The q word has been a slur since 1894. It’s original and modern meaning is “strange, odd.” It slowly became a prevalent word to shame gender nonconforming / anti-heteronormative individuals. Early 1980’s LGBTQA+ members began to reclaim the word from its offensive meaning, but then fast forward to the early 2000’s where you have people who use it to describe ‘not-normal’ people, comparing their ‘oppression’ to actual struggles. Being a straight couple who participates in BDSM and getting strange looks when a grown woman calls her husband Daddy is not the same as a lesbian couple wanting to hold hands but being afraid for their lives. Coming out as a cis-gender heteromantic who doesn’t want to have sex will never be the same as telling your parents that you want to transition your body.
There is a difference between someone raising their eyebrows at how you have sex and half the nation not wanting you to marry the person you love. Grouping LGBTQA+ people with cis-gender heterosexuals is not liberating. No one wants to be compared and categorized with the very people who ostracized them. Pride is slowly becoming more about asexuality, kinksters, and furry pride than the very people who started it: trans women and lesbians.
Telling LGBTQA+ questioning kids that they should be q*eer is a terrible thing. Some people don’t like labels (q*eer is still a label) but telling a 14-year-old lesbian that she’s not a lesbian but q*eer will confuse her even more. There’s nothing wrong with the word bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender. Why are people erasing the very core of this community? Being gay or a lesbian is okay. It’s okay to just like men or women. It’s okay to just be bisexual. You can like two genders and they don’t have to be the binary ones. Bisexual people can like men and gender-neutral non-binary people. As a lesbian, I only like women and non-binary people like me. I like women and I know now it’s okay to like women! I can and will be a lesbian who dates non-binary people. I can say that I’m a lesbian and be proud. I don’t have to adopt a hateful slur to ‘reclaim’ my sexuality. Q*eer tells people who were in my position, “Hey, you’re still open to men, right? Being a lesbian is bad. Be sexually fluid!”.
We, as a community, have enough problems without trying to force this rhetoric. The LGBTQA+ community was built on the commonality of being hated by the world and that sense of love that we give ourselves. Huffington Post is using the q slur in many articles like it’s not a curse word. Slurs if reclaimed by the people that it affects shouldn’t be used in our media. It’s a horrible way to show “support”. It’s just like when non-black people think saying the n-word helps destroy racism by making all the same. It doesn’t. It’s just an excuse to say words you have no business saying. Cis-gender heterosexuals using it is like any other oppressor using a slur. It makes the oppressed seem too sensitive if you don’t stand up for or a joke if you let it slide.
Q*eer is for people who aren’t oppressed for anything but they want to feel cool. Q*eer is being used as a tag into this party that’s more like a struggle to survive. Q*eer is for people that love pride but not talking about the AIDS crisis and the oppression we have been through. Q*eer is erasing the voices of LGBTQA+ and helping people who are straight feel good about themselves. Q*eer is scaring young kids who are questioning into asexuality or new sexuality that is just a way to have sex (auto-sexual: someone who only likes their touch) Q*eer is hurting us not helping.