this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Honestly, including people is why i prefer just saying queer over using acronyms. It's completely open-ended, it doesn't create a hierachy based on who gets named first and who ends up with one of the slots behind the LGBT that may or may not be included by a given speaker, it's easy to use, it doesn't shoehorn people into rigid categories and makes it easy to fit in for people who are questioning or have complex identities - and it pisses off the exact type of bourgousified, reactionary, assimilationist, racist, mysogynist, transphobic, biphobic cis gays that the farthead you're replying to refers to when they bring up how supposedly "gay people shit talk" all of this.
same tbh, plus i find i trip over acronyms a lot and it gives Certain Assholes the feeling that they can use that as a vector for attack ("it's so complicated even they can't keep track!" etc)
worth mentioning scumfuck up there only added that bit after getting criticized for their bigotry. homophobes are all magically harvey milk's favorite nephew the instant someone calls them out.
Yeah that's common, i see that a lot both online and irl and they always mean somebody like that one gay dude in their QAnon chat group who dates muslim men exclusively while also wanting to genocide them.
I do the same for similar reasons.
That said, i don't mind when ohter people go with the acronyms, and it often tells you a lot about the background of the person using it. Like, i see that it starts with 2S, i immediately know they're Canadian because that's the only place in the world doing that. Or when somebody still says GLBT like they did before AIDS, i know i'm reading a post from a cis gay boomer. And when i see something including LGBTT, i know they're a transmedicalist and possibly from Southwest Germany and think you're not valid if you don't get bottom surgery.
Are the two Ts for counting "transsexual" and transgender as different things that are both included?
Yea
TERF ass trans people
disagree, queer is not all encompassing. if you dont identify as queer but you still want to identify with the community the acronym is still the best descriptor. as for the order, i do support updating it by putting trans first and pushing bisexuals down the list in favor of pansexuals.
Bad take, considering bi erasure exists.
im not trying to do a bi erasure, bi people are valid. im just saying as someone who was bi sexual who later became pan sexual after learning about the term i just think changing some of the letters around would be good ways to raise awareness about different genders and sexualities in the acronym. so many people know what lgbt is but they dont really know the plus part. the first four are really important to the broader conception of gender and sexual identity as a whole. look if we can change the flag i dont think the acronym is sacrosanct either, i do however think we need an acronym.
i think lesbian, gay, and bisexual should be lower on the acronym. i think trans people should be first since they are receiving most of the targeting and attacks out of any group in the community right now, i think pansexuals, asexuals, and nonbinaries could really benefit from a representation bump. TPAN, rolls off the tongue. we can keep lgbt too. nobody got rid of the pride flag after the progress flag. both can exist at the same time. i just think its a representation issue.
why
It's literally a catchall term for anybody who's not het, cis, allo or endo.
As a bisexual trans woman exclusively dating t4t, let's NOT start the "bi is actually transphobic, you should call yourself pan" nonsense debate. It always leads to awful bad faith discussions, pushes bi erasure and completely ignores any and all actually transphobic dating behavior, of which there is plenty, none of which is connected to calling yourself bisexual.
Why would you change the order? It implies some level of arbitary importance to certain unique struggles over others which I don't think is healthy while we all share the same acronym.
Also L should stay at the front because that relates more to gay history and the allyship shown by women during the AIDS epidemic to provide blood to sufferers and L comes first to honor that.
Lemm.ee ass take
I don't follow - my understanding of the term is that it encompasses everyone who fits under the umbrella. if you're not under the umbrella, the acronym isn't going to fit either, no? can you give me an example of who you mean?
I've seen/heard of people specifically disavowed the term "queer" for their personal identity, but only a couple times and I, like others here, much prefer "queer" as a catchall term for brevity in all cases where there isn't someone objecting to it being applied to them.
yeah, I'd be curious to learn why. like I'm all for a different umbrella term but it's hard to pick one without understanding the complaint.
I'm guilty of using queer without considering who I'm talking to.
When I talk to boomer gays and use queer as a catchall term I've seen visible recoil.
To them queer was a slur similar to foxtrot-Oscar-gay-gay-oscar-triceratops (I can't remember the phonetic alphabet) and was used to oppress and attack them at least in the UK.
And like yeaaah, it was even when I was in school up until like 2010s so its not as reclaimed with the older generation as we'd like to hope because of lived experience from what I've seen which is fair.
So as a result I don't use it around older gay men and use the acronym since queer genuinely seems to bring back a lot of the 80s gay panic trauma for them I guess.
I'd liken it to when a cis friend called me triceratops-rain-alpha-november-november-yacht as a in-joke he assumed i knew since he knows a fair few trans people who are reclaiming that term on twitter but for me that word is full of trauma and I was like "nope, I'm not in that community please don't ever say that again".
I called him a chaser cos he has a trans gf and said it was reclaimed by friends of mine with trans gfs and he got the message why you can't assume reclaimed words have the same gravity with each individual.
I guess I see queer in a similar vein, I guess the difference is the time since it was reclaimed is the big difference.
I don't think we need a new umbrella term but I think it's important for us to remember others experiences with reclaimed words before we assume them to be gospel (despite most gay publications I've seen using it fine).
I dunno, I'm trying to be mature and empathic 😭😭😭
yep totally fair. I mostly interact with younger trans people - a lot of the boomers are just straight up dead here because of how the government handled AIDS. so there isn't the same kind of memory. like 40 is unfortunately the oldest I've met. it's rage inducing to think about - I transitioned with literally zero wise elders around to provide guidance.
Mood
I have however had enough moments of speaking to older gays in our cities gay town and was asked to be aware of the history of that term and it deffo made me go "ah m'bad".
I get that for older gay people in English-speaking countries and i appreciate that you shared this. My perspective on this is rather different, as i'm from Germany and completely out-of-date English slurs are obviously not something people here normally have a personal trauma from. On this side of the North Sea, the people who take objection to the term queer are mainly assimilationists who don't want to be lumped in with anybody who is too flamboyant, loud and gender-nonconforming for their straight friends and business partners, or they're outright terfs who love to make up stuff about how lesbianism is erased by the queer agenda (ofc most of the time these aren't even lesbians, and if you see them at a counterprotest to a Dyke* March, odds are they are paid to be there by one of the European fronts for the Heritage Foundation). So i'm not used to needing to pay attention to who i piss off with the term, because my experience is that it reliably pisses off people i want to piss off.
That's really interesting, I guess my perspective is shaped by my material conditions
Lmao but genuinely that's really interesting. Admittedly this thread is the first time I've heard it's not pecieved in the same way which says to me I've fallen for a British (but positioning itself as the "International community") position so it's given me some things to think about as hearing its being weaponised by reactionaries makes me feel the ick now.
Likewise, i'm feeling kinda icky because my previous opinion towards the term kind of brushed over the trauma queer elders had to endure. Because it originally wasn't the international term it is now, it was something that gay people abroad probably knew about, but definitely not something your average bigot in a rural central-European village yelled at you when he thought your pants where too fancy to make him feel secure in his fragile masculinity. So i was under the impression that people still alive today just had no direct, hurtful experience with it like with other slurs.
We live and learn. I still find myself having to catch myself in situations where maybe its better to just use the full acronym to not trigger anyone.
I'm sure you'll find them in the anglosphere too. I've seen a few threads of twitter. Possibly just Germans though, since they tend to have good English.
Not even only boomer gays, I'm in my mid 20s and I don't identify with the term. If someone were to call me that I'd get flashbacks lol
Thank you for letting me know, I'd never have assumed that but I feel kinda gross now for thinking it was just a generational thing 😔
It is more of a generational divide, you're right about that. I'm definitely an outlier in terms of people my age.
It's still definitely food for thought though.
Because queer is a slur many of us have been called by bigots
fair enough
Yeah that's why I don't identify with or use the term.
You know why the L in LGBT goes first, right? For me that's very important and I'll never change that.
Its a sociological descriptor not a personal one. You can be queer and not identify as queer, and you can identify as queer and not be queer.