Read on Twitter
thinking about how i've never heard a non-queer person use the word queer in my life, but sure did grow up hearing gay and lezzy/lesbo used as pejoratives
which is not to say that no one has ever been subjected to queer as a slur, obviously, but rather that if we're banning all words that have ever been used to hurt queer people, we're not going to have any words
queer is an inclusive, reclaimed umbrella term for marginalised sexualities & genders that allows us to find community with each other without drawing lines in the sand between us, and we should absolutely be suspicious of any person, group, or entity that wants to suppress that
i'd ALSO submit that any denigration of the term queer also seeks, whether explicitly or implicitly, to divorce and disconnect people from queer studies, which as a discipline will inform you of exactly how complicated and nuanced the history of sex, sexuality, and gender are
which look, no one needs the academy to tell them how they should identify, but as a repository of knowledge that has been suppressed or straight up lied about in the public consciousness, you should also be suspicious of anyone telling you that you don't need to know our history
also because this seems to be going over some people's heads: the point of using my individual experience was not to claim that queer has never been used as a slur, but rather to showcase the impossibility of banning a term based on its slur-ness
there is no community movement to stop using the words gay or lesbian. no one says 'g-slur' or 'l-slur' despite those being words used to wound in much the same way. we instead have pushed to make cishet people not use those words as slurs
rather than putting the onus on a marginalised community to not identify using terms that have been their refuge, even if they have been used to hurt other members of that same community
the issue remains: if queer is the only word to refer to marginalised genders and sexualities that a section of our own community is pushing to stop using, the argument of 'it's a slur' doesn't hold water
it's because queer can be used as an accepting umbrella term to cover all marginalised genders and sexualities without having to Specifically Define them, and to gender essentialists and terfs, that's a threat
muting this thread largely because i was not anticipating an inundation of people telling me about the shitty homophobes they've encountered lol
