor histories often have sexual triggers. We can negotiate safe and creative ways to be intimate with people with HIV/AIDs and other STIs.
Queers understand the range of power and sensation and the diversity of sexual dynamics. We are tops and bottoms, doms and subs, sadists and masochists and sadomasochists, versatiles and switches. We know what we like and don’t like in bed.
We embrace a wide range of relationship types. We can be partners, lovers, friends with benefits, platonic sweethearts, chosen family. We can have very different dynamics with different people, often all at once. We don’t expect one person to be able to fulfill all our diverse needs, fantasies and ideals indefinitely.
Because our views on relationships, sex, gender, love, bodies, and family are so unconventional, we are of necessity anti-assimilationist. Because under the kyriarchy we suffer, and watch the people we love suffering, we are political. Because we want to survive, we fight. We only want the freedom to be ourselves, love ourselves, love each other, and live together. Because we are routinely denied that, we are pissed.
Queer doesn’t mean “don’t label me,” it means “I am naming myself.” It means “ask me more questions if you’re curious…“”
This was exactly my reaction when, in 2015, a 15yo on Tumblr came and sent me a load of hate for being “an OMG ACTUAL ADULT” calling myself ‘queer’ and using ‘queer community’.
Like, how to put this. In Australia since the early 90s, ‘queer’ has been the accepted term to call that community. It’s a mainstream word. We say ‘queer theory’, ‘queer community’, ‘queer organisations’, etc. Another Australian who words for the government said it’s a perfectly acceptable term to use in policy documents and funding applications. Here, in Australia, queer hasn’t been a slur at any point in my life. The only Australians I’ve ever come across who think it’s a slur are people who spend too much time around American youths on social media.
I did a post about the international queer community, it got 5-7k notes (ish) and people from at least 10 other countries said ‘queer’ is not a slur in their country and it’s just the word that’s used for the queer community.
This is why it drives me nuts when a 15yo from South Carolina, USA assumes:
1) Her experience with ‘queer’ is the same as everybody else’s
2) A small number of people having a bad experience with ‘queer’ is an acceptable reason to deny and police usage by the entire wider international queer community
The short of it is that it’s not acceptable. Many older queer folks have used this word for decades – it’s been in common use since at least the 80s. In the past 3 years it’s become very fashionable (mostly only on Tumblr, but on pockets of social media elsewhere, too) to treat queer as this Big Bad Slur (forgetting that there are many other slurs and most of our language gets used as slurs at some point by various people) and to pop up on every fucking post that mentions queer like “UM EXCUSE ME IT’S FINE FOR YOU TO CALL YOURSELF QUEER BUT IT’S LITERAL ABUSE FOR YOU TO USE IT FOR OTHER PEOPLE LIKE AS AN UMBRELLA TERM AND YOU ARE A BAD PERSON!!!”
like. babe. I’ve never met you in my life. You live an entire world away from me and you can’t tell me what language I’m allowed to use for myself and my own community. If you don’t like the word, you have trauma associated with it or whatever, I accept that. I feel for you, I have trauma about some words, too. USE XKIT BLACKLIST. Your trauma is your problem, just like my trauma is my problem. Yes, really. Get counselling. It’s not everyone else’s responsibility to change their identities and language because of your trauma. That’s not a lack of empathy from me, that’s a hard life lesson you need to learn about the world not revolving around you. I am not abusing anyone by using the language I’ve always used about my own community.
It’s not the end of your world, though. You’re not doomed to read ‘queer’ all over tumblr forever. There are many many many tools available for you to protect yourself and avoid triggers. You should be responsible for yourself and your experience online and protect yourself from seeing things that upset you.
“BUT I’M A MINOR!!”, you cry! okay, true. Get up from the computer, go directly to your parent or guardian, and let them know you’re not old enough to police your own internet usage and ask them to do it for you. It is not my responsibility to take care of you. It is no one else on Tumblr’s responsibility to take care of you. The internet is not just for kids. If you can’t take care of yourself, your parents need to help you do that.
The short of it is if you’re old enough to know the word ‘queer’ upsets you, you’re old enough to download xkit blacklist and add ‘queer’ to the blacklist words. If you’re not doing that, I have to assume you’re actually trying to pick fights with queer people and it’s more of a power struggle to you than anything about semantics.
“BUT I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO USE XKIT! IT’S AN EASY CHANGE FOR YOU!” Dude, you’re asking me to change my whole identity. You’re asking me to change my lexicon for you. It’s not an easy or fair change for you to ask me to make. Xkit is a quick and easy solution for you (and now, you can use the tumblr innate tag blocks, too). If that’s too much for you to do, I have a feeling you’re just looking for a fight and not actually traumatised by ‘queer’.
NEVER. NEVER. Come onto a queer person’s post and start telling them anything about how to use their word. Queer folks get policed and oppressed enough by cishet folks. We don’t need people from our own community trying to police our language and language we’ve used for decades and continue to use in many countries and in many parts of the US.
There is absolutely no reason to derail posts being “””””””helpful”””””””” by repeatedly, constantly, aggressively spreading rhetoric that shames people for using language we have used for ourselves and our community for decades. Your problem with the word queer should not be my problem, so don’t make it my problem.
“Gay Migration fandom moves along lines of identity; that is, it comes to a show because someone said, “There’s lesbians here.” It regularly jumps across genre lines to do so, and very often, if it shows up in the middle of a show’s run, it does not bother to familiarize itself with previous seasons, core messages, pre-existing dynamics—in short, what makes that show tick. The pairing is all. As is the desired outcome: Some variant of “gets married and rides off into the sunset.” Which, we could all probably stand to see more of. However, given that ends-based approach, it makes sense that some frustrations around how queer stories are handled in that segment of fandom can be traced back to a fundamental misunderstanding—or total lack of understanding—about how different genres work. Their expectations are calibrated not by their sense of how a particular type of show might behave, or the kinds of topics they can expect it to address, or even if romantic relationships will be very important at all. Instead, their expectations are calibrated by their own regularly evolving idea of what gay stories are or should be, down to specific character beats and archetypes—which are often a function of a show’s genre, and not the disrespect of the writing staff. This in turn is shaped by experiences in previous fandoms, and heavily influenced by internal fanwank, negative interactions with production and writing staff on other shows, and other concurrent online arguments about gay culture and identity. In short, their expectations of the show are influenced by everything but the individual show itself.”
—
Genre and the Gay Migration | The Fandomentals (via marieduplessis)
Really? This sounds like BS. Everyone I know who jumps to a new show because it has a gay character starts binging the show,from the first episode. This sounds like someone trying to shift the blame to queer people, us not being happy with the shitty repsentation we get.
‘shut up and be happy we included you for a little bit, yes the character died,but it isn’t my fault, it just made sense to the story!!!You’re just still mad they killed your fave on that other show!’
Yes,I’m still mad!I’m mad about all of the characters that are importent to minorities that get killed off/disappears, who seldom is shown the respect they deserve, because rep IS different for us. People who see themselves everywhere in everything just.don’t.get.it.
We should be allowed to ask for better.
Agreed. Speaking from my own experience, I’ve binged shows because they had gay/lesbian/bisexual characters. Given how many people in fandom are not straight, this seems like passing the buck – “Oh, it’s not our writing that’s shitty. You just don’t know the genre! Why should we have to do better? You didn’t even watch the show!” So, yeah – sounds like crap to me, and making excuses for lazy writing.
okay so like
i get that y’all are angry but also: did you actually read the article? because even if you had a valid point against just this excerpt (which i don’t think you do), context still matters, and you seem to have missed all of the context of the article.
But we don’t need just one story. We need all of our stories. We are not monolithic in our experiences of our identity, and we are not monolithic in the stories we need.
And ultimately, the best way to negotiate that is to understand and maintain a language that allows us to express and define what we’re looking for, what we get out of our stories. Genre is one of those languages.
“we’re allowed to ask for better” yeah okay sure but also: that’s the whole point of the article? that queer peoples’ representation should be expanding beyond just its own subgenre into broader genres, where it’s no longer the sole focus of the media. that queer stories are human stories and should be told as human stories.
the whole point of the article is that queer stories should exist outside of just the three shelves of the queer section at the local bookstore and that they should be part of broader literary genres. and you know what? putting queer people in horror stories, and sci-fi stories, and cheesy romance stories, and fantasy stories, and pretentious “literary” stories where the protagonist escapes to the seaside and spends 350 pages mentally fellating themselves because the world doesn’t understand them, is important and also requires a functional integration of them into the genre and its associated requirements. that was the point of the article.
it’s not that bad or lazy writing shouldn’t be called out when it happens, because it should. it’s that as much as there are harmful tropes regarding queer characters that writers should avoid, there are unavoidable facets of genre that readers should be aware of when they consume pieces of that genre. as harmful as negative tropes about queer people are, so too is the polar opposite: avoiding possible negative associations or unhappy stories for queer characters within a genre where negative or unhappy things happen to everyone, simply because they are queer.
the advancement of queer people in media won’t come by elevating them to an untouchable status, but by advancing them to a place of equality with their straight counterparts. because queer stories are human stories, and human stories don’t always have happy endings. but people within the gay migration mentioned in the excerpt in the op aren’t looking for human stories, they’re looking for exclusively positive stories. to wit: the massive influx of queer fans into the supergirl fandom in season two when alex’s queer storyline came about who blew several self-righteous gaskets when alex and maggie split up over an extremely human and realistic reason. nobody died, nobody cheated, nobody did anything wrong; the just wanted different things, and that broke them up. a wholly respectable and respectful reason to end a queer relationship, handle one of the actors leaving the show, and still leave the door open both for the remaining actor to have other romantic storylines and for the leaving actor to return later on. and yet people were still bellowing about how it was homophobic and terrible and disrespectful, because the queer character was sad.
the point of this article was that equality of representation of queer people in media requires acknowledging (1) the potential downsides of telling queer stories as human stories, and (2) that as queer representation is making its most significant strides within genre fiction, acknowledgement of the tropes and standards of that genre are required in the functional understanding and appreciation of those genres.
This is the greatest progression of events I have ever read, where’s my historical gay romance novel about this
KING JAMES, CAN YOU CHILL?
Local King Cannot Stop Promoting His Boyfriend
where’s the lush period drama about this series of events?
fun thing about king James, this guy was fairly public about his bf (more public than what was acceptable). He threw lots of extravagant parties with his man on his arm. It pissed off the church obviously so to get them off his back, he’s the one that ordered the third translation of the Bible from Hebrew to English (the King James Version aka the Authorized Version) so the Bible every hot blooded all American Christian reads today was literally just written so a very gay king could fuck his boyfriend in peace.
oh my god this is hilarious
“guys, guys. I know this looks kinda gay, and i promise i have a good explanation for all this, but have you considered… that jesus… is also gay? checkmate, heteros.”
James I is the most potent example of Big Dick Energy in history
Holy shit. Holy fuck. I got my little sister the book “sex is a funny word” because she’s at that age where she’s reading a lot of puberty books and I’d heard that this one was lgbtq+ friendly, but I was checking it over for accuracy and I gotta say, even with the totally gender neutral language they were using to talk about body parts and the really respectful way they talk about gender and their portrayals of same sex couples I was so fucking sure that I would have to mention that not everyone gets crushes or feels attraction separately. Because these books never talk about that. But here it is. The one thing I was so absolutely sure wouldn’t be included.
I honest to god dropped the book when I saw this I was so shocked. And I’m so fucking happy right now. I can’t exspress how much I wish this was mentioned in the books I read when I was a kid. It would have saved me so much confusion, and I’m so happy that kids today are gonna read this and know that it’s okay and normal to not get curses. I’m so so fucking happy you have no idea.
wild idea here but… instead of pushing this idea that teenagers can’t be asexual bc they’re children and not wanting sex is normal, how about “if you identify as ace as a teenager but later realize you just didn’t want sex bc you were a kid and stop identifying that way, that’s okay” and realizing that doesn’t mean no one can know they’re asexual as a teenager and stop maybe telling asexual teenagers that they’re too young to be ace bc that’s really weird given that teenagers are cetainly capable of being non-asexual also you totally can’t decide something like that for someone else
‘Here is your label, you can never change it’ is one of the most toxic things I’ve ever seen and honestly is the worst parts of pretty much any community there is. It keeps people from being willing to change or even self-reflect, because once they get a label it’s impossible to free themselves from it. And it’s behind all the ridiculous ‘well at one point you said a thing that all these years later in a different context doesn’t sound all that good so you’re a bigot and everything you do is terrible’ nonsense going around this hellsite.
teenagers especially need to be able to say “this is where i’m at now, it could change later, it’s valid either way,” because they’re still evolving really fast
anyone at any time in life can discover something new about themself and no one gets to tell them what they’re feeling
YES, and also??
The argument that “you could find out in the future you’re not ace, so you can’t identify as ace NOW” has an underlying sense that… identifying as ace is BAD. It makes it sound like identifying as ace is something you absolutely should not do until you’re 100% certain, because maybe it isn’t that bad, maybe you’re normal and you just don’t know it yet!
It’s the same mentality, I find, as people who think being gay or lesbian is a horrible fate you wouldn’t chose if you could, something you would change if it was possible. The same mentality that says you can’t be trans unless you’re horribly dysphoric all the time.
They treat the decision of identifying as asexual as some serious life-sentence instead of, you know, a simple way of exploring your identity??
Not to mention letting ace teens know that asexuality exists and it’s okay to identify as ace will help them not jump into sexual situations they may not be comfortable with but feel like they have to because media constantly shoved it down their throats that having sex and being sexual is a necessary part of romantic relationships, and they could spend years feeling broken and confused why they don’t feel that way when it seems like everyone else around them does.
THAT LAST COMMENT THO
if I’d known asexuality was a real thing when I was a teen, oh gods, just think of all the years, the DECADES of feeling horrible and broken and worthless that I could’ve skipped! not to mention the times I forced myself to do things I didn’t really want to do, but felt like maybethis time I’d like it, because other people liked it so eventually I’d like it too, right?
yeah, I never did, and I wish I could go back and tell past-me that she didn’t have to do those things and it was okay not to want to, because no one else told me that.
so for the love of whatever god you believe in, let kids and teens identify however they feel is right! GIVE THEM THE FREEDOM TO FIGURE IT OUT! let them say “I don’t want this right now, and maybe not ever” and not feel obligated to be “normal” in ways that they could seriously regret later! and if later they change their mind and say “okay, you know what, maybe I do actually want that,” SO MCFREAKIN WHAT? it doesn’t mean they never felt that way, it doesn’t mean they’re appropriating or faking or whatever. it means they’re still growing and learning! I kinda thought that’s what people were supposed to do as they grew up? since when is growth and learning a bad thing?
i'll apple your turnover 