There's a lot of dimensions to the "queer is a slur" stance that is ignorant of or propagating a lot of bad faith misinformation about what the term and community actually is

Not least of which is erasing the rallying cry, "Not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you".

One of my earliest interactions with the word "queer" with friends after coming out was one friend expressing that they don't like seeing more liberal/assimilationist (white) gays using the word "queer" if they're not committed to the radical liberation politics, solidarity work,

fight against the status quo, and what else that comes with "queer" in the punk sense. Which is kind of the same energy I get from being alienated from lesbian twitter but finding a restful stop if not a home in dyke twitter.

Then too, there's the way that the fight like hell to claim the word -- not *re*claim but push binary and homophobic culture out of it and claim the heritage of a word coined *from* gay and queer people -- is for the sake of establishing a safe haven for people who don't fit into

any of the other binary designations of sexual and gender identity. (Because that's what it is, quite frankly, a binary. You're either gay/lesbian OR bisexual. You're either cis OR trans. Within trans, you're either man/woman or Non Binary. etc)

Then too, there's the way a lot of us are quite frankly alienated by the latent and vicious transphobia, the liberalism, the binary thinking, and what all else, that plagues lgbt spaces and want a space that's actually to get fucking *weird* with gender and attraction and all.

Then there's the part where LGBT culture is easily commodified into a "got mine, fuck you" club for rich white gays and trans people who can more easily assimilate and will gleefully throw poorer, more marginalized, and more discordant-with-the-status-quo lgbt under the bus,

and part and parcel of queer culture is saying, "no, fuck that, we fight like hell for solidarity with the least of us and with establishing support networks for each other".

In short, any substantive look at the etymology, the community, the culture of queerness reveals the absolute opposite of anything that could justify "queer is a slur" "stop calling people queer who don't want it" etc. It's a word and a community that is fundamentally founded

by outcasts, for the outcast, and in stark opposition to any heirarchical, prescriptive society and structures that would even make it possible to force "queer" or any other label on everyone, or anyone. It's buy-in, it's not a universal appellation.

TW Nazi , antisemitism

Also the part where a fascist and antisemitic hate criminal literally used "gay" as a slur on 28 December 2020, proving the lie to the shitcourse's other claim

(seriously, they actually believe gay has never been a slur) https://twitter.com/kalina_chung/status/1344005562623639552

https://twitter.com/EmpressMadeline/status/1344941357211680768