Over on the “Gender Critical” forum on Reddit clone Ovarit, the regulars are discussing how much they hate the word “queer.”
Oddly, their main objection seems to be that it’s not the word “lesbian.”
“Queer means everything and nothing,” complains GCRadFem in the top comment.
It is a pejorative to me. I’m a lesbian. The word makes many people uncomfortable because a lesbian is clearly a woman with no desire, need or sexual attraction for men. Lesbian is a sexual orientation to women, by and for women.
A woman that doesn’t want or need a man? We can’t have that in society.
Rama replies:
“queer” means there’s a chance, from a male perspective. “lesbian” means no thanks & they can’t deal with that.
Huh. The weird thing is that these proudly lesbian Gender Crits are happy to welcome straight people into their movement — they don’t mind it when hetero women date men — but the slightest suggestion of bisexuality sends them to the fainting couch.
The other weird thing is that NO ONE IS PROPOSING WE REPLACE THE WORD LESBIAN WITH THE WORD QUEER. You can call yourself lesbian all you want. Let people who want to call themselves queer call themselves queer.
Or, if the main problem is simply the word “queer,” here are some possible alternatives.
I’m not sure that any of these really work for me, but hey, it’s not up to me to decide.
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Audre Lorde said, “there is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives” and that’s why I like ‘queer’.
The real reason they hate that Q word is that it’s an umbrella term that can cover trans people.
Audre was a wise woman.
But yeah. Lesbians can still call themselves lesbians all day and night and no one is going to deny them the right to say that.*
Queer people don’t fit in the neat binary “lesbian/gay”; they need their own term and they’ve decided they want to be called queer. If that offends you, don’t talk to or have sex with them, everyone will be happier.
Not to mention, a lot of queer people are AMAB and stay that way — you gonna tell them they can’t use the word “queer”?
@LouCPurr: Bingo.
*Some territorial and religious restrictions apply IRL. YMMV.
“Queer” is a fuzzy label. They want nice, neat labels so they know who to discriminate against.
@snowberry:
There have long been feminists opposed to Audre Lorde’s insistence on complicated liberations movements dedicated to liberating fully human lives. That’s why (or almost certainly why, I can’t speak directly to what was in her head) it was necessary for her to say such a thing in the first place. If everyone had already been operating on a multi-issue, intersectional level in the first place, saying what she said would have seemed trite, possibly even to the point of reducing respect for the speaker.
But nope. It’s not trite because we’ve always had and will for many decades more still have people that try to insist on single-issue movements for political and social liberation. But you can’t liberate all Black people if women are still oppressed because many Black people are (:gasp!:) women. You can’t liberate all women if Black people are still oppressed. And you can’t even liberate all Black women if lesbians are still oppressed.
As a queer, I fight for lesbian liberation.
As lesbians, those redditers seek my further denigration and diminishment.
That’s really all you need to know.
@Crip Dyke
Correction: these aren’t redditors: they are ovaritters. Most of them have been banned from Reddit.
I stand corrected. Thanks, bcb.
Correction: “woman” means there’s a chance, from a (sufficiently entitled) male perspective. “Bi” or “pan” means “threesome waiting to happen.” “Lesbian” or “ace” means “challenge”.
Can’t they just admit they hate everyone?
These people spend an inordinate amount of time on people who do not care they exist.
@Full Metal Ox
Exactly. All my lesbian friends have at least one story where telling a dude he had no chance did nothing to dissuade him
Huh? Sixty years ago “queer” was specifically about homosexuality in men. Today’s meaning appears to be nonconformance to society’s definitions of gender. I’ve also seen it used as a political term, advocating LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms. No idea how that user derived the meaning they suggest. My own stance is that women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights, queer rights and so forth are all fundamentally the same thing – an individual’s rights and freedoms shouldn’t be determined by their genitalia.
LOL, last time I got harassed by a bigot in public, he called me a queer and also made it obvious he couldn’t tell my birth sex – he couldn’t decide on insults aimed at lesbians or gay men.
GCs might be opposed to the concept of an umbrella term, but most of the far right makes barely any distinction between gay, lesbian, bi, or trans. Any alliances with people like Milo Y are nothing more than opportunism, otherwise they see us as just one big degenerate lump of social enemies. IRL the umbrella is already there.
Someone’s dabbling with Dall-E. 😀 That AI generated woman with the QUER sign is clearly just using it to hide her abnormally long neck. You took a big risk having them hold signs though but I’m impressed that only a couple of the hands look like they’ve been exposed to a mutagen.
It’s really terrible how there’s no room for Lesbians in LGBTQ. If only there were some letter they could call their own.
[Disclaimer: The following is likely true from a US perspective, but I don’t know if it also applies to most other countries]
This appears to be yet another manifestation of the general anxiety that the identity of “lesbian” is disappearing. Since 2010 at least (and probably earlier) lesbian bars have been gradually disappearing, or occasionally, converted into a general LGBTQIA+ bar. Events like Lilith Fair or Michfest have been in decline since their heyday in the late 1990s/early 2000s and have become basically nonexistent as of 2015. Most IRL communities have lost members or broken up, with some becoming mostly focused on online presence, and others moving on to LGBTQIA+ or Pansexual environments. (“Pansexual” in the sense of all orientations including straight welcome, not the specific identity.) And some fraction of people who used to identify as lesbian now identify as trans or nonbinary.
It’s not so much that lesbians are disappearing as that many of their IRL communities and spaces are shrinking or fragmenting. Those who remain, or want to be in them but no longer have meaningful access, often feel like their world is vanishing. I can imagine how it might feel that they’re being “erased” along with their communities, especially if they don’t really know where everyone else went, or don’t want to follow.
But for lesbians who (consciously or not) believe in some form of gender essentialism, it’s worse than that: the ones which remain are, with occasional exceptions, allowing trans women to join up. Not only are they unwelcome in their own communities, the presence of AMAB people and any cis women who might date them feels like an even further erasure (by “diluting” the meaning of the word if “anyone” can claim it).
True, not every queer woman is a lesbian. I wouldn’t call myself a lesbian, since I’m not *only* attracted to women.
But I had a friend and classmate who was, and she called herself queer AND lesbian. So it’s not a one-or-the-other deal.
@LouCPurr – I strongly suspect so, yeah.