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Jumping In:

piny

Blackademic has a fantastic post on the asymmetrical etymology of the n-word and the q-word. I’d love to hear what you all think; I don’t have much to add but agreement. Queer has been reclaimed to a greater degree, and people who identify themselves as queer seem not to have the same insider-outsider conflicts as those that arise around the n-word. Sorry if any queer-negatory LGBT people are reading this, but its derogatory meaning is dated in a way that the n-word’s decidedly is not. “Queer” isn’t the slur of choice anymore.

And I have to say that I haven’t encountered as much resentment around the word queer, or its use in-community, from people who aren’t queer.

The debate in comments–stick around for it–developed into a discussion of both words, and I wanted to highlight this comment and my response to it just because, well, I’ve got it ready, and because there probably won’t ever be a good time to open up this particular can of worms.

Commenter Piig said:

I tend to agree with Kortney that while “queer” has a negative history it is nothing compared to “nigger.” However, we diverge when it comes to the acceptance of the queer descriptive. When I hear the term I automatically think of gay men and trannies, but not lesbians. “Queer” tends to erase lesbians from the picture in much the same way as the generic term “man” erases women. “Mankind” is meant to mean “humankind,” but it doesn’t. Likewise, “queer” is meant to encompass lesbians, but it it really doesn’t. The 70s and 80s saw a real lesbian rights movement. Then along came the 90s and the queer rights movement. It effectively pushed lesbians to the side in favor of a focus on gay men with HIV. It then morphed into more of a gay male and gender bending movement that doesn’t have room for lesbians who have no interest in being bois or in transitioning into transmen. I often get dismissed as being old school and transphobic, but I am neither. I just see a palpable misogyny in the queer movement and in Queer Studies.

Funnily enough, I often encounter palpable transphobia.

These are the assumptions I’ve noticed:

Transpeople are served by a movement headed by gay men in ways that lesbians somehow are not.

“Queer” as used and understood by gay men has no potential to marginalize transpeople.

Transpeople are not marginalized.

Trans publicity within “queer” is necessarily positive, not fetishistic, shallow, or downright demeaning.

Gay men are not generally transphobic.

Lesbians are never transphobic; they bend over backwards to make us feel comfortable and accepted.

Queer theory and queer studies have been accurate and respectful with regards to trans lives.

Transpeople in general are neither cognizant of nor invested in fighting misogyny.

I’ve also noticed that “gender bending” is so often defined as nothing more or less than identifying as male–which confuses the hell out of me, since it seems to come up so often in complaints about mango-wristed men in dresses and transmen who won’t just be men already.

“Queer” elides a lot of those conflicts in ways that bother me a great deal.

39 thoughts on Jumping In:

  1. Thank you for the post. Even as a self identified Gender Queer Trans-Women I fully understand the conflicts the term ‘Queer’ can bring up. I have encountered many of the same assumptions online. I also remember the very stereotyped Trans-Woman on ‘Queer As Folk’ in the last season. I suppose they were trying to be inclusive but I found it annoying.

    I am so glad to see you posting on this (she says again). It is refreshing to hear your voice on one of my favorite blogs.

  2. Hm. “Queer” has never had gay-man connotations for me. Or at least not not int he last 5-8 years when I’ve known anything about queer activism or the like. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I’ve run far more Lesbian and trans-positive circles than gay male within the Queer-positive crowd.

    And piny, this reminds me of the “if you’re an FTM you’re not really a man cause you’re not, y’know, _really a man_, and if you’re an MTF you’re not a real man cause you’ve given up your manliness” double standard, but inverted. It redefines all transpeople as not women.

  3. Part of the reason why I identify as Queer is because I don’t want to identify myself too closely with the transphobic kind of lesbian. I have met transphobic lesbians, gay men, hetersexual people, and everyone in between. Transphobia is prevalent in LGBT communites , whether we’d like to admit it or not.

    I don’t think that Queer erases Lesbian, at least not the way I do it – to me, the one builds upon the other. Queer’s never had only gay-man connotations for me either.

    Could you elaborate on how Queer elides those conflicts? I realize that no one label can accurately describe everyone’s experiences, but I’ve been using Queer in an attempt to indicate that I’m inclusive of transpeople, so I’d appreciate knowing more about how you interpret the word.

  4. I have always thought “Queer” was an inclusive term, inclusive of gay men, lesbians, and transgender people. I thought that was the POINT, kind of, in choosing to “rehabilitate” the word…..you know, it was VAGUE enough to include everybody in the LGBT spectrum……

  5. This may seem like a silly, superficial example, but one pop-culture instance of queer being used in a way that arguably effaces transpeople (and, I’d argue, lesbians) is found in the TV show ‘Queer As Folk.’ I’ve only seen maybe eight episodes and that was two years ago (the last time I bunked with a TV-owning roommate) so I’m no expert on the show, but from what I recall, the show’s main characters are all gay men, the most ‘gender-bending’ of whom wears a pink fuzzy coat and has a sibilant ‘s’. I don’t recall any transmen or transwomen on the show at all, and the two lesbians, as far as I could tell, function as kind of ancillary characters (I could be mistaken. Like I said, I don’t follow the show regularly, but I seem to remember the lesbians doing a good deal of advice-dispensing, with their baby dramas relegated to the sidelines).

    Getting back to how the queer blanket label can elide conflicts within the LGBT community, let’s pretent for a moment that, instead of ‘Queer as Folk’ the name of the TV show I just described was ‘Gay as Streisand Impersonators in a Piano Bar’ or ‘Gay Men & Friends’ or ‘Generic Gay Drama’ or whatever. You could argue that such a title is more accurate to describe the predominantly gay male cast o’ characters. Now, you might say that’s more narrow-minded or whatever because gay is a less inclusive term than queer. That’s true, but also deceptive. Sometimes language that is ‘more inclusive’ can, as piny points out, be especially margenalizing and shallow. Sure, you can call them Queer as Folk, but if all the characters on it are gay men, then what are you representing as queer? Blanketing differences with the terms queer, can and soometimes has been a way of shutting out transpeople (and others). Or if not shutting transpeople out completely, then at least them in under a model of queerness that happens to look a lot more like gay maleness than anything else.

    Again, this is just a pop culture example, but sometimes concrete examples are useful when thinking about how language works.

  6. Transpeople are served by a movement headed by gay men in ways that lesbians somehow are not.

    Well, some transpeople are gay men, and no lesbians are, so that one particular assumption isn’t entirely unfair.

  7. Well, some transpeople are gay men, and no lesbians are, so that one particular assumption isn’t entirely unfair.

    Yuh WHAT now? Bwa [scratches head]– huh? Come again?

  8. rereading my previous comment–

    Or if not shutting transpeople out completely, then at least them in under a model of queerness that happens to look a lot more like gay maleness than anything else.

    should be:

    Or if not shutting transpeople out completely, then at least folding transpeople in under a model of queerness that happens to look a lot more like gay maleness than anything else.

    Neglect to proofread and the meaning falls apart. Darn language.

  9. Well, some transpeople are gay men, and no lesbians are, so that one particular assumption isn’t entirely unfair.

    I think I’m reading you right, but just to be clear: there are a whole bunch of transsexual lesbians.

    Let me clarify: the assumption is that a movement built on a conception of gay men that doesn’t actually include transmasculine people can help gay men who happen to be transmasculine people. I identify as a gay man; that doesn’t mean that gay men include me when defining “gay man.” Look at HC’s QAF example. Or that a movement which has zero interest in identifying and serving the needs of lesbians and queer women can do much to identify and serve the needs of transpeople.

    I’d argue a different boundary, one that seems to get overlooked a whole lot when discussing affinity: most gay men, like most lesbians, are cisgendered. No transpeople are.

  10. Hissy Cat, I had to read it a dozen times, but I realised the meaning was no lesbians are gay men. Not that no lesbians are transpeople.

  11. Sure, you can call them Queer as Folk, but if all the characters on it are gay men, then what are you representing as queer? Blanketing differences with the terms queer, can and soometimes has been a way of shutting out transpeople (and others). Or if not shutting transpeople out completely, then at least them in under a model of queerness that happens to look a lot more like gay maleness than anything else.

    Exactly. The trans community, IME, is more likely to use “queer,” if only for the sake of convenience. That doesn’t mean that calling something queer necessarily makes it relevant to us, any more than using a supposedly catch-all term makes it relevant to lesbians.

  12. Hissy Cat, I had to read it a dozen times, but I realised the meaning was no lesbians are gay men. Not that no lesbians are transpeople.

  13. I was taught to use “queer” by lesbians and trans folks who felt excluded by “gay.” It was my understanding at the time that the word did have a long history as a pejoritive directed at individuals who transgressed gender (it actually met resistance from more gendered gay men because of this), so it felt like it included trans folks. That was a while ago, though, so it’s not surprising that it’s changed to a more limited use – it’s difficult for one word to represent such a diverse community and gay men dominate the community (in both political positions and media representation), so it seems logical that the word feels co-opted.

    We used the word inside our community, but for orgs and outreach we used the list. As Urvashi Vaid said, naming political groups “Lesbian, Gay, Bixesexual and Transgendered” forces outsiders to use those words and become comfortable using them – or at least teaches outsiders the words we want them to use.

  14. so I’m not sure that it’s the word that’s exclusionary – seems like the community is. I recently read that all the big pacs have switched from a tradition of lesbian leadership to nearly all men.

  15. It’s not up to me what word LGBT people choose to embrace, but I personally cringe every time I hear the word “queer”. When I was a kid, (yes, that was a long time ago) “queer” was the word of choice used by the most hateful homophobes.

  16. Daryl – that’s exactly the reason the word was reclaimed. The idea is to take a word that’s been used to hurt a group and use it yourself so the word can’t hurt anymore. A lot of LGBT folks use “faggot” much like “n-” but it has a lot of the same problems (like it can be used as a put down to less-straight-acting people).

    Personally the word that makes me cring is “gay” because for all of my life it’s meant “lame.”

  17. Let me clarify: the assumption is that a movement built on a conception of gay men that doesn’t actually include transmasculine people can help gay men who happen to be transmasculine people. I identify as a gay man; that doesn’t mean that gay men include me when defining “gay man.” Look at HC’s QAF example. Or that a movement which has zero interest in identifying and serving the needs of lesbians and queer women can do much to identify and serve the needs of transpeople.

    And on further thought, I’m not sure this is exactly right, either. When I refer to the belief that, “Transpeople are served by a movement headed by gay men in ways that lesbians somehow are not,” I mean, “Transpeople in general are served by a movement headed by gay men in ways that lesbians somehow are not,” that is, that trans interests somehow have more overlap.

  18. so I’m not sure that it’s the word that’s exclusionary – seems like the community is.

    Precisely. I think ground-level structure of the movement has more impact on whose interests are served than the words we put on our posters.

  19. It’s not up to me what word LGBT people choose to embrace, but I personally cringe every time I hear the word “queer”. When I was a kid, (yes, that was a long time ago) “queer” was the word of choice used by the most hateful homophobes.

    What other ryan said, pretty much: “fag,” “gay,” and “lesb****” were the slurs I grew up with; Queer Nation was old hat by the time I got out of high school. I get the sense that self-identified queers and transpeople in particular–myself included–use it because it allows them to simultaneously link up with other others, and because it allows them to open up possibilities besides LGB without necessarily creating a disjunct between LGB people and transpeople.

  20. Precisely. I think ground-level structure of the movement has more impact on whose interests are served than the words we put on our posters.

    Plus, inclusion at the lipservice level eventually becomes a substitute for inclusion at the policy level. “We’re acknowledging you; what else do you want?” It’s an old joke in the trans community that the T stands for “tacked-on.”

  21. For whatever reason, there’s a lack of leadership in all those well-funded LGBT groups (much like the democratic party) right now, but this has always been an issue. Waaay back in the early 70’s a lot of lesbians dropped out of the “gay” groups and formed their own and both dropped the trans folks who were such a huge part of stonewall itself (and the earliest post-stonewall groups, which were super idealistic and very right-on) Silvia Rivera spoke to this 30+ years ago (and for many years after), so the more things change…

  22. It’s not up to me what word LGBT people choose to embrace, but I personally cringe every time I hear the word “queer”. When I was a kid, (yes, that was a long time ago) “queer” was the word of choice used by the most hateful homophobes

    Exactly, I belong to an organization called
    Gender Queer Revolution and we regularly debate the use of ‘Queer’ as a term. Many do not like because of past connotations, others because they feel it does not suit there identity. Still we continue to use queer because it can be an inclusive shorthand for all of us.

  23. It is also important to keep in mind the extreme biphobia in pre-90’s lesbian movements. I wasn’t alive for it, but I have read a lot about it. And when I read, I shudder.

    I’ve embraced queer because it includes me as a bisexual, even though there is still biphobia in the gay community. And because of its long and bloody history, there is a power in saying it, a power in using it. It gets up in people’s faces and shows them that they cannot use it to insult you.

    And I’m a little confused about this comment: “I also remember the very stereotyped Trans-Woman on ‘Queer As Folk’ in the last season. I suppose they were trying to be inclusive but I found it annoying.”

    When was there a trans woman in the last season of Queer as Folk? Did I miss this? I remember the trans guy that was in 4 a bit after he got bashed, but I don’t remember any trans people in 5.

    Queer as Folk was never the most inclusive show, it never really fleshed out any transpeople or bisexuals as major characters, but it was primarily concieved as a show about gay men, so I don’t fault it for not living up to every principle.

    Now Moira/Max on L Word…. grrr…. that pisses me off.

  24. It is also important to keep in mind the extreme biphobia in pre-90’s lesbian movements. I wasn’t alive for it, but I have read a lot about it. And when I read, I shudder.

    There’s some of the same “all pop-culture acknowledgement is good pop-culture acknowledgement” going on.

  25. Hissy Cat, I had to read it a dozen times, but I realised the meaning was no lesbians are gay men. Not that no lesbians are transpeople.

    Thanks for the help there. I was misreading that to mean that no lesbians are transpeople. That was a very helpful clarification.

  26. piny,

    could you clarify this statement “There’s some of the same “all pop-culture acknowledgement is good pop-culture acknowledgement” going on” because I’m a not really sure what you mean by this in relation to biphobia.

  27. could you clarify this statement “There’s some of the same “all pop-culture acknowledgement is good pop-culture acknowledgement” going on” because I’m a not really sure what you mean by this in relation to biphobia.

    The idea that fetishization–e.g. “trendiness” and objectification–is better than invisibility.

  29. piny, I guess I’m not really sure what that has to do with biphobia….

    The invisibility in question isn’t merely the invisibility of bisexuals, but the invisibility of biphobia–and some of the same issues arise wrt superficial vs. real inclusion and wrt media attention vs. real visibility.

  30. It’s an old joke in the trans community that the T stands for “tacked-on.”

    Indeed. The original version of that post read “GLBTTQAAGQTSBDSMLOLOMGWTF”, (and all of those mean something, until LOLOMGWTF) but I thought that might be read as a shot at people who prefer GLBT to queer.

  31. Indeed. The original version of that post read “GLBTTQAAGQTSBDSMLOLOMGWTF”, (and all of those mean something, until LOLOMGWTF) but I thought that might be read as a shot at people who prefer GLBT to queer.

    I guess it depends on whether you think the former is too divisive or the latter too blurry.

  32. When was there a trans woman in the last season of Queer as Folk? Did I miss this? I remember the trans guy that was in 4 a bit after he got bashed, but I don’t remember any trans people in 5.

    She was in only two scenes I can remember. She was a waitress at the dinner where Debbie worked. The first scene was just after Debbie had quit, she was running behind on the orders and after a customer complained said ‘I grew tits now you want to grow another pair of arms’. The other scene was less memorable(annoying), she was just a extra with a few lines.

  33. Natasha

    Are you talking about Kiki? She was a sparse regular on the show from seasons 3-5, introduced as “Kiki the new waitress who used to be Kenny the waiter”. She worked at the diner and never had more then just an humourous role serving up wisecracks or being a name-drop/plot device for Deb. Or was there someone else?

  34. Sarah S,

    Yep Kiki, shows how much attention I was paying doesn’t it. Thank you for the information.

    Still it supports my original point, the Trans-Woman was a very minor character there for mostly comic relief. This used to be called tokenism, I still call it that.

  35. Still it supports my original point, the Trans-Woman was a very minor character there for mostly comic relief. This used to be called tokenism, I still call it that.

    At least she has a job, right?

  36. Someone should make up a name for the scientifically-proven Law Of The Internets that says that all discussions about queer & trans issues eventually devolve into detailed discussions of minor characters from Queer as Folk.

  39. I guess it depends on whether you think the former is too divisive or the latter too blurry.

    I would say that I see the value in both, but I prefer Queer for its inclusiveness. Once you get more than five letters in a row it looks messy, and you need far more than five letter to fit everyone under any umbrella I’d care hold up.

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