{"id":281617,"date":"2018-10-08T09:10:50","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T09:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/10\/08\/waiti-always-thought-the-q-in-lgbtq-was-for\/"},"modified":"2018-10-08T09:10:50","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T09:10:50","slug":"waiti-always-thought-the-q-in-lgbtq-was-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/10\/08\/waiti-always-thought-the-q-in-lgbtq-was-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Wait…i always thought the q in lgbtq was for queer??? Am i wrong? And why is it considered a slur?"},"content":{"rendered":"

vaspider<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

asynca<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

This was exactly my reaction when, in 2015, a 15yo on Tumblr came and sent me a load of hate for being\u00a0\u201can OMG ACTUAL ADULT\u201d calling myself\u00a0\u2018queer\u2019 and using\u00a0\u2018queer community\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like, how to put this. In Australia since the early 90s,\u00a0\u2018queer\u2019 has been the accepted term to call that community. It\u2019s a mainstream word. We say\u00a0\u2018queer theory\u2019,\u00a0\u2018queer community\u2019,\u00a0\u2018queer organisations\u2019, etc. Another Australian who words for the government said it\u2019s a perfectly acceptable term to use in policy documents and funding applications. Here, in Australia, queer hasn\u2019t been a slur at any point in my life.\u00a0 The only Australians I\u2019ve ever come across who think it\u2019s a slur are people who spend too much time around American youths on social media.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I did a post about the international queer community, it got 5-7k notes (ish) and people from at least 10 other countries said\u00a0\u2018queer\u2019 is not a slur in their country and it\u2019s just the word that\u2019s used for the queer community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is why it drives me nuts when a 15yo from South Carolina, USA assumes:<\/p>\n

1) Her experience with\u00a0\u2018queer\u2019 is the same as everybody else\u2019s<\/p>\n

2) A small number of people having a bad experience with\u00a0\u2018queer\u2019 is an acceptable reason to deny and police usage by the entire wider international queer community<\/p>\n

The short of it is that it\u2019s not <\/i>acceptable. Many older queer folks have used this word for decades – it\u2019s been in common use since at least the 80s. In the past 3 years it\u2019s become very fashionable (mostly only on Tumblr, but on pockets of social media elsewhere, too) to treat queer as this Big Bad Slur (forgetting that there are many other slurs and most of our language gets used as slurs at some point by various people) and to pop up on every fucking post that mentions queer like\u00a0\u201cUM EXCUSE ME IT\u2019S FINE FOR YOU TO CALL YOURSELF QUEER BUT IT\u2019S LITERAL ABUSE FOR YOU TO USE IT FOR OTHER PEOPLE LIKE AS AN UMBRELLA TERM AND YOU ARE A BAD PERSON!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

like. babe. I\u2019ve never met you in my life. You live an entire world away from me and you can\u2019t tell me what language I\u2019m allowed to use for myself and my own community. If you don\u2019t like the word, you have trauma associated with it or whatever, I accept that. I feel for you, I have trauma about some words, too.\u00a0USE XKIT BLACKLIST.<\/b>\u00a0 Your trauma is your <\/i>problem, just like my trauma is my problem. Yes, really. Get counselling. It\u2019s not everyone else\u2019s responsibility to change their identities and language because of your trauma. That\u2019s not a lack of empathy from me, that\u2019s a hard life lesson you need to learn about the world not revolving around you. I am not abusing anyone by using the language I\u2019ve always used about my own community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the end of your world, though. You\u2019re not doomed to read \u2018queer\u2019 all over tumblr forever. There are many many many <\/i>tools available for you to protect yourself and avoid triggers. You should be responsible for yourself and your experience online and protect yourself from seeing things that upset you.<\/p>\n

\u201cBUT I\u2019M A MINOR!!\u201d, you cry! okay, true. Get up from the computer, go directly to your parent or guardian, and let them know you\u2019re not old enough to police your own internet usage and ask them to do it for you. It is not my responsibility to take care of you. It is no one else on Tumblr\u2019s responsibility to take care of you. The internet is not just for kids. If you can\u2019t take care of yourself, your parents need to help you do that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The short of it is if you\u2019re old enough to know the word\u00a0\u2018queer\u2019 upsets you, you\u2019re old enough to download xkit blacklist and add\u00a0\u2018queer\u2019 to the blacklist words. If you\u2019re not doing that, I have to assume you\u2019re actually trying to pick fights with queer people and it\u2019s more of a power struggle to you than anything about semantics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBUT I SHOULDN\u2019T HAVE TO USE XKIT! IT\u2019S AN EASY CHANGE FOR YOU!\u201d Dude, you\u2019re asking me to change my whole identity. You\u2019re asking me to change my lexicon for you. It\u2019s not an easy or fair change for you to ask me to make. Xkit is a quick and easy solution for you (and now, you can use the tumblr innate tag blocks, too). If that\u2019s too much for you to do, I have a feeling you\u2019re just looking for a fight and not actually traumatised by\u00a0\u2018queer\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

NEVER. NEVER. Come onto a queer person\u2019s post and start telling them anything about how to use their <\/i>word. Queer folks get policed and oppressed enough by cishet folks. We don\u2019t need people from our own community trying to police our language and language we\u2019ve used for decades and continue to use in many countries and in many parts of the US.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is absolutely no reason to derail posts being\u00a0\u201c\u201d\u201d\u201d\u201d\u201d\u201dhelpful\u201d\u201d\u201d\u201d\u201d\u201d\u201d\u201d by repeatedly, constantly, aggressively spreading rhetoric that shames people for using language we have used for ourselves and our community for decades. <\/i>Your problem with the word queer should not be my problem, so don\u2019t make it my problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

vaspider: asynca: This was exactly my reaction when, in 2015, a 15yo on Tumblr came and sent me a load of hate for being\u00a0\u201can OMG ACTUAL ADULT\u201d calling myself\u00a0\u2018queer\u2019 and using\u00a0\u2018queer community\u2019.\u00a0 Like, how to put this. In Australia since the early 90s,\u00a0\u2018queer\u2019 has been the accepted term to call that community. It\u2019s a mainstream … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Wait…i always thought the q in lgbtq was for queer??? Am i wrong? And why is it considered a slur?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[297,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281617"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}