#whereas many of my friends who prefer pan describe themselves as not seeing gender at all in their attraction

[missgowgow]

I need to make a “don’t make me tap the sign” meme for queer discourse, how many times do we need to tell people that it’s okay to not describe yourself as queer but that:

a. many people, including myself, find it a much more comfortable label, especially in surface-level conversations where you don’t wanna explain exactly why you prefer the label bisexual over pansexual for your own identity and how it relates to your ever-expanding understanding of gender and how that factors into your attraction but actually both labels are equally valid, or why you identify as genderqueer but still use the pronouns associated with your assigned sex at birth, or that yes you present as very cishet but you’re aroace and wow I thought this was monday morning small talk but now we’re doing a brief history lesson on asexuals and queer history

b. lots of people only ever heard queer in a positive context and heard gay, lesbian, fag, dyke, etc. used as insults. my first introduction to the term queer was in my first introduction to the idea of queer history. my first introduction to gay and lesbian were hushed scandalized whispers and my first introduction to bisexual was a generic movie joke about cheating liars. in my head, queer is tied to the idea of us always existing as a community that fought for each other. if we’re going off of what words have never been used to hurt people, there would be no words left so just let people choose what they want for themselves

c. lots of people act like lgbt/lgbt+ just means gay or lesbian, we barely pay attention to the b or t except to yell at them (especially trans people my god) and the + community might as well not exist. using queer often is a way to prioritize all identities equally

(note: if that’s not your experience with lgbt, I’m genuinely happy for you. I’m glad you don’t have that baggage and if you prefer me to refer to you and your personal community as lgbt I will, but respect my preference to be called queer too please)

I’m not denying the genuine reasons some people have to be against the term queer, but the reasonable accommodation for that discomfort is to ask people to not refer to you as queer, to ask your close friends to not use the word around you if it’s a trigger for you, and to do the internal work to understand that when other people in the community use it, they have chosen to do so for reasons that make sense to them.