There was an article in the local paper the other day talking about attacks in the community by neo-nazis against women, queer people, non-whites, etc. The article referred to these attacks being against the "queer communtiy", among other things.
Someone got really upset about this and wrote to the editor complaining that the word "queer" should not have been used, but "gay" should have been used. He was quite upset as he felt "queer" was a derogatory term, and sent gay rights back 15 years, etc, etc. To him it was so obvious that you do not refer to something or a group as "queer" in this sense.
Okay, so obviously I have some issues with this editorial. I'll get to that in a second.
Today I read another editorial on this subject, saying that "queer" /was/ the right word because the dictionary defines queer in a way that suggests it was used properly. We shouldn't be so uptight and politically correct about things... like when the city of toronto wanted to refer to the "christmas tree" as a "holiday tree".. totally rediculous.
Okay, that was his position. Personally, I like the idea of a "holiday tree". I'm not totally uptight about being politically correct but I can imagine how non-christmas celebrating people must feel around that time of year. This is beside the point. Both people that wrote in about the word "queer", I think, didn't really "get it".
To a lot of you, this might be really obvious. You can't just say "attacks against the gay community"... this is just not accurate. It's not just gays that are attacked. You would have to say something like "attacks against lesbians, gays, bis, pansexual, pansensual, trans, otherwise genderqueer or differently sexually oriented peoples". Secondly, what about the usage of "gay" as derogatory? "Queer" can be used in a derogatory way, so can "gay". Really I think "queer community" was the best way to put it. It's an umbrella term that includes all of these non-heteronormative identities, and it's been reclaimed long enough that it should be able to be used this way. Yes, certain people are going to be offended. There are people that, even if they understand the politics of language like this, and they understand that the word has been reclaimed and is now often used in a positive way, they still feel upset when they here this word. We should definately be sensitive to that but also be careful not to limit ourselves too much. (We need words).
When creating this site, I considered the word "queer" as possibly offensive but decided to go along with it anyway. I couldn't think of a better (and all-inclusive) word to use, and no matter which term one picks, there will most often be an issue for someone.
Your comments on this are welcomed and appreciated :)
Thanks.
Language is tricky...
I have an archaeological analogy which I occasionally deal with. There is a difference between, say, a hunter-gatherer society, where the people live in small bands, are generally egalitarian, migrate several times a year, live in small, temporary house pits, make their own tools, clothes, etc., and highly hierarchical societies, where people grow food, live in large, permanent cities, have monumental architecture (like the pyramids, large temples, even city walls), have special craftspeople to make certain things, etc. In the past, these latter types of societes (which used to be considered superior and 'advanced' compared to other types of societies) were simply lumped into the term 'civilization.' But this is a tricky term, with a specific meaning, implying that others aren't 'civilized' and are therefore savage brutes, etc. When anthropologists got away from seeing hunter-gatherer and other such societies as being savage and inferior, it was time for a new term for the city societies. But what do you call them? They are either Chiefdoms or States, but you can't just describe them as that (if lumping them), because there are so many possibilities, and those terms have other problems, including identifying what type of society a people were, or when they became that type of society, etc. (in the modern world, it is easy to identify a state society (Canada, and indeed all modern international nations are. Sometimes called nation-states. But the term nation is difficult, too, because the Iroquois are a nation, in that they are a group of people with a national identity, but they do not have their own separate state. The Welsh are the same. As are so many other groups throughout the world)). And you can't call them more advanced societies, because really, there is nothing more advanced within them than with any other type of society. They just began to grow food, developed private property, began to exploit each other, and then built big shit.
So a new term was necessary, and the term "complex society" began to be used for describing Chiefdoms and States, and it still is. It stems from these societies being more social-culturally complex; in other words, there are more levels to their society. Hunter-gatherers have one level. Chiefdoms have two (rulers and the people). States have three or more (rulers, buearocrats, and the people, plus any number of other classes). I didn't entirely mind this term, so I used it, but sometimes when I use it to describe my archaeological interests I get the reply "but all societies are complex!" which is quite true. I don't think that I could ever figure out the kinship system of the Ju'/hoansi people, because it is so complex. That is but one of countless examples. So rather than saying "advanced societies," or "complex societies," or "societies which are complex because they have two or more levels or classes of people," I think that it is time for a whole new term. What is it? I have no idea.
And I must say that I like your new word, Mike! GLittelButQuy or whatever (I forgot exactly what it was, and it is off the screen, so I can't copy-and-paste it now. Well, I very easily could get to it to copy-and-paste it, but I am too lazy, so I will instead write a long explanation on why I don't have the word exactly correct, rather than just go and get the correct word).
I should follow that example for my archaeological problem: swacbthtomlocop.
Anyway, sorry for my rambling, off-topic post, which really added nothing to the discussion at hand, but where you hopefully were enlightened a little and saw that language is a problem for many thinkers, not just queer philosophers. Fucking semantics.
And that last sentence can be taken in more than one way, too. :)
words can't be free of meaning...
Your post wasn't too off-topic, and pretty relevant for this discussion, so thank you :).
I'm wondering if any word can be free of negative connotations and not come to be insulting to some people over time. For example, we might create a new work (ewok), and then that work will be used negatively for enough people that it's no longer a ncie thing to say in any context. So we create a new word because we don't want to offend anyone... maybe 'kowe' :). Same thing happens to that word, but since (hopefully) people are more tolerant, it takes a little longer. So we create a new word... again and again? If everyone was fully accepting, we wouldn't have this problem. But then, would the former words even be insulting anymore? (Probably, as long as people know them and the history that goes along with them...).
So an example of this... "retarded", "special", "mentally challenged"...
To create a new word at this point, how successful will it be? Maybe as long as there is the negative word (say, queer), and the new word is too awkward to use as an insult, like "you GLBTQ!!"... we will be okay :).
Just a few things to think about.
Mekyla is right
I am not personally offended by either of the terms "gay" or "queer", and I think that to some people they are essentially synonymous. Gay obviously most often refers to gay males, but it is also used to represent queer in public life sometimes. Take for example the "gay" pride parade, the "gay" village, or the "gay" rights movement. These things are not at all excluded to gay males (perhaps with the exception of the gay rights movement, which focused on the rights of gays and lesbians, but it still opened many doors for the broader queer community).
However, I am not one of those people. I agree with you, in that gay should not be used in place of queer. It creates a subtle superiority of gay males over the rest of the queer community, much like the use of "man" or "mankind" to represent the human race places men above women. Either the parade and village, etc, should be relabelled queer, or our community should think of a new term to apply to gay males. I think the latter would be fun! It would have to be a new term, with no linguistic/cultural baggage. I propose Ewok.
new terms
I also like the idea of having a new term without linguistic/cultural baggage, though I think such a thing would be really difficult to get going. I mean, just look at how much (or little) wyman has become... I didn't hear of that until a few years into university. I think queer, as a term adapted/reclaimed, I knew long before that. And then there is the advantage of reclaiming words in general... when a word is reclaimed, the "anti-queer" lose the ability to use it in a negative sense. (Or at least partially... I know 'gay' is still used in a derrogatory way).
Ewok sounds good, though! :)
(Also look at how difficult it is to get people to use gender-neutral pronouns. I'd like to use them, but I keep forgetting what they are!)
This is tricky.
Assuming that all people who might be categorized under the queer umbrella are okay with that term can be problematic (even discriminatory and oppressive?) in a number of ways. I think oftentimes people who've been labelled queer in the context of being bashed or otherwise violated just CAN'T go along with the whole reclaiming of language strategy, because on a very visceral level, they feel violated again every time they hear that word. It's not because they don't GET it or aren't theoreticaly astute; frankly, theory (or at least a highly abstract, intellectualized type of theory) is only good for so much when you've lived with violent oppression for most of your life. And I think there are some trends in terms of the types of people who have been most hurt by the term queer... they may be older than the average, more rural, more working class, less gender-normative or whatever (okay, I don't know whether these things are true or not, but they're just examples of how the term queer doesn't necessarily work the same way for everyone). I am NOT saying that there aren't many people who have been brutalized by queer-bashing who are proudly using the term queer to identify themselves. Just that not every can or should do that, and that people are not somehow less advanced if they don't do that.
Regarding "gay pride," "gay village" etc., I really hate these expressions too. I kind of like dropping the gay part altogether and just saying "pride" or "the village." This is vague enough to be extremely inclusive, yet non-offensive. Also, it really seems to rankle heteronormative people (like my dad) who get freaked out because it's not clear just who's involved... it makes them kind of paranoid, I think... when my dad saw an ad for "Pride" on TV he went off about how it's so ridiculous, they won't even call it gay pride anymore. So yeah, I like it because it's kind of provocative.
Obviously just dropping the label is not going to work in all cases. I think the best option--surely not the most popular, but we'll see what kind of responses I get--is long strings of letters. Arg, I know. Q definitely has to be one of those letters, for "queer"--because as others have mentioned, lots of people are excluded by the term gay but feel perfectly comfortable with the term queer (though I would caution that "queer," just like "gay," has its own set of exclusionary implications: male [for some people, at least], urban, middle or upper class, etc etc). Maybe the acronym thing wouldn't be so annoying if we made a cute word out of it, or something. Of course it has to be a constantly growing and open-ended acronym, not an exhaustive list of non-normative sexual identities... there never COULD be one.... and the list would have to include things like "unidentified," "pansexual" and "not included in this list because the list is inadequate" (which hopefully is not such an insulting designation as "other" would be).
Then again... I'm all for making up a new word. Maybe it can be MORE inclusive, though I'm not sure a word can ever be as inclusive as we would like...
Well, what do y'all think?
moving beyond 'queer'...
As far everything you said regarding the word queer, I pretty much agree. We have to recognize that people are going to feel insulted by the word, and we have to be sensitive to that. Also, we have to recognize that, no matter how inclusive "queer" is supposed to be, it always will lean towards describing a certain type of person more than another. As you say, "urban, middle or upper class, etc". Going back to the original article, what would have been the way to put it when talking about attacks against the queer / glbtqETC community? (Given that this is a small local free paper directed to the general public in peterborough?) What would have made the most sense-- been the most accurate as far as getting the meaning across, and be the most sensitive (considering there are those that are obviously offended by the word 'queer', but i would have been really concerned if they had said 'gay'). Maybe you're right about the long string of letters. Perhaps something like GLBT here would have been best (except that I don't think the general public really knows what this means). And what about adding a Q to that? How would the people offended by the word "queer" react to that? (I would ask if I knew such a person).
Creating a cute word from glbtETC would be helpful, for sure, but with the letters GLBTQ... we're off to a bad start :). Well, maybe not... GaLeBiTraQ! hehe.
Also I wonder what adding a bunch of labels to glbt is going to do ultimately. (But this gets into a discussion about the value of labels, what good they do, what bad they do, and maybe I'll leave it for another day :) ).
And yes, it is tricky, and if we ignore the trickiness, we can get ourselves into a bad place :).
Okay I'm really tired so I hope this made sense.
Comments welcomed and appreciated :)
True, true
Oh definitely, in the context of the article I think queer is the best choice. I got carried away and wasn't really thinking about the original question. It might not hurt to footnote it, though, with a little disclaimer that this is a reclaimed term, an umbrella term, one that not everybody is comfortable with....
Okay, who am I kidding, this is a community newspaper we're talking about, not a sociology paper. Still, though! A lot of folks might not have encountered that terminology before.