Back To The Motor League

You know it seriously is a bizarre thing to see this conversation pop up online in the last year. It genuinely makes me feel old! When I first came out and started doing activist work at Cal State Long Beach, I swear to you we figured this shit out. Like, I distinctly remember these conversation, and then making policy to enact them for our group, and then like nine years went by and I went about my merry way and then in the last year it’s like all these people online are like WAIT WE NEED TO FIGURE THIS OUT RIGHT NOW AND OH MY GOD NO ONE HAS EVER DISCUSSED THIS BEFORE THIS IS A BRAND NEW ISSUE TO EVERYONE

which is not really a criticism at all, just an observation about how tumblr stuff makes me feel ancient. it’s not like we held a conference for All Things Queer 2002 and dictated some international law on gayness or anything, but yeah. this is all so weird to me!

anyway, the way my group worked at Cal State Long Beach and the way my brain has always considered this is that there is a Queer community! In this community includes pretty much every non-heteronormative group. Oh god, I think this was around the time that QUILTBAG as an acronym was starting to gain usage and all of us were like NO GET THAT AWAY FROM US HOW ANNOYING THAT SOUNDS SO SILLY. Anyway, we all just referred to issues as such as queer, and we loved that umbrella term. I still love it, and I’m happy to see it being used.

Here’s the difference. That is a term to describe a community, but we made sure to let others know they needed to be careful and respectful of using that term as a self-identifier. This was really before any orientation terms for asexuals existed (at least for us; none of us heard them before 10 years ago). So people who were poly or asexual and had strictly “straight” relationships or attractions or sexual experiences were told to just be respectful of the fact that while we loved having them in the queer community, self-identifying with that word would always be more complicated. Some people might be cool with it, and others might not, and you should respect that in our space. Generally, most of us fell along the line that if you were heterosexual in attraction/dating/sexual experiences only and you never experienced anything else, you should probably stay away from using that word. 

I mean, it’s for the same reason I outlined yesterday. The word is still a slur, and it’s a word with a violent, horrifying history. People have a history with it, and in the interest of creating a space where we can respect history while adapting ourselves to being a group of people who is open and accepting, we should probably be wary of how it is used. 

I sort of feel like it this way. I live in the Bay Area. I’ve been here a year and a half. While technically I am very much a Bay Area resident, I don’t go up to someone who has lived here their whole lives and didn’t really choose to be referred to by where they grew up and lived and start talking to them as if I am totally a Bay Area person and whatnot. Does that mean that there’s no context for me to refer to myself that way? Of course not! But this is about navigating personal norms for people and respecting history.

And I don’t mean that in a general sense. When I say history, I am referring to the deeply personal history of each person who has lived in the shadow of a word that was once really ugly and terrifying. I want people to respect that I’m reclaiming a slur for that very reason: it was once used to harm me. So when I see people throwing “queer” around willy-nilly without an appreciation for context or the thoughts of other people who had no choice about that word, it just makes me feel sad.

So, yeah. To sum up: I’ve felt for many years that there is a wonderful queer umbrella that many people belong under, but I think we should all take time to research and consult others about being a person who might fit under that umbrella, but who society has not deemed a sub-human because of who they are. If you’re generally read as straight, if your romantic orientations are hetero, if your partners in a poly relationship all fit in an umbrella of heterosexual experiences for you, I would ask that you please, please take a moment to read what I wrote here and in yesterday’s ask and think about what the experience with a slur is like. If it is not used against you currently, if it was not used against you in the past, and if in no future situation will you ever be read in a way that might involve someone using a homophobic slur at you, please proceed with extreme caution. And most of all, just respect the fact that some people might feel uncomfortable or threatened by such things, and some might not. 

THAT IS ALL YAY