I think some âqueerâ fans have some sort of difficulty reckoning with the difference between the individual self and the group. Pretty much every time Iâve spoken with someone who likes âqueerâ, they have been fixated on the fact that they personally like it and want to use it to describe themselves, and canât really accept that it is a heavily politicised term for a group, which is something they canât just slice off if they want to (there is also the fact that many of them want to use it because they want to apply the imagery it has bc of its history, but somehow avoid the rest of the group having a say).
tbh itâs the same with âwomanâ and âmanâ. The default response to feminist criticism is, âWhat does it matter to you how someone describes themselves?â because theyâre focused solely on the effort to describe themselves, and so arenât prepared to consider that ofc theyâre using group terms and expressing a view of what the group âwomanâ or âmanâ must be, in order for them to fit or self exclude from it. Women who say theyâre not women because they have complex feelings and like to be comfortable and safe are thinking exclusively about themselves and the unfair standards they set themselves (because theyâre women), and not very much about how this then applies to everyone in the groups whose boundaries theyâre redrawing. They donât really register that what theyâre doing is actually making huge political (often conservative) statements about huge groups of people, all in the pursuit of a personal vocabulary they wonât just find adjectives for.
