Reading through a argument around âis queer a self defined thing or is it something where you have to check off at least one specific named identity and tell people what that is thing?â And thereâs a 17 year old who expressed concerns about the idea of queer being a self identifier thing getting his ass handed to him. Which, I have to say, my initial reaction (safely saved to drafts) also involved a lot of swear words, and not colorful background swearwords either.
Fuck off. My initial reaction was to tell him to fuck off. And that, never mind about hypothetical straight fakers, I didnât want him at my queer events.
But...I can understand, being young, probably being new to the community, possibly not having any offline community at all, how someone might find themselves arguing that position.
I mean, we got a lot of gatekeeping of various types on this site and in online queer spaces in general. Itâs a thing someone could pick up without really questioning it, just because other queer people are saying it. And, youâre new, youâre unsure of yourself, you want to fit in. I can see it.
So, the kind gentle explanation, for anyone who needs less fuck off and more patiently explaining. (If I get replies/asks about this Iâll attempt to continue with the patient version.)
The acronym isnât fixed. Itâs fluid, and the categories within it are fluid.
For example: Marsha P Johnson in her life didnât call herself a transgender woman. She called herself a transvestite and a gay man, even though she used she/her pronouns. Now, we look back on that and think âwell, the language changed over time, someone who lived the way she did would almost certainly call herself a trans woman now, and the modern queers who identify with her most tend to be trans women.â Categories are fluid, in that now weâre inclined to see âtrans woman, cross dresser, gay manâ as entirely separate categories that arenât especially related to each other (and het crossdressers might not be seen as queer at all) but they used to have much more overlap.
As another example, ânon-binaryâ wasnât really a thing when I hit adulthood. There were people who would now call themselves nonbinary, but they used different terms, like genderqueer. Stone Butch Blues talks about âhe-sheâsâ, a term that straddled âbutch lesbianâ and the modern âtransmasculineâ, and which definitely isnât in common use any more.
And thatâs just in recent American history! If you look at how queerness is conceptualized across time and across cultures, it varies so much. Some cultures have more than two genders that are universally recognized within that culture. Some times/cultures see homosexuality as being dependent on whether youâre topping or bottoming or about gender roles: a guy who bottoms or takes on feminine gender roles is gay, while one who tops is just a normal straight guy. Sometimes a culture has fairly set gender roles, but people who are biologically male or female taking on the opposite role and having a same-sex partner is completely normal and unremarkable.
The alternative to âa queer person is someone who says they are queerâ is to have a fixed definition. You are queer if you check at least one: gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, (asexual, intersex, two spirit, whatever else we want to explicitly include on the list.) But that would require âqueerâ to have a fixed definition and for all the sub-types of queer to be fixed.
What about when people donât know for sure: a woman who knows sheâs lesbian or bisexual but not which, a person who might be trans but isnât quite sure, someone who might be asexual but again isnât quite sure, but perhaps is quite sure they donât feel comfortable when straight people talk about sex and romance. (And then thereâs what happens when youâve always thought of yourself as gay, but your partner is transitioning so what does that make you?) Hanging out in queer spaces with people who are queer makes sense for all of those people, even ones who might eventually decide theyâre not actually queer after all.
And Iâve been writing paragraphs and paragraphs, but I think I missed the main point, which is: the alternative to âqueer is self-definedâ is âsomeone else gets to tell you whether youâre queer or not.â Which gives strangers permission to ask all sorts of invasive questions. (Especially if the given reason for defining queer is to keep people who arenât queer out of queer spaces! That can only happen if you actually ask people coming into a space what they are!) Thereâs no way to define queer other than âsomeone who says theyâre queerâ or âsomeone who thinks they fit in with other queer peopleâ that doesnât open the door to those sorts of challenges.
And, in turn, to gatekeeping out people who might not be âqueer enoughâ (ie, close enough to exclusively gay or lesbian) â in practice, trying to define queer leads to defining queer in a way that excludes aces or some trans people or all trans people or bi/pan people with opposite sex partners, or all of the above.
(Not entirely happy with how Iâm using the term âsexâ here, because I get âbiological sexâ can be a complex and very loaded concept for many trans people. If someone sees something theyâre uncomfortable with and can suggest a better alt phrasing let me know.)
So, people tend to react to âqueer shouldnât be self-definedâ in exactly the same way theyâd respond to ace exclusionism or terf talk. Because...in practice, insisting queer has to have a fixed definition (or telling people to not use the word) tends to be round one of a game that ends with exactly those things. Even if you personally didnât mean it that way, the rest of us donât know that. We react to it like anti-racist activists respond to âAll Lives Matterâ â maybe it could be innocuous confusion, but it comes from a place of malice often enough that people do tend to assume malice.
Because the idea of fakers who are really straight infiltrating the community...thatâs a terf idea and an exclusionist idea, and it doesnât really fit with any robust and self-consistent understanding of queerness other than those ideologies.
