#who casually uses the word queer to refer to my community

[karlachismylife]

Venting about transphobia and homophobia (no details, just in general) and my struggles with gender identity, I just had to yell into the void because yeah

The fucking whiplash between getting constantly subtly gender affirmed here on Tumblr by people casually using different pronouns/gendered words for me and just seeing a nice accepting community with all kinds of beautiful people both cis and trans coexisting and effortlessly - and then talking to someone outside it who is passive aggressively transphobic (not to me per se but it doesn't make it any better). And the only response to confronting them about it is "erm I didn't say anything" yeah bitch you didn't have to, you gave off enough signals without running around yelling death threats.

Makes me angry because it took me such a long time to come to terms with me actually being the most comfortable identifying as genderqueer. I was so mad at myself for potentially just "following the trend" cuz I barely encountered dysphoria and I was comfortable with my assigned at birth name and pronouns. With my parts. I am still regularly falling into the pit of doubt cuz what if I'm just confused. Because I don't have any "factual" evidence of being queer outside the fact that saying that feels so much more right than saying any other gender.

bitch sometimes i still doubt that i even am pansexual becuse my sense of self is so warped and even my priviledged life doesn't have much affirmation and support because no one wants to get 6-10 years of prison for being in the "extremist movement of LGBT". why are you making it harder for me to cling to any little thing i think i know about myself.

I hate that someone managed to package transphobia as some sort of feminism and sell it to people.

The only thing I'm clinging to is the fact that identifying myself with a monkey/ape stuck with me so much longer and tighter than identifying with any gender. It might be a stupid thing to use as proof, but it's just. The fact that I do not have any solid ties to any gender identity is what I'm trying to express so clumsily. I am literally more sure in my place outside human society than in its gender spectrum. It's such an undefined thing that I probably will never feel confident about it.

But I know for a fact that my heart sings when someone drops a they/them referring to me. And you know who you are, but your "good boy, sweet girl" in a row is stuck with me forever. And you with your "wife, gender neurtal" too.

those are small things but they fucking mean actually the world to me.

[thestobingirlie]

This isn't just a st fandom problem, it stretches across fandom as a whole.

But I think people focus on and constantly bring up Steve's 'sins'/ asshole behaviour while ignoring everyone else's because fandom seems to consider homophobia the 'worst' kind of bigotry. They can ignore racism, sexism, ableism, but they can't excuse homophobia. They only care about any other type of bigotry if they can use it to prove a point.

They bring up Steve being homophobic for using 'queer' against Jonathan in season 1 but they ignore

The kid's, particularly Dustin and Lucas, casual ableism in s1, when they kept referring to El as 'the psycho' and talking about her escaping from Pennhurst, calling it a 'nuthouse', constantly referring to her as the weirdo or the freak

Jonathan's ableism in s2 when he refers to the kids as Will's 'spazzy friends'

Billy's misogyny, referring to the girls of Hawkins High as cows.

Billy's racism. Everything about the way he treated Lucas. Just because the actor refused to say the N word, doesn't make the character not racist. There is more to racism than just using slurs.

Jonathan's casual misogyny, the way he talks to and treats Nancy at times, especially in s1 when they're talking about the photos. And the way he talks to and treats Joyce at times.

These are just some of the examples I can think of just from the top of my head. But they all get ignored or swept under the carpet, because 'not that big of a deal.'

All bigotry is bad. But Steve is the only character that has shown a hint of bigotry and then been shown to move past it. To make amends and show that he is now accepting of it. No matter how much people try to claim that Steve accepting Robin as a lesbian isn't proof of him no longer being homophobic. As if lesbians are somehow less gay than gay men.

i think because the majority of the fandom is gay, they just… don’t really give a fuck about other forms of bigotry.

they really think that homophobia is the worst that it gets. and that homophobia really only seems to apply to gay men, because the way they treat bisexuals and lesbians is…. jarring. to say the least.

obviously the show is set in the 80s, so it’s not like the bigotry is… totally unexpected or out of place. but i don’t think it’s treated or written right within the show, and i think that’s one of the factors that makes people so comfortable with ignoring it.

steve’s homophobia is unambiguously portrayed as the wrong thing. as steve’s lowest point. the actions he has to claw his way back from. but the bigotry within other aspects of the show is just… ignored. it’s just a joke. or not that serious. the characters aren’t punished or proved wrong. (i do kinda think that’s because a lot of bigotry was inadvertent, and more reflective of the duffers as people rather than because they were trying to accurately portray an 80s society. but whatever).

steve’s homophobia being treated as the biggest bad is also kinda weird to me because it doesn’t really have… a ‘real’ target, so to speak. like, the parties ableism is directed towards el, who, while she doesn’t have a canonical disability, is developmentally behind and raised in a lab. jonathan’s misogyny is directed at nancy and joyce, his ableism is directed towards the party, and therefore dustin. billy’s racism is directed towards lucas and his misogyny is spoken to max.

whereas steve (I AM NOT CONDONING HIS ACTIONS THEY ARE WRONG!!!) calls jonathan a queer. who is not a gay man. while it’s still obviously wrong and homophobic, the target of his homophobia is not a member of the community. and yet, people treat his comment as if it’s the worst form of bigotry on the show.

they’re willing to overlook everything else. they’re willing to perpetuate lesbophobia and biphobia, racism and misogyny. they’re willing to write thousands of outing fics where the outing isn’t portrayed as wrong. but steve saying the word queer? unforgivable.

(honestly, though steve’s homophobia is the only form of bigotry that we see treated as wrong and we see a demonstration of steve’s growth later in the seasons. i don’t know if we can even give the duffers that, because robin wasn’t originally going to be a lesbian. which means the duffers were never planning on dealing with any of the bigotry in the show in a meaningful matter. but that’s a different conversation)

[thedreadvampy]

Also speaking of 2012 Tumblr censorship Discourse I feel a desire to clarify this stuff about the need for discomforting language is Unambiguously Not About Slurs

and if you think those come under the same discussion of discomforting words then I invite you to think about who coins words and for what purpose

Discomforting words like "rape" and "death" are words used to describe the discomfort which comes from an experience

Slurs are words used to create discomfort in or about a person's identity

There's some muddy area around self-identifiers for marginalised/stigmatised groups - ie some self-identifiers are reclamations of slurs (queer, dyke), and as well, when people are conditioned to be discomforted by a group of people, any word which describes those people can be both used as a slur and treated as discomforting language (gay, lesbian) - because the insult and the discomfort is the comparison to a stigmatised group

and I think the reason this is important is partially that the response to that language should be different

I very much believe it's important to use specific, meaningful language over comfortable euphemism when we're talking about discomforting topics. And although I hate that we're this in hock to advertising algorithms, I would much rather someone talk about a discomforting topic using specific but censored language (eg r4p3, that thing YouTubers do where they say "when I say 'hamburger' I mean" ["rape"]. I don't like SA in this context but that's only bc sexual assault is much less specific than rape). It's imperfect, but it retains the weight of the issue much more fully than talking around it or avoiding talking about it. Tbh in circumstances of external censorship, I don't mind unalive or sewerslide or le dollar bean or whatever - it's a way to continue talking about the thing you want to talk about. It's when you carry it on out of circumstances that necessitate it, or begin to believe that you're avoiding the original words because they're Ontologically Evil, that it becomes a problem.

Slurs, on the other hand, are words designed as weapons, so in that case yeah it is appropriate to use euphemism or talk about them indirectly. It used to drive me nuts on Ye Olde Tumblr where people would use slurs in casual speech but put a star in there (hard to give examples bc I'm very uncomfortable Doing It but along the lines of "you're acting like a r*tard") as if that was what denatured a slur. And my position then, as now, was that (other than in reported speech, which is where that asterisk-censor might be appropriate) you either think the word's a slur, in which case don't use it, or you don't, in which case why are you censoring it?

Again, there's grey areas. Simplified: slurs are words which draw power from marginalised groups; to the degree that self-identifiers are Discomforting Words, it's because they draw power to marginalised groups by naming their experiences. Obviously things get muddy when different people use the same word differently.

To use the classic example: is queer a slur? yes. is queer a self-identifier for a community which power would prefer to invisibilise? also yes.

there's some personal discernment to use there on how it's appropriate, therefore, to approach this word. Should it be embraced, and censored only under sufferance, because it describes an experience which is valuable to have the language for, which may be discomforting to some but is a part of people's lives experience? Or should it be avoided and referred to only obliquely, because it's a slur? Which outweighs the other? Am I discomforted by the word, or by what it describes? By avoiding speaking it, am I avoiding speaking the word or avoiding speaking about what it describes? Who does it serve to say the word? Who does it serve to avoid it?

obviously by the fact I said "queer," my opinion is clear. but there are words about which there are similar debates that I wouldn't use because I land on 'I'm avoiding the word not the concept' - the n-word would be the most obvious example. I'm not saying the n-word because I have other, non-derogatory ways to refer to Black people, and because it isn't a word that the people it refers to would generally use to self-describe.

but yeah like there's words which inspire discomfort because they describe a discomforting thing. and if you wanna talk about the discomforting thing you have to be willing to be discomforted.

then there's words which create discomfort in their own right. slurs, insults, expletives, etc. Censoring those words isn't censoring the thing they describe, it's censoring the Words Themselves

I think it's an important thing to discern is all

[zaneswhite]

this is a genuine question, as a white trans guy who grew up surrounded by cishet white baptists in a town so small that it doesnt have a walmart or mcdonalds: i have only learned of the words stud and stem within the last 5 years. but i have just now learned of the words bulldyke and bulldagger. im literally just unaware of these terms, so im sorry if i shouldn't be using them so straightforward in a sentence like this and please do let me know if i shouldn't. my question is, is the term Bull appropriated from poc vernacular? i have seen the term bull used before in predominantly gay men's communities, and of course as a term in the (predominantly cishet) cuckoldry communities. (and i could have just been oblivious the whole time, but i also didnt pick up whether or not a bull is usually a poc?) but i have never seen bull used in the way that you mentioned in that comment on a post that you reblogged. i feel like i may have some reading to do.

Words like bull and buck being used to describe black men came from slavery. Black people were literally considered a cattle equivalent, hence the farm animal association. We were considered farm tools in the same cows were.

“Bulldagger” is a word used to describe a black lesbian woman who had “masculine mannerisms” like being very strong, being emotionally reserved, and being gentlemanly. And yeah, it was only used for black women. Black drag kings, casual black cross-dressing women, black butch lesbians, so on. The word was originally not considered offensive in the black community during 1920s Harlem but y’all know, certain people gotta ruin a good thing.

(Disclaimer, I’m not a lesbian, just a black queer who dresses masc and hits on men and women alike. I’ve been referred to as a bulldagger before by older black women so I be knowing things but not all the things. Black lesbians please add to this if you wish.)

[sixshotsofespressoinabigcup]

I'm here for about a week, feeding soley on GO materials and now I feel like someone whose late to the party for a blasted decade really. Saying it's a ride would be the understatment of the century. It is such a ride if the thing can be manifested into a rollercoaster it would surpass the ride of death.

A good one though, we seems to reclaim all the verbs, nouns, adjectives and so on for the word faggot, the word refering to the seeding structure of plants became reference for the pinnacle of homosexuality. I'm so overwhelmed to the point I pulled a Daivd Tennant(the eggplant emoji saga) the first time I saw the show being discribed as "fruity" and the leads are "fagging it up" by go on with an internal "What's that suppose to mean" blabber before realizing I should maybe consult urban dictionary for that.

Even though I still haven't figure out how exactly the tag system works, I still adores this place and especially the crowd here. I can openly be in the LGBTQIA+ community without weird side glances, people use pronouns with no fuss, the atmosphere doesn't reek of patirarchy superiority complex, misogyny and casual sexism nonsense. Views are exchanged, arts are made, discussing domestic politics are safe and no one will tell you to shut up and it's fine if we are on different sides, I thank the heavens sex is just sex here it's not some diabolical rituals that can't be shown or discussed. Also I have yet to encouter any kind of cencorship while I worried about the "we will muffle you for the most trivial reason and we will muffle you so hard you'll choke but you're gonna like it" kind of cencorship I need to constantly worry about back in that bottomless pit or aka chinese internet. The show and its fandom somehow...stood out. It's a big hit around the globe while being so unapologetically queer. I've seen the queerbait then no-homo thing played out so often I almost refused to believe there are other canon screen romances other than the cishet options. Here comes Good Omens, standing out unapologetically in that traffic like a black vintage Bentley going 90mph unapologetically in central London.

It feels good. It feels like to breath again after a long time, didn't know you were suffocating until the moment you do.

In all honesty, I only initially felt like someone who's late to the party, I feel like some interstellar refugee who just landed on a brand new planet later. I expect it to be just as barren and devestated as home because after years and years of futile searching you just forget how to be optimistic again.

I am most pleasantly suprised.

I can really sum this whole thing up by "Close Autocratic-Regime-Controlled internet is blasphemous SHIT and after practically Shawshanked myself out into the open with a VPN and get to live in it a bit I start to dispise that pile of pustulant blasphemous shit even more" but no, I deserved my rant, you guys deserved the praise.

[thebreakfastgenie]

Since this has come up again I gotta say I disagree with you about the use of the word. I think it’s bizarre to call it a slur that is extremely offensive to use and then also say it’s been “defanged” in the same breath. I also think it’s strange that I’m sure I have seen you reblogging posts about why people ID with slurs but then you also say that use of slurs is just “edgy” and “white noise”.

I assume you’re not really interested in a good faith discussion about it but the gist of it in my opinion is as follows.

1. Many people have had these slurs weaponised against them and using them in a casual context or self-identifying with them allows them to reclaim them in a positive way and take away the power of them. I.e. this isn’t a scary word because it was shouted out a car window at me or used by the person who assaulted me. I am not scared of this word. This word is who I am and I am okay with that.

2. Some people find that words commonly used as slurs feel more true to their experience than the polite, socially acceptable versions of the words. This can be for a variety of reasons but one I’ve commonly seen is that they feel as though the softer word is shying away from how they identify rather than facing it head on.

3. It can be a way to make people pay attention and get your point across. This can be wielded politically like in protests or pride parades or in pseudo political protests like online calls to action. As in, “the people who hate me call me a [slur]; well, this [slur] has something to say”.

4. Some people feel rubbed the wrong way by rainbow marketing (I.e. big corporations putting rainbows on things in June and talking about how inclusive they are while not actually doing anything meaningful to support the community and sometimes actively working against them in other ways, purely in the interest of getting the gay dollar) and like to self identify with words that squeaky clean corporations are never going to sell back to them.

This is not an exhaustive list, but it covers a few of the common reasons that I have seen. And it’s certainly not just the f word for gay men that gets used this way. Consider Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For, a piece of lgbt pop culture so entrenched that the term “the Bechdel test” is commonly used in media criticism. It certainly wouldn’t have been improved, in my opinion, by being named “Lesbians to Watch Out For”.

I think I was pretty clear that a word can be defanged in one context and remain a harmful slur in the other. The crux of my issue with using that word is that I do not know how it is being used when a stranger says it to me. As I have mentioned before, I live with two gay men, one of whom does use that word, and when he does it I am comfortable with it because I know him and I know the context in which it is being invoked.

I do not know that context online and I am not going to assume a stranger on the internet is a safe community member just because "tumblr is the gay website." First of all, it isn't, and I don't make a habit of assuming strangers' sexual orientations without strong contextual reasons to do so (e.g. gay bars, and even there it's not a guarantee). Secondly, people can be members of the community and still use slurs inappropriately.

I do not feel that everyone who is using slurs on tumblr is reclaiming them in any meaningful way. It looks much more like this is the cool new word, like a bunch of second-graders who just heard the word fuck for the first time. This is why I talked about it being defanged. My reference to white noise was because the word "gay" has been overused so much on this website (e.g. "gay little [x]") that it barely means anything anymore. It's practically a filler word. The alternative used to be "queer," but now that's been overused and sanitized because it was adopted by the mainstream and corporations found it. People picked up on "fruity" for whatever reason, probably because it's a bit old-fashioned and not used much by serious homophobes anymore, and also just sounds kind of funny. And that was quickly overused, the way memes are run into the ground.

But here's the thing: there is no word that is safe from rainbow marketing. There isn't. Maybe they would never use f*ggot now. Give it time. If you want to outrun mainstream society, you will always be hopping to a different word. Especially with the internet. People become desensitized very quickly to memetic language, simply due to saturation.

Tumblr users did not reclaim f*ggot. They turned it into a meme. They did the same thing with the limp wrist. And yes, gay people do these things with each other. In private. In gay spaces. Not on the public internet. Even if tumblr were a gay website (it's not) content from this site ends up on twitter, instagram, tiktok, and facebook. I do believe the use of slurs on this website is edgy. I won't speak for individuals, but as a trend it is at least partially motivated by being cool and getting clout. My point in saying it had been defanged was it was no longer accomplishing its purported goal of reclamation. Some of the reasons you listed for using slurs--facing things head-on etc.--rely on shock factor, and therefore have a naturally limited lifespan. People still say "queer as in fuck you," but when queer is the standard academic term and has been adopted by mainstream institutions, does it really hit the same way?

Each slur has its own history. I'm a fan of Dykes to Watch Out For. I attended a Dyke March last year. I am personally uncomfortable with f*ggot because unlike other slurs, I have personally experienced this one being used by homophobes. I think it was fairly popular in the United States in the 2000s, so many people have this experience, and therefore it is still more strongly associated with homophobia. This is still true outside tumblr, regardless of the defanging I observed here.

I am concerned about the eagerness of some to use slurs and engage in "ironic" homophobia (e.g. limp wrist) at a time when many countries are facing such a serious homophobic and transphobic backlash. I am concerned about slurs for the LGBT+ community in particular, because the idea of "who can reclaim them" is more fluid than with racial slurs and many other slurs. Someone can be raised in a homophobic environment and be a homophobe who calls people f*ggots, then come out as gay themselves and continue calling people f*aggots but it's "okay" now, whether or not they ever had any self-reflection about it. I am not accusing specific people of following this exact path, but this pattern is responsible for a lot of internalized and intracommunity homophobia.

I do believe that reclaimation is a conscious, active process. A lot of talk about reclaiming words on tumblr sounds like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy: I didn't say it, I declared it.

I hope I've explained my opinion a little bit here. Contrary to your assumptions, I am interested in a good faith discussion. The person who asked if they could call me a f*ggot was not.

[female-malice]

21 yro here, not comfortable sharing the fact I am a lesbian with just anyone. My first language is not english, so I don't have strong feelings about the words queer, dyke, etc, while acknowledging their meanings. I can't imagine being called "maricona" o some other derogatory terms in my language casually like is nothing 🤨. Can't imagine how it is for some to being called slurs all the time to refer to you or your community in general. Sadly even spanish speakers use queer for some reason 💀

It's just very hard to relate to young people who think that being gay means being disrespectful and inappropriate

"Queer" has sort of become a self-fulfilling prophecy for young gay people. First they identify with the word queer. And then they start to act out and say terrible things and watch copious amounts of porn. They're young and naive so they don't recognize how homophobic the queer perspective is. They just go along with all of it. And they do all the things they think queer people are supposed to do. They become mean, disrespectful, and inappropriate.

[crossguild]

looks like OP's turned off reblogs, but i do wanna say something

queer is still a slur and reclamation is a process that can't and shouldn't be done by a whole entire community because no community is a monolith. there's no other slur that any marginalized group has so thoroughly reclaimed that they insist people outside the community use it as well.

'queer studies' is not a term that was approved by every lgbtq person out there before it was used in academia. people didn't march with signs saying 'we're queer, we're here' because it was the most politically correct and acceptable term. it's a slur and its deliberate and intentional usage as such is an important part of its history, and even the decision to use it in academia, which should be acknowledged and respected.

you wouldn't, for example, call a study of asian-american history chinkology even if a large portion of the community wanted to, nor would i ever, personally, be comfortable with that usage even if it became the accepted academic term. 'gay' and 'lesbian', while they have been used as insults, didn't originate as insults the way queer and certain other homophobic slurs did (and i don't see people insisting on normalizing those words)

a reclaimed slur is still a slur, it doesn't stop being a slur just because some people, even a lot of people, have reclaimed it and use it comfortably. like please think of how many slurs you hear people reclaim and why you would not ever use them, and then consider why it's suddenly fine if it's cishet people using 'queer'.

i don't personally have an issue with its usage in reference to me, nor do i have an issue with using it day-to-day, but unless and until a person specifically tells me they identify as such, i wouldn't use it for them. if someone wants to tag it as a slur, because it is, and some people don't want to see slurs that have been used against them used casually, that's their prerogative as long as they're not out there policing the terms that people are allowed to use.

the TERFs aren't responsible for 'queer is a slur' even if they have weaponized it against people, which i agree is bad! but you cannot take every TERF's idiot talking point as proof that it's rhetoric that originated in the terf community. there's a vast gulf of difference between 'queer is a slur and no one should ever use it' and 'it may be reclaimed by many people, which is fine, but i still don't relate to it nor do i want it used in reference to myself'. idk, i just think we should all think a little bit more about the words we use, & why, & how it affects people we care about, even if ultimately we come to the same conclusion

the rhetoric people should ACTUALLY be wary of that is 100% fully terf & right-wing nationalist propaganda is the fujoshi stuff, which for some reason english fandom has really embraced, so clearly SOME terf rhetoric is fine and maybe people are just calling this specific discourse 'terf rhetoric' to shut it down because it's a conversation they're uncomfortable with. but that's none of my business.

ETA and i'm speaking personally as someone who LIKES it, and likes my privacy, and as someone who refuses to identify in any particular way, but i would not ever use it on someone who doesn't want it used for themselves.

[bashsbooks]

Loveless Book Review

★★★★★ ~ 5 out of 5 stars

Loveless, Alice Oseman’s fourth and most recent novel, has yanked asexuality and aromanticism to the forefront of book club discussions with its insanely relatable characters and the messy way they go about figuring out interpersonal relationship dynamics. And as a certified, card-carrying queer who has a lot of aro and ace friends, I am totally here for it. I was so happy and excited to see them represented in popular, mainstream media - and in YA, no less! But I am juuuust old enough to remember when queer representation trickled into books like crumbs, rather than the whole cookie, so to speak, so I was surprised - and delighted - to realize that the ensemble cast of Loveless represented across the rainbow, that this book was not about an aroace woman adrift in a sea of allocishets, but about her discovering our community and finding her place within it.

Loveless follows Georgia Warr, a freshman at Durham University in England, who is obsessed with the idea of romance, but finds herself repulsed and uncomfortable whenever she tries to get involved with anyone. Her two best friends from secondary school, Pip Quintana and Jason Farley-Shaw, are with her at Durham, and she becomes fast friends with two other people on campus: her roommate, Rooney Bach, and her college parent, Sunil Jha. Navigating the university environment, the meshing of old friendships with new, and the confusing realization that she may not, in fact, feel any sort of attraction, Georgia grows to understand herself and relate to those around her more authentically.

This is a hilarious coming-of-age novel, but it also doesn’t pull its punches. It’s not afraid to let its leads fuck up. Georgia and her friends feel authentic. They are a gaggle of eighteen year olds (except Sunil, who is a couple of years older), and they still have a lot of growing up to do, some of which they do throughout the novel. The conflicts are relatable; I remember being a teenager and trying to figure out my gender and sexuality, feeling like an imposter within the queer community, and not being one hundred percent happy about the conclusions that I came to. 

Even if you aren’t queer, Georgia is relatable in other ways - she worries about not having enough friends, about not being cool at parties, about having hobbies that are ‘weird’ (she loves slash fic… this book really slapped me in the face by referencing Drarry and Korrasami in the second chapter). 

Which leads me to something else that I love about this book: the references! I feel like I’m the perfect age to get all of the references in Loveless, from those iconic ships (and a few more that are referenced later) to the live action Scooby-Doo movies. Shakespeare also comes up a lot, because Georgia’s roommate, Rooney, is obsessed with Shakespeare - this speaks less to my age group, but still heavily to my interests. (Georgia does roast John Keats at one point, though. Not cool, Georgia.)

The way the characters learn information feels more natural than I’m used to in mainstream queer media. Oftentimes, it is awkward and stilted, definitional and over-explanatory, usually so that the (non-queer) audience knows what words like ‘aromantic’ and ‘asexual’ mean. I find this type of scenario inauthentic, as most of my experience learning new sexuality and gender terminology comes from someone of that sexuality or gender very casually explaining, rather than me looking it up in the OED. Even when I do start by Googling it, my second step is always finding a primary source that isn’t so… well-rehearsed. Georgia learns new terms from her friends in much the same way I did, and I like that inclusion. 

Honestly, I like pretty much everything about this book. I’m pleased to rate it 5 out of 5 stars. I’m excited to read more Alice Oseman soon - I’ve already picked up the first volume of Heartstopper from the library!

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

Okay, yes, and a very good deal of it is signaling to people that you are friendly, and not threatening, but when I -as an autistic person- say I hate "small talk" I am not talking about the context of strangers or people who only just met. And I can't speak for anyone but myself but hear me out,

And I don't want this to be taken as aggression at OP who is probably not talking about people like me, but it seems relevant to explain,

When I say I hate small talk I mean I hate it in the context of established relationships or in contexts where we should be able to move past small talk, or in ones where we have limited time but an established social incentive, such as seeing relatives for the first time since childhood -at a wedding or funeral- who you might never see again but who you want to KNOW. I hate it when people use it to appear friendly while maintaining social distance and refusing to engage as people.

I don't care about the big guy next to me on the bus making friendly chatter so I know he isn't going to hurt me, I think he's being adorable. I don't care about the small woman sitting next to me and chatting about the weather so she can get the sense I won't hurt her, I want her to feel safe. I'm saying that I hate that my mother calls me up to get me to help her pay her bills, and wants to tell me about the weather and etc, but the moment I try to have a real conversation she makes up excuses to leave/hang up.

Like yes, I also hate being in social situations with lots of people I don't know where the expectation is constant pure social signaling like bird calls, where the expectation isn't to move past that, because that's stressful for me and not how I prefer to socialize myself or spend any of my time, but that's not even generally what I am referring to.

I engage with socially appropriate small talk all the time, but as someone who's autistic and read that way, by other people, or read as my "vibes being off" to a lot of people, and as an afab [guy never seen as a guy] who's seen as a body to get to do things without engaging with as a person, I am very often invited around repeatedly by the same people, people I might consider close friends or family, for YEARS while they pointedly try to stick to 'small talk' and the kinds of conversations that are pure social signaling, instead of actually engaging with me as a person, because they are trying to maintain emotional distance and have no interest in knowing me... All while they keep expecting favours, or maybe physical intimacy, they want my body or skills there for some reason, and when I try to pull away to go spend time with other people, or alone, they keep trying to pull me back in with lip service of how much they care about 'me', but won't actually get to know me, and won't just accept -and tell me- they don't personally like me or vibe with me so I can spend my time cultivating real relationships with people who actually want to move past the 'small talk' stage and talk to me like an actual fucking person.

I 'hate' small talk because I keep being treated to it under inappropriate contexts, not because I want to skip it in the appropriate ones.

Casually talking to strangers in line or while getting to know someone without info-dumping isn't the issue. The issues are:

I am at an event that expects this for hours on repeat and that is socially exhausting to me for multiple reasons

This person is inappropriately using small talk to hold me at arm's length but won't let me just leave

Some guy is trying to get in my pants again but isn't fucking listening to a word I am saying [or acknowledging me as not a woman]

Those are ways I do not like spending my time anyway for reasons that have to do with a lot more than just the mode of communication, but the fact that exhaustive "small talk" is common to all three makes it extra infuriating.

The fact that common small talk subjects are hostile to me as a trans queer disabled person is also an added frustration because there are a lot of questions that people assume are normal that for me required revealing something personal or something I know they will judge me for, such as not having a job... And I fully acknowledge that this isn't inherent to the type of communication, but it's still present in all cases. Someone even asking my name in public means I have to make a calculation of whether or not I want to out myself as trans to them, because my legal name is gendered and so is my chosen social name.

I know small talk serves some appropriate social functions under many contexts where there are not reasonable alternatives, but is ALSO sometimes serves social functions that I do not want to engage with and am purposefully avoiding for good reasons.

Sometimes I acknowledge the utility of the social signal even if I am bad at interpreting it in the moment.

Sometimes I understood the fucking social signal and I just think it's stupid and a waste of my time.

There comes a point at which, in any interaction, we are exiting this 'small talk' left or right, and you can fucking pick one, but if you keep trying to drive straight I am going to slam on my breaks because I don't need to go 50 more miles in the direction this road is heading... But unfortunately everyone seems really fucking attached to forcing me in some way to keep driving in the same direction as them even when my destination is the other way. And then when I say "I hate this fucking road" I get people telling me how roads are good, actually.

OP uses he/him pronouns

[thestobingirlie]

(Same anon complaining about fruity four)

Oh my god, the casual homophobia in teens these days, especially from within the community. I'm older genZ, at 25. I have been openly queer for over a decade.

When I first came out all the homophobia I saw/ experienced was from outside the community, casual use of the f and d slurs, using gay as an insult/ synonym for bad, using fruit/ fruity in a derogatory way, and your typical hate crimes/ hate speech.

Now, most of what I see/ hear comes from LGBT+ teens. I have heard teens in a pretty conservative town asking other people (Including adults) if they're fruity. Loudly discussing how strangers are "obviously queer" without caring who is around. And the whole trend of "Is he y'know *limp wrists*?" And the push of micro labels onto almost everyone, who don't want or need to use them.

This links back to the whole "fruity four" thing, because all of these things are used in so many fics for them. Eddie will be limp wristing at everyone. They'll all be describing themselves as fruity. Steve will keep using the word queer to describe his sexuality. Yeah, sure creative liberties and whatever. But it feels unrealistic for a group of teens in the mid '80s. They wouldn't be using all these things that are common in kids now, because they were used in a very derogatory and dangerous way in the '80s. They're teens in a small town in the '80s, they probably wouldn't feel comfortable reclaiming the word queer, let alone half the other stuff they get written as doing when they're written as queer. And they wouldn't be well versed in queer culture of the time, let alone that of today.

i think the reason for this is that these teens are only experiencing queer culture online. the most they get in real life is a commercialised version of pride. all they really know are tiktok comments, where it’s encouraged to imply someone is gay, and loudly discuss what a celebrities sexual orientation might be. outing someone isn’t seen as bad because coming out is seen as a necessity now. i’ve even seen people say that it’s morally wrong and lying not the tell someone you’re gay, which is just insane.

i’ve even seen this post critiquing the word queer because it’s “too vague”… wtf. and yeah! there’s this weird thing where people expect you to totally analyse every aspect of your sexuality and gender and have the perfect word to describe it, and if you don’t totally fit what they think a sexuality is, you’re wrong. and it’s so tiring.

some fics just make it so obvious that they’re writing from a 21st century perspective. like, i’m not saying to write the teens being violently homophobic or anything, but you’ve just got so many st teens treating sexuality with a gentleness and understanding the complexity of it that they just wouldn’t have.

like, robin always knows what bisexual is in fics, she knows the word for it, and she knows exactly what steve is before he even knows. and eddie is flagging and knows exactly what every colour flag mean and he’s a sado dom in small town indiana. and it’s like, get a grip.

i think, when it comes to like robin and steve, it wouldn’t be until they left hawkins, and moved into a city and actually started interacting with queer culture that they would start to refer to themselves with labels. i think in a town like hawkins, where an identity is used to insult you and you really don’t have any other queer people around, it’s harder to just call yourself a dyke or queer. (which is why i love stobin in their 20s exploring queer culture and being able to feel comfortable in themselves and the way they present, because they just really couldn’t do that in the teens).

[moderatetoaboveaverage]

Alright, I've been seeing a lot of people use the word 'fed' a lot recently* to express a particular concept, and for as long as I've been noticing this I've been having some thoughts, and there's just been a post that's come across my dash that I think is perfect for explaining what I've been thinking.

*within the last like, couple years.

To clarify before we start, I agree with the OP of the post, and my critiques are not of them in particular, but a broader culture and shifting of definitions. This isn't a queer discourse post, this is a post about how words are used.

Okay, so here's the post (monochrome'd for visual clarity):

Okay, so my observation is, in this post, what does the word fed, mean? Well, clearly it doesn't seem to imply that the offending parties are literally federal agents, the post is talking to its subjects, who if they were feds would be pointless

No what "Fed" seems to often refer to, and is used to represent in posts like this, is "someone who is disrupting a community from within, often with bad disxourse, or harmful rhetoric". And I think this is perhaps a useful shorthand to have in casual settings, but, I think using the word Fed to express that shorthand is unhelpful.

My reasoning is this: the problems of online discourse are often not the fault of individual bad actors, to understand 'why is online discourse terrible all the time', there are a vast number of complicated nuanced issues that relate, fundamentally, to the infrastructure of the internet. Online communication is built in such a way that facilitates, and exacerbates, anti-intellectualism, interpersonal conflicts, misinformation, etc. I've talked about this before but like, anger drives engagement, anger makes you cognitively impaired, and so the internet is full of people saying dumb stuff because they are angry, attached to the dumb opinions of angry people that made them angry.

(And also, sometimes bad discourse or bad rhetoric seems to just appear on its own, like the modern use of Fed that has been tormenting me for the past couple years)

What the word Fed is doing is, for 1. Flattens all that down significantly into being the fault of "someone who is being unhelpful to the community by doing [stuff that people on the internet do]", but, I don't think that would be all that bad except for, 2. Implying that the people doing that are bad actors, and 3. Implying or at least leaving the door open, for the interpretation that those people are literally federal agents.

Here is a comment on the above post I found in the reblogs:

(Again not trying to come down on anyone, only here to critique words)

This is the logical conclusion that the modern usage of Fed often leads people to. That the problems with modern discourse and online communication are a conspiracy by the government to suppress, (in this example) the queer community. Even if it were to be true (its not like I know what the feds are doing), I don't think it is a useful belief to hold.

In the modern day, where most online community strife is caused by distrust, anger, spite, all driven and enforced by the material realities and infrastructure of the internet. To have the belief that, "when people in my community are hostile to eachother, it's probably because of the feds" primes you to approach intracommunity conversations with distrust! To assume to anyone you are speaking too could be a bad actor, that their opinions could be an intentionally designed waste of your time, all of that is exactly the kind of thing that drives interpersonal and intracommunal conflict.

And, I think it behooves us, as people who are in community with eachother, to believe that the people with opinions we find unhelpful (within reason, there are, in fact, some sockpuppets and trolls who are just trying to waste your life) are, in a sense, real.

And just because they're real, it doesn't mean you have to invest your time, that precious sand in the hourglass, into arguing with them.

[zaagis-archive]

diaspora is survival : let the dystopian morning light pour in

this is an edited version of an autobiographical essay i submitted for my pan-african geography class where the prompt was

"Using the excerpt from Stokely Carmichael’s Ready for the Revolution as a model, write a short autobiographical essay describing your own experience of “diaspora as survival.” How, in other words, did you end up here in Vancouver and at UBC? While you should describe as much as possible the migrations of your own family, you should also try to include references to those important historical markers of labor, history, race, colonialism, migration, and gender that are referenced by Carmichael." the purpose of me publishing this essay on tumblr is so i can cite it for another class, michael if ur reading this i hope u enjoy it !! i omitted some details i wasn't comfortable posting on the internet (aka not doxxing myself). also if the capitalization seems funky, it's intentional !!

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.

[Notes of a Native Son – James Baldwin]

I’ve always been a bit of historian, how could I not when my own history, my own stories, have been hidden from me. To be Indigenous in a country that treats my people as a history, as no longer present, means being a historian of my own culture is a form of resistance. It doesn’t fit with the settler colonial canadian logic for my people to have a history or culture. Everyday I resist this occupation by remembering, by recreating, and continuing anishinaabek ways of living. And if Audre Lorde says, “the personal is political”, then much of what I write (both for academic purposes but also creative projects) will involve the politics of being a disabled Afro-Indigenous queer/two-spirit person living in an occupied state. Simply put, I write as a Nakawe, a citizen of Tootinaowaziibeeng, in Musqueam territory. I write from the belly of the beast and it can hard to avoid the drops of acid on these pages. 

How do you know your history? I’m not saying “ask your mom to cite her sources” but how do you know if what you’ve been told about yourself, your family, community, etc is true? I don’t believe one’s truth and what is fact are the same, at least I haven’t lived a life like that. Thus I’ll start where life starts, with the one who brought me into this world. I was born in oskana kâ-asastêki to my two adoptive parents and my biological mother tracy-lynn. I was adopted at birth, many who aren't familiar with the foster care system (the modern way canada monitors Indigenous children’s whereabouts, since the final residential school closed in 1996) would think that being adopted at birth was a good thing, I don't know if it was. You're likely wondering where my biological dad is… well that makes two of us. During conversations with her social worker she admitted to not knowing the father and regularly having casual sex with men of different ethnic origins, naming white, Indigenous, Black, and Filipino. Thus my adoptive parents (Tracey and Arlon), assumed I was Filipino based on my looks. Although strangers did occasionally throw Black microaggressions towards me, older white women wanted to touch my black curls and I was a girl who wanted to be ‘polite’. 

For the first 18 years of my life, it was my truth that I was Filipino. The guilt of my lack of connection from my Filipino friends eventually brought me to study the language as a teenager. Wanting to know what region of the Philippines my father was from lead me to doing a DNA test around age 18. Discovering the truth, for a short period of time, resulted in a what felt like a cultural crisis. I finally felt comfortable in one of my ethnic backgrounds (comfortable enough to get a tattoo of the Philippines flag within a knife, image above) so realizing the rarity of situations like this and not being able to find help online terrified me. After learning basic Tagalog, growing up with Filipino friends, and even embarking on a double major of History and Asian Studies, I had found myself in a very strange circumstance. You can find thousands of articles giving advice on how to come out as gay or transgender (as I had done so at 11 and 12 myself), but nobody really comes out as African. Honestly, I was scared that people would think of me as a liar or fraud. Like the pretendian equivalent of being Black. If the truth came to light, people would think I was intentionally lying about my race. At the same time, I was scared that if I said I was Black, but provided no proof, I was just some annoying leftist trying to claim a marginalized identity. It felt like being called to fight in a war where I'd lose on either front. 

As strange as it sounds, I can’t imagine my life without my queerness. Growing up with two older siblings that came out as queer before me allowed 11 year old me to develop language to understand myself and others. If I weren’t queer, I don’t know if I would’ve been introduced to philosophies of identity and history. Gaining a sense of self, a sense of pride in who I am and the communities I’m a part of, was integral to me discovering feminism at a young age (roughly age 13), leading me to learn from Black and Indigenous feminists/communists, many of whom I cite today in teacher education. The most important life lesson being queer has given me is that I don’t need to “know” myself, know what exact labels and identities suit me at any given moment, I just need to live. For example, I don’t inject testosterone because I feel at my core I’m a man (I don’t) or because I feel a need to prove my masculinity in a biological way (I don’t), I do it because I like the way it makes my body look. In a very Gen Z way, I decided to fuck around and find out. Thus when I had my cultural identity crisis, I realized I could just identify as mixed Black/Ethiopian/African. In the same way there’s no “true trans” person, there’s was no way for me to “truly” be African. I just am. 

As mentioned, I learnt about social justice issues and movements relatively early which was integral to my own identity development. Through learning from revolutionaries like Kwame Ture who stated “​​We're Africans in America, struggling against American capitalism. We're not Americans” and “a fight for power is a fight for land. [...] Our land is Africa. America's not our land, it belongs to the American Indians and we have a right to stand and take a moral struggle with them.” I felt empowered to describe myself as Afro-Indigenous, to bring my two sides together as one whole. Diaspora is survival can mean a lot of things at different times & places but here, it meant a member of the diaspora empowered another diaspora to take up the family name of African, within my mixed background. The name survived its travels. This is my favourite term for a few important reasons. Firstly, I’m acknowledging the lands I’m from. Both the ties I have to Africa as a diaspora and Indigenous reflecting my Turtle Island upbringing. Secondly, I’m not identifying with a colonial state as terms like Indigenous Canadian or Black Canadian would suggest. Lastly, I’m not playing into the settler idea of blood quantum. A soul cannot be divided into percentages.

It feels wrong, embarrassing even, to say I envy the classmates of mine who have the privilege of being one call or text away from a family member that can answer simple questions. I only know what someone, I assume a social worker, felt was worthy of documenting. I didn’t learn that my maternal grandmother’s brother roger was forced into multiple residential schools from tracy-lynn or her mother rita, I learnt from a fucking hydro company. How colonial dystopian is that? Hydro Manitoba did a study of the land they intended to put pipelines through, consulting the nation which neighbours my own. My nation is Tootinaowaziibeeng First Nation, physically within Treaty 2 territory but a signatory of Treaty 4. I’ve lived most of my life on Treaty 4 land, i.e. the land stolen from the Métis (michif), Cree (néhiyaw), and Ojibway (anishinaabe). My adoptive dad Arlon is a descendant of the first British & French settlers in the region and he didn’t know which Indigenous peoples lived on the land that makes up our family farm-turned-acreage until I told him. To him, the land was always in the family and was empty before, owned by the canadian government that gave it to his family. As a socially anxious young adult he was set up on a dinner date with my adoptive mom, Tracey. She was also from a white farming family, her childhood home being just 2 km down the road from where mine still sits today. Growing up she embraced the cuisine of her German ancestry, that was all her mother taught her. If I remember correctly, she’s mostly German, but had Jewish family survive the Holocaust, becoming refugees to Canada after leaving the Netherlands. I’m unsure if they were Dutch Jewish, I never asked. Despite having 3 known sides of family, I’ve always been distanced from them in some way. When I was young my mom told me the reason we didn’t spend time with distant family was because they were “mean” to her. As a teenager I learnt “mean” actually meant racist, they were upset with her for adopting an “Indian” baby.

Like Toni Morrison, much of my own literary (and musical) background comes from autobiographies. Now that I think about it, I’m surrounded by autobiographical creations. I can prove this on the spot by looking down at my phone next to me, Spotify open, playing Boujee Natives by Snotty Nose Rez Kids, a hiphop duo from Haisla First Nation. That song is on my ndn rap playlist, below it is my hiphop for sexy ppl only playlist which contains only Black/African rappers. I hit shuffle on the playlist and Malcolm Garvey Huey by Dead Prez comes on, ironic as I get to read works by/about these exact historical figures for this geography class. If I look into my backpack next to me I’ll find Dancing On Our Turtle’s Back by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg) and Creeland by Dallas Hunt (Swan River First Nation), both autobiographical works to an extent. That’s just my immediate surroundings here at a cafe near my house, I typically exist near a shelf of autobiographies at my two library jobs, as well as at home in East Van.

Where would I go? If I wrote an autobiography what section would they put me in? Would it still be autobiography if so much of my family knowledge comes from government documents like an adoption act or residential school records? Would my Indigeneity render it a historical work? If I have to rely on historical evidence to make a guess, does that make my life a fiction? Assuming an Indigenous category exists, who makes the decision on whether I’m too Black to belong? Perhaps I’ll write a biomythography like Audre Lorde. The sisters have it figured out this time, I know where’d I go. 

If past you were to meet future me, Would you be holding me here and now?

[Historians – Lucy Dacus]

References :

Afromarxist, “What's in a Name? ft. Kwame Ture (1989)” YouTube, video publication date 27 October 2019, https://youtu.be/OGcl359SMxE?si=T_bs5PKLBZuUYwZ0

Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955. 

Chakasim, Neegahnii Madeline. “Pretendians and their Impacts on Indigenous Communities.” The Indigenous Foundation, May 10 2022. https://www.theindigenousfoundation.org/articles/pretendians-and-their-impacts-on-indigenous-communities 

HTFC Planning & Design & Manitoba Hydro. “See what the land gave us” Waywayseecappo First Nation Traditional Knowledge Study For the Birtle Transmission Line. December 2017. https://www.hydro.mb.ca/docs/projects/birtle/appendix_c_waywayseecappo_tk_study_final_report.pdf 

Lucy Dacus. Historians. Jacob Blizard and Collin Pastore. March 2, 2018. Matador Records, digital streaming.

Books / music mentioned

dead prez. Malcolm Garvey Huey. June 22 2010. Boss Up Inc., digital streaming. 

Hunt, Dallas. Creeland. Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2021.

*Maynard, Robyn. Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2017. 

Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. New York: Crossing Press, 1982.

Phoebe Bridgers. ICU. Phoebe Bridgers, Marshall Vore, & Nicholas White. June 18, 2020. Dead Oceans, digital streaming.

Snotty Nose Rez Kids. Boujee Natives. May 10 2019. Independent, digital streaming. 

Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2011. 

*Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. As We Have Always Done. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. 

sources with * were in the original essay but omitted from this version

[hermithomebase]

Hello! Happy June! It's Pride and I have another question (7/30)

Hello hello, today we are going to take a dive into the word "Gay".

The word gay dates back all the way to the 12th century, and comes from the Old French word "Gai" meaning "full of joy or mirth". This word might have evolved from the Old German word "Gahi" meaning "impulsive", however this is unconfirmed.

This was in use for centuries to mean any version of happy, carefree, mirthful, joyful or bright, and didn't have any sexual/sexuality link until roughly the 1600s.

At that point, the "carefree" gay started being used to call a person immoral or promiscuous, and the Oxford English Dictionary defined it at the time as "addicted to pleasure and dissipations. Often euphemistically: of loose and immoral life". So, a prostitute eventually became known as a "gay woman", and somewhat ironically now, a "gay man" was a womanizer or a man who had a lot of sex with woman (especially prostitutes). This also meant that a "Gay House" was a perfectly normal way of saying "Brothel", and this is also where the word "Gaiety" comes from ("lively celebration or festivities" <- it is a common word in theatre names nowadays).

Then in the 1890s, the term "Gey Cat" ("gey" was a Scottish version of "gay") was used to refer to a "younger man in the company of an older man" or a man who offered sexual services in return for food/protection. Because of the implications of "sexual submission2 in the first definition, this phrase is thought to be the origin of "gay" as "homosexual", rather than just as "sexual deviant".

In 1951, the Oxford English Dictionary for the first time defined "gay" as slang for "homosexual", but this usage was in less mainstream communities at least 30 years earlier, specifically in US prisons and homeless camps.

"Bringing Up Baby" in 1938 is probably the first movie to use "gay" in its modern context. Cary Grant wears a lady's feathery robe in one scene, and when asked why he ad-libbed "Because I just went gay". (<- however, it is unlikely that "mainstream audiences" understood this, and likely thought he meant the carefree definition)

So, with all these definitions, I want to ask you, what makes you feel ""gay""? (any definition you want! :))

Happy Pride 🌈 🎉

tbh i used the word very casually but i dont think i have ever identified with the word "gay" in a meaningful way-like i have always been more of a queer identifier guy myself but i think that has something to do with the way i identify not easily lining up with "gay" in a traditional sense.. but to not be a pedantic freak about it i suppose i feel the most gay when i am talking to other gay people in my private spaces.. it just makes me happy

[thebreakfastgenie]

The kinds of things you say that people think are “terf-lite” based on my experience of terfs and terf rhetoric are probably stuff like throwing your hand in on the front of “don’t self-identify as a slur” (when said by terfs, often referring to the Q word and used alongside stuff like lgb without the t - I don’t know your views on this one in particular but I personally like the word and grew up surrounded by people reclaiming it so I’m probably biased as that was my first exposure to it as part of the community) as well as stuff like specifying men should be excluded from feminism (when said by terfs, it’s a dog whistle to exclude trans women, who are of course not in fact men at all), the swerf stuff, and stuff along those lines. Note I am not saying I think you are a terf but this is the stuff I think is being called “terf-lite”.

I have never said not to self-identify as a slur. I expressed discomfort with casual use of f*g because I am seeing it outside of a self-identification context. I have mentioned that I personally don’t identify as queer (but am fine with it as an umbrella term).

I didn’t say men should be excluded from feminism, I specifically said men are welcome to join the fight but the movement is not for or about them. This is basic… like, does anti racism “exclude” white people? Does disability rights “exclude” able-bodied people? Women need a movement and that’s what feminism is. As I think you know, when I talk about men, I don’t include trans women, since they’re women and not men.

There is no SWERF stuff, I made a comment about having misgivings about the framing and terminology and specified my thoughts were not yet fully formed. The short version is I don’t think “sex worker” and “trans” are analogous categories.

I’m not at all saying you’re doing this, but I think a lot of the time online “TERF rhetoric” is defined as “anything a TERF says” which is problem because it’s a tautology and also because part of what makes TERFs a problem is some of the things they say are true or normal. This is true of all bigots of course but it’s worse with TERFs because they’re often starting from legitimate feminist theory and then interpreting it to their own whims (some of the feminist theory they like is just bad also; it’s a mix). We have to be able to recognize harmful rhetoric for what it is, not for who said it.

I do appreciate this because I was wondering what that anon was talking about.

[opinated-user]

LO being queerphobic again

anon asks: So do you tell black people not to use the n-word to refer to themselves or other black people? Racists still use it, so it must not be reclaimed since they still benefit. Lots of people still use gay, lesbian, and homosexual as a slur. Spastic and cunt are slurs in some areas but not in others, so who's right and who's wrong?

LO responds:

I see what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to change the subject in the hopes I’ll misspeak and you can scream that I’m telling black people what to do.

remember when LO called the black people calling her out for her fetishization of them as "vultures and stalkers"? she had no issue policing black people back then but i guess it must be different when the subject was police how they spoke about her. a little late to concern herself about respecting black people's autonomy.

That having been said:

When white people use the N-Word, they’re immediately recognized as a racist. Decades of work at reclamation has rendered the N-Word nonexistent from the instinctive vocabulary of most people, and you have to desensitize yourself to be comfortable with it. White people not saying it is a bare minimum standard of basic fucking decency.

that is not what reclamation means.

for now only the first definition concern us. notice that it doesn't say anything about how other people are ought to treat what you have reclaimed. what you reclaimed is yours and can't be taken away unless you give it back. black people took the n-word back where it always belonged, on their hands, and that is where it should because we have decades of oppressive hateful history that show what do you support when you use that slur as a non-black person. it's frustrating to read this from LO because even if you're a POC, it's still bad to use this word, especially against black people but in general too. it's not just racist when white people do it. all forms of anti-blackness are racist, but not all forms of racism are anti-blackness. using the n-word is a form of racism that is specifically anti-black. that distinction matters.

Furthermore, it’s used entirely on an informal, casual basis. The Junior High/High School/College courses are called African-American/Canadian studies, and not… you get the idea.

queer can also be used on informal, casual basis. queer people do it all the time.

Further-Furthermore, if someone were to ask you not to use it around them, that doesn’t become a problem.

doesn't it? if a white person interrupts two black people talking between each other to tell them about how the n-word makes them, the white person, uncomfortable, i don't see that situation going as smoothly as LO pretends that it does. same question for when a black rapper says the word, when a black publication has it on the headline, when a black character written by a black person for a majority black cast movie says it. who's the one who gets to police that? whose comfort should be prioritized? the only reason i can come out with this is because "not use it around me" can mean a miriad of things that can feel like entitlement to the language that other people use for themselves, their community and their spaces. LO herself has shared posts with the queer word on itl, and i have my own issues about that as well, but she shared it that so if anyone assumes that she's actually fine with the word, nobody can blame those people. if queer people talk amongs themselves or about their own identity, they don't have any reason to stop doing that for LO's or anyone's else comfort because that is their word. they have a right to it as much as LO has a right to call herself bisexual or trans. if LO wouldn't stop calling herself bisexual if it bothered some biphobic person, why should queer people? if someone is calling LO with that word then she does have a point, but she's not making that argument. she's entitled to not want that word imposed on her or even don't allow it on her space, but she doesn't have any power to stop anyone else.

Further-Further-Furthermore, you can dissallow it in your spaces and nobody complains. The N-Word is banned in my Discord server and messages containing it are auto-deleted by a bot that does not check if you’re white or not. Nobody complains.

LO is not black. she can insist all day and night to be indigenous, even though the Cherokee Nation doesn't know her, but she's still not black. if anything it would be weird if she openly allowed the use of the n-word on her spaces when, again, she's not black and doesn't have any right to it either. nobody complains because why would anyone expect LO of all people to allow that word in the first place?

If all of these things applied to the Q-Slur… I’d have a lot fewer complaints. But we don’t do that.

LGBT studies are still called “Q—r Studies” for some reason.

because the first academics that pushed for those studies were queer themselves. they were activist who fought nail and teeth for every single one of our rights, including the one to have a recognized space on academia to speak about how being queer has affected our life. this is just so painfully anti-intellectual and ignorant. not even a google search could she spare for such a simple fact.

Straight and cis people use it constantly with no pushback. It’s often reclaimed by people who have no business reclaiming it (it’s a slur against gay men after all) It’s used in formal, presumably professional settings like articles where other slurs are not. And when someone objects to it’s use either directed at them or as an umbrella term people get really pissy about it and start throwing around accusations.

how do they use the word matters, LO. people usually can tell when it's completely mundane and innocent ("the queer community deserves human rights"/"i learned today that Wonder Woman is a queer character") or they're actually being hateful with it. they could also be hateful without touching that word. that's what anon tried to say and LO completely ignored them. if the most important aspect is how other people still treat the word, then words like gay and lesbian are just as bad and haven't been reclaimed either, if we follow LO's logic.

LO might be refering to how some articles are going to say "queer used to be a slur aimed at gay people" and ignore how gay for a long time was the only identity that the whole community could have. before the bisexual community existed all non straight women were lesbian with no distinction, and before that lesbian was actually a sexual act before an identity, and before lesbians worked to try to have their own spaces, gay was the only visible thing that wasn't strictly straight or cis (since showing "homosexual tendencies" used to be strongly associated with gender) as far the general public was concerned. you can say that queer was only targeted at gay men only if you believed that everyone else, lesbians, pansexuals, bisexuals, trans and ace/aro people, were born into existence until much later, instead of already being there the entire time and not getting the same recognition or not having the vocabulary to express themselves at hand. related to that point, what a hateful thing to say when there's a lot of non gay men people who have actual trauma around that word and had it thrown around to them growing up. if someone who went through that decided to reclaim the word for themselves, as to heal and replace the negative association with positive ones, who is LO to determine they can do that or not? no one. she's no one to put herself on such a position.

once again, because queer activist fought hard for not only have their voices heard but also their identities recognized, to be seen. if anything the fact that people can in fact use the word on such settings should tell you a lot about how much the movement has advanced to normalize/visibilize our struggles. in fact, this is a major reason why comparing two words from two different communities (queer and black one respectively) and treat them as if they are meant to be equivalent of each other is foolish, reductive and... actually racist. queer is not the "n-word of the LGBT+ community" because queer people, for all the oppression and struggles they lived and still live, as a whole can't claim to have suffered the same wounds of colonialism, white supremacy, slavery, torture and deshumanization that black people went through and still go through, something represented by the n-word on the mouth of a non black person. black queer people get constantly sidelined and forgotten from their own communities, their contributions to our history and culture erased and whitewashed, and that is exactly what LO is doing by ignoring all the black queer activists who fought the hardest for the queer people of today to be able to say the word without fear or shame. futhermore... that is normalization. if we can say a word just as much on "professional settings like an article" just like i can say it on my own blog, then the activists won in normalizing their identities for the rest of the world and make them recognize as something that was, in fact, completely normal and mundane, just like being straight is.

if someone tries to force that word on LO or anyone else who hasn't reclaimed it then that it's wrong of them and i'll support her on calling out those people. but when people say "the queer community" they usually mean the queer community, to be under the queer umbrella. if someone is not queer, then they're not part of the queer community. just because she doesn't like the term it doesn't stop being a valid term for this group of people, and frankly it's entitled of her to act otherwise. further-futhermore, none of this has been the context in which LO has spoken out about queer is a slur. her video about the subject, that was full on misinformation, bad faith arguments, out of place comparisons and overall was deeply offensive, wasn't made because people were insisting too much on calling her, personally, queer. it was made because too much people were using the word and LO wanted them to stop using it altogether, even on their own articles, their own shows, movies or stories, even if for that she had to lie and invent all kinds of disgusting conclusions about how we're self hating idiots pushing the movement back because we reclaimed a word that was meant for all of us. she's not frustrated because people keep calling her something that she isn't, she's frustrated that she can't take the word away from us and queer people happen to have an issue with others trying to tell them that their identities don't deserve respect.

The fact that all of these things are true is an indication that the word hasn’t been reclaimed. Reclamation means something.

indeed it means something. nothing of which LO has explained or examplified here. a word is not reclaimed when everyone outside of the targetted groups stops using it. a word is reclaimed when the targetted group give the word a new positive meaning that other likeminded people understand as such.

Furthermore, and I find this rather telling, when the whole “is tr*p a slur” discourse was going around, there was the claim from weebs that trans people should “just reclaim it.” The expectation being that if we did, weebs would be able to keep saying it freely, which is not how reclamation works, but IS how reclamation of Anti-LGBT slurs is often treated.

normalization and reclamation are not the same thing. reclamation can lead to normalization because of the new positive meaning given to the word (queer), but it can also bring a new awareness of why something can be reclaimed and not normalized (n-word). to put plainly, when cishet people say the word queer outloud they refer to a community that queer people built and a identity people are proud of. when non black people use the n-word is always relying on that racist history (for shock value, edgyness, etc) and in the process inviting themselves to a table that doesn't belong to them. they can't apply it with the new positive meaning because that meaning doesn't exist for them, that new meaning wasn't made with them in mind.

The general attitude of the N-Word is “That’s our word, you have no right using it.

The general attitude of the Q-Slur is “Ugh! It’s not a slur anymore! Just get over it! That’s TERF rhetoric!”

this is very common knowledge on the LGBT+ community, but since LO is not very familiarized with it, i'll explain a little from where the TERF rethoric comes from. queer on it's new positive meaning is an umbrella term for everyone on the LGBT+ community, but also for anyone who doesn't stritcly fall into any of the available letters. it's purposefully vague and radically inclusive because of that. as a result TERFs despise queer, because being inclusive would mean accepting trans people, and they can't have that. they push for the "q is a slur" discourse every opportunity that they have, spreading just as much misinformation and bad faith as LO has done. the goal is to create division and isolation for any queer person who wouldn't fit nicely on any of the pre-approved boxes they determined until there's none of us left with any label, any box and not recognition at all.

if anyone ever saw the phrase "lesbian, not queer" it almost definitely came from the kind of TERFs who would write a horribly transmisogynistic article to paint trans women as inherently predatory. to be queerphobic, to insist that the word is a slur and only a slur, and worse, in front of an audience of young impressionable LGBT+ people and allies, is to help TERFs, wether intentionally or not. the exact arguments don't matter when the end goal is the exact same. that's what TERF rethoric means. TERF rethoric is not call out one specific trans woman for being a creep with an audience of minors following her, despite what LO would love her audience to believe because she happens to be that trans woman.

These are not comparable situations. And the only way they can be compared is to demonstrate how gays are terrible at reclamation. Maybe if we actually reclaimed it, that would be a different story. But we haven’t. We just said we have and done none of the work.

it's... absolutely rich seeing LO of all people trying to say that activist of the past haven't put the work, when people have died for the cause doing exactly that and we can see the results of that even today. meanwhile, what LO has done for the LGBT+ community? write fanfiction and do reviews of cartoon for children? constantly misrepresent LGBT+ history to her young and impressionable audience? what kind of qualifications does LO think she has she thinks she can determine that all those people haven't done enough?

If you want to reclaim the Q-slur, THE FUCKING DO IT YA LAZY BITCH!

queer.