#queered

Venu$ by Krister Larson

2min 55sec, Milwaukee WI, 2014

"The nude, most commonly female, is a clear depiction of the body, idealisms, and the male gaze. Venu$ asserts both roles in the exchange between model and artist, director and actor. Much like Boticelli's "Birth of Venus" we witness a snapshot of a happening, an exchange between bodies, voices, and hierarchy. What happens when these voices and bodies are queered or merge? Who addresses who? "

For more info about Krister Larson visit KristerLarson.com

It's sort of like learning your ABCs, but instead it's your LGBTQ's.

As your friendly neighborhood Queertips editor, I understand goofing up when writing. Everyone's put the wrong you're/your in a sentence before. Two minutes ago, I tagged something as "tansgender." (Which I guess is like being trans but also really tan? Do we have any tan/trans followers?)

So today I wanted to go over a do and a don't of queer writing and make the Internet a more queer-grammatically correct place.

DON'T: Say "transgendered."

It's not a thing. "Transgendered" is not a thing. Being trans isn't a thing that just happens to a person. ("Ted went to the bank and got transgendered!" Nope. Not a thing.)

You cannot hit someone with the queer wand and make them transgendered. A person is transgender. Using it as some bizarro world past-tense verb makes it sound like an accident, or a mistake. And worse, it makes YOU sound like a grampa--"kids these days and their video games with the transgendered pokemans..."

Transgendered is not a word. Transgender is.

DO: Use "queered."

Queered is TOTALLY a verb. You can be queer, but you can also queer something. For example, "We queered prom by giving all the girls fake mustaches to wear and giving all the guys tiaras." People, places and things can and should be queered. How do you know if something has been queered? Well, has it been altered in some way that makes it seem more like the sexy chaos of the LGBTQ community and culture? Then it's been queered.