Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.
[TW: Child sexual assault.]
Hey, just to let everyone know. I'm queer. I unapologetically refer to my community as Queer. Objections will be muted. That's it. You don't have to use the word. You just don't get to come into my mentions telling me a long-standing community term is ~dangerous~. I will mute ANYONE who comes at me on this, that is how DONE I am with this. We're here, we're queer; if you're personally not, fine. I don't care.
Nobody had a problem with this term over Queer Studies and Queer Eye shows. Folks only came at me when they realized Queer is inclusive. I will not change my identity because someone else doesn't like it. That's my stance on "bisexual", too, while I have you here. I'm going to be using Queer regularly on this account BECAUSE IT'S INCLUSIVE (and "LGBT" isn't, btw) and you can mute me if needed.
I'm not gay as in happy, I'm queer as in fuck all this in particular.
I'm not going to tell ANYONE how to identify but since some of you have asked: the "alternatives to queer" some of you are seeing and hearing shake out of tumblr spaces are in many cases SUPER problematic. Queer is a community term that has been considered and refined and reclaimed longer than most of us have been ALIVE. It has history. These "alternatives to Queer" that are popping up and being spread by well-intentioned folks are often created with intent to harm.
1. "LGBT" and "LGBTQ" and even "LGBTQ+" are not inclusive. You may silently be added the A and the I and the P but most folks aren't. Yes, I know the plus sign is there. I also know how listing some letters but not others prioritizes some identities over others.
2. MOGAI (Marginalized Orientations, Gender identities, and Intersex) includes--intentional or not--everyone on earth who isn't cis men. It's not a substitute for Queer when it includes cisallohet women (who are marginalized by way of gender).
@kingdomofwench: Also I thought "gender identity" was not preferred because it sets up non-cis folks' gender as fake?
@AnaMardoll: Yes, this is another problem with the term. Gender IS an identity, but there's a problem when only trans peoples' genders are referred to that way. (Implying "make-believe".) So thank you for bringing that up.
3. SGA (Same Gender Attraction) is a harmful conversion therapy term and excludes trans people, intersex people, and many aces and aros.
4. GSD (Gender and Sexual Diversities) has the same problems as MOGAI. Both have also been linked heavily with unqueer people trying to tie kink, polyam, or even child abuse (ped0philia) into the queer umbrella.
So while I realize some of you are good-faith trying to be inclusive, recognize that some Bad Actors are deliberately acting bad here. Queer is inclusive. Queer is a community term and has been the appropriate term for DECADES. So. We're here. We're queer. If you're not queer for whatever reason, this statement doesn't apply to you.
People keep asking me "what should I use instead of Queer?", here is the answer: Queer. You use Queer. Queer is the community term that the community majority decided. The new acronyms you're playing with? Several are being currently used in attempts to include ped0philes.
You don't have to use queer for yourself but as a community we are Queer. Queer History, Queer Art, Queer Theory: these are things WE named. You do not get to ERASE decades of Queer Theory. I've been called fat as a painful insult. It's still Fat Activism. The terms "crip" and "cripple" are literally triggering to me from harmful use. It's still #CripTheVote.
"I was hurt by a word" is REAL AND VALID but it also doesn't mean that we dump decades of Queer activism for a new term. Do you know why? Because whatever we pick next will ALSO be used to hurt people. And so we literally never get a word. We become Nameless. That is literally how oppression works: taking our words and twisting them to harm us so that we're Nameless and unable to organize. Reclamation is about understanding that process and doing work to take the words back. It is COMPLICATED and WORK and part of ACTIVISM.
We're here, we're Queer, and yes that is the appropriate term for us in academia, on twitter, in activism, in EVERYWHERE. I will not have this argument with folks who do not know how activism works and how systems of oppression perpetuate themselves. I am part of Fat Activism, I am part of CripTheVote, I am part of the Queer community--whether you or I feel warm & fuzzy about those words. But, for the record, I feel incredibly warm and fuzzy about being Queer.
[Derail which I will not quote in which "ped0phile allies" (their word, not mine) rushed in to defend "inclusion" under the umbrella of "marginalized orientations".]
It is NOT okay to ask Queers to accept pedophilia into our midst as an "orientation" when MANY of us (myself incl) are survivors. Especially NOT when cisallohet people have been painting us as child abusers for years as a stigmatizing tactic. So, NO, pedophilia is not an "orientation" I'm willing to include in my Queer space. I cannot believe I even have to say that.
I'm here, I'm queer, I'm a survivor.
