jenroses:

So the topic of “queer as a slur” came up in a fb conversation and my answer pretty much distilled out a lot of things that Tumblr has been saying for a while on the subject, as well as my personal experience. 

See, here’s the thing. I marched in the streets using the word Queer as a word of power. “We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.” We worked hard to reclaim that word and it’s been publicly reclaimed longer than the word “gay” has, tbh. Gay was being used as an insult within the last decade. We had to do a coordinated public service campaign to get people to stop using it to mean “bad”.

Queer studies have been a thing for decades. Academics study “Queer theory”. It IS the one word we have that is inclusive, and the only reason people keep editing themselves out of it is because of a concentrated campaign from trans exclusionists, which got picked up by biphobes and aphobes and everyone who is not comfortable with the umbrella being inclusive.

This is an act of infiltration and subversion from conservative elements. It’s a common tactic for conservatives and right wingers to send people into groups and twist the message to divide the group. Radical feminists got in bed with the religious right on the subject of sex work, and used the inherent isolationist tendencies of the gay and lesbian community to make it sound like there are “limited resources” which “shouldn’t be divided among too many people”… which is completely the opposite of the truth, which is that the larger the umbrella, the more people working together, the more collective power people have to change things to be better for everyone.

It hurts NOTHING to be loving and open and accepting of everyone who says, “I’m not straight, and I’m on your side.”

We don’t get to second-guess people’s identities. We don’t. That’s sacred. And people who reject “queer” are doing just that.

I identify as queer. Every time someone says “q-slur” or shies away from saying the name of my identity, they’re giving MY WORD back to the assholes.

So I flat out don’t trust people who say “q-slur” or act like my identity is a bad word. People who do that are stating loud and clear that they don’t value me, don’t see me as a person, and that my identity, the word that means the most about who I am, is “bad” to them.

It makes me think that people who use that word are listening too much to bigots and not enough to the most marginalized people in this ridiculous attempt at community.

I marched in the street for my word. People DIED for my word. Fuck yeah, it was a slur. But it’s not when I use it. It’s not when people use it as a positive identifier. Because we fucking reclaimed it.

You know what else was a slur? Gay. Lesbian. Trans. Even bisexual has been used to mock people. We don’t have many words that weren’t slurs, because what makes a word a slur is not the word itself, but how it is used.

People use “woman” as a slur, when they speak the word like a sledgehammer. But there is nothing inherently derogatory about the word.

When I say “Queer” I’m saying “You’re welcome here. The storm is scary out here, but my umbrella is big and we accept you. We welcome you. We CHERISH you.”

When someone refuses my word? They say the umbrella is not for me, and I do not accept that.