cardozzza:

ofbonesandblood:

pieandhotdogs:

winebrightruby:

I am flat-out blown away every time someone posts or reblogs a post along the lines of “These darn kids on tumblr have never been oppressed by the word ‘queer’; it’s obvious those crazy radfems just taught them these talking points so they could complain about it!” when I literally caught my younger brother playing “Smear the Queer” with his friends in the neighborhood when I was in high school, post-9/11. “They’re like twenty years too late to have ever even had this word thrown at them” is an outright stupid thing to say. “Queer” is actively and currently used to insult and oppress non-straight people literally today, and I’m super happy for you if you’ve never had it thrown at you, but what in the actual hell is going on in your head to unilaterally declare that it must no longer be a slur because you and your friends have reclaimed it?

This. I’ve had complete strangers shout “fucking queers” at me and my friends during public LGBT+ events, my dad has texted me “well, all my friends know I have a queer for a son” when it got back to his shitty bar buddies that he raised a gay kid, I’ve seen students verbally assaulted by evangelicals denouncing the “liberal queer agenda” on college campuses, this isn’t just something that stopped being a thing back in the 90’s.

And for the love of god, stop acting like those of us who speak out against its broad application on people who are uncomfortable with its usage are unaware that there has been a movement to reclaim it, or that we’re talking about people who personally use it to refer to themselves and their own identity. Hell, I fucking call myself “queer” all the time, and I’m cool with most of my friends using it in reference to me. But I sure as hell know the difference between reclaiming something for myself, and calling every random non-straight or non-cis person on the sidewalk a literal slur, and I make certain that the people I care to keep in my life are aware of that distinction as well.

this is also why I hate how it’s become an “academic” word because all these urban liberal twenty-something mostly-straight & -cis students and scholars are suddenly under the impression that they have permission to use it. and like, obviously I get the appeal of having a simple umbrella term but not at the expense of my or anyone else’s comfort. just fucking say LGBT, or gender non-conforming, or “gay or bi”, as the case may be. it’s not that much longer, it’s infinitely less fraught, and it’s definitely not that fucking hard.

I honestly favour the word queer as a self-descriptor but I don’t use it lightly, and hearing people around me use it like they would any other word and apply it to historical figures and other unsuspecting LGBT people is absolutely jarring. it’s at the point now where I’m becoming *more* averse to using it, even around my close friends, because I don’t want to inadvertently let someone think it’s just a casual adjective.

And they’ll first say ‘there’s so much power in reclaiming slurs, taking them back from those who would use them to harm you!’ but then insist that queer is no longer a slur, with zero irony. It can’t be both!