Hallowed be thy cheesecake

“’Gay’ and ‘Lesbian’ are words we chose ourselves”

Gay was used to mean promiscuous and morally destitute. A “Gay woman” was a prostitute. A “Gay man” was a philanderer. A “Gay house” was a brothel. Later the term meant uninhibited, sexually active, and hedonistic. By the mid-20th century it came to mean all those things AND engaged in sexual relations with people of the same gender. It largely supplanted “homophile” as a descriptor of LGBTQ people in the 70s but has been used as a slur since, especially during the 90s and 00s.

“Queer is a slur”

Queer gained a pejorative meaning in the early 20th century, meaning sexually deviant. It was reclaimed in the 80s, and quickly rose to prominence. “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” became a rallying cry at pride marches. It was especially used by those who worried that the policies of some LGBTQ rights groups were verging toward conservatism and assimilation which was leaving people of color, trans people, immigrants, etc. out of the loop. Queer became an identity that stoop opposed to the cry to keep your head down and be presentable and quiet and private to garner the tolerance of straight society. The Queer identity was seized on by trans rights activists, people who did not neatly fit the labels of “gay” and “lesbian,” and people passionate about political causes (especially AIDS).

Like “gay” and “lesbian,” queer has continued to be used as a slur by straight people. The only difference between the reclamation of “gay” and the reclamation of “queer” is a couple years.

“Reclaiming slurs is individual, you can’t apply it to everyone.”

Queer has been used as an umbrella term longer than most of the people who call it a slur have been alive. Having lived through the 90s and 00s I remember when “gay” meant bad, when everything bad was “gay.” People sneered “gay” at me when they tried to beat me up as a kid and teenager. Gay and Lesbian are every bit the slur today that queer is, yet anyone who said that “gay” shouldn’t be used because of its history as a slur would be laughed at.

“It excludes people who don’t want to be called ‘queer’.”

Refusing to allow queer to be used in public discourse and robbing it of its history and use excludes queer people.

“LGBT is better because it’s been an umbrella longer and no one takes offense to it.”

LGBT has been used since the 1990s.

Loads of people take offense to it and its adoption was and is a fight in activist circles. There are dozens of different variation, addition of + and *, both of which are celebrated and decried in equal measure. There is endless argument over whether the “T” belongs there, whether the “B” belongs (traditionally you see most of the anti-queer rhetoric in-community coming from people who want to pare down to “LG”). People have pitched MOGAI and MOGII and GSM and GSRM. MLM/MSM and WLW/WSW get tossed around. “LGBT” has been fraught with discourse.

“Academia appropriated ‘queer’ without asking, had they talked to actual (LGBT/Queer/MOGAI/MOGII/GSM/GSRM) people they’d have know it was a slur.”

When Queer Studies began in the 1970s who do you think was teaching it? Who was taking it?

So sure, Queer is a slur, Gay is a slur, Lesbian is a slur, newsflash, to the straight world WE are slurs. All our words are taken from the slurs they called us, our identities themselves are reclaimed.

Fast forward twenty years to when the father of the biology professor who told me this is driving out from the east coast to see his son in California. Crossing the southwest at night.

An armadillo runs across the road. 

He comes to a screeching halt and the Thing Of Evil, which he never knew was actually a real animal, trots the rest of the way across the road and vanishes into the desert.

His little girl, maybe 9, replies, “Mmm, I think I want Captain Marvel.”

Dad makes a face, and says, “How about you choose a real super hero and not a little princess?”

Me and my coworkers were about to smack down on this man when his wife makes a FACE and says, “Honey, you get Captain Marvel.” Then she turns to her husband. “Shut the fuck up, Greg.”

And that has become our new motto for dealings with mysogenists at work.