So the other day, I was listening to Savage Lovecast, one of my growing list of must-have podcasts, when a girl called in asking for advice about her relationship. In the first few sentences, she talked about her queer identity and then proceeded to explain a problem she was having with her long-term boyfriend. I had a complete “wait … what?” moment, and I realized that I had been defining “queer” solely as “gay”. So I started thinking about what it really meant and who falls under the umbrella of the queer identity.
Now, far be it from me to tell people how they should or shouldn’t identify. People can identify as whatever they like, regardless of the life choices that they’ve made. Nor are people required to take on an established label for themselves. Forcing others to conform to my understanding of the word “queer” is not what this post is about. I simply wanted to take a closer look at what it meant to me and how people in the queer community use it to talk about themselves.
What’s fascinating to me is the breadth of meaning that it seems to encompass. For some, “queer” is a handy term that refers to pretty much anyone in the LGBT community without having to fit them neatly into a category or use that clunky acronym. Some even prefer it because it avoids the basic assumption of a gender/sexuality binary. Yet for others, the term still carries too much of a derogatory meaning. Even assuming that the queer community has done a little linguistic reclamation of the slur, it still has its original meaning of “strange”. Why should we call ourselves strange, when the existence of non-heteronormative relationships are as old as time, they ask. And that is a fair point. After all, even if homosexuals are in the minority, they are hardly out of the ordinary. You might as well call racial minorities weird.
I think the most insightful comment I read was by a person named Alex at Kathy’s Lesbian Life Blog. He or she says:
I think that any term is not going to fully fit anyone’s understanding of self; our lives are much bigger than the words we use to describe ourselves.
And that, I think, is the most important point. Rather than making an assumption about someone’s life based on the term they most identify with, we should get to know them better and understand what they mean by it. Advice that is no less valid outside of the world of gender and sexual orientation, no doubt.
But let me throw this out to the comments. For you, what does “queer” mean? And how important do you think is to find a label that fits your sense of self, whether sexual, racial or otherwise?
Jessica is a writer and editor living in the exciting, interesting and sometimes confusing city of Tokyo. She loves traveling and learning new languages and is rarely to be found without a book or two within arm’s reach. She writes a regular column on NPO/NGOs and volunteer work in Japan for Metropolis Magazine and specializes in English as a Foreign Language materials.
I think that you are raising a very important point about labels in general. To be queer or not be queer…that is the question. I think that queer means “odd” or “out of the ordinary”. I remember growing up and a girl that I walked to school with overused the word “queer”. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure if she was just saying that things and people were weird, or colloquially using queer as some people refer to things and people as “gay”.
To my understanding, even labels within the gay community are important. For example, there is a major difference in the social experience of a female within the gay community if she identifies as bi or lesbian. In my experience, bisexuals are sometimes dubbed as confused by other lesbians and may hence not be considered in the dating game. This is due to the fact that lesbians would feel an incredible amount of anger if a woman left her for a man. Bisexuals are even discriminated against within the homosexual community. Some refer to bisexuals as “greedy” or “confused”. (i.e. Tila Tequila who did the homosexual/bisexual community a SEVERE injustice…)
Labels serve a purpose to human beings because when we can clearly and distinctly identify a person, place, or thing, we can deem said thing or person as a threat or safe zone. Labeling and judging are embedded in the human spirit in order to help us survive in a sense. Unfortunately, some people take this above and beyond the call of nature and use labels as a weapon against others.
I haven’ t heard the word queer in awhile and this makes me want to start using the term, “Queerly” just to de-stigmatize the word!
Please give me your feedback! This is a refreshing read!
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Oops, forgot to click reply. See the post below!
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Thanks for the comment, Eryn-Ashlei. I totally agree with what you said about labels. In some cases, they provide a handy referent that can give us a lot of information in one word. The problem though, is not only that they can be used pejoratively, but even within groups, they can cause confusion. If I just assume that someone means the same thing I mean when I say queer (or bisexual or liberal or Muslim), I may be assuming things about them that are very far from the truth. And when that assumption later collapses, it sometimes leaves one feeling as if he or she has been betrayed or that the friend has “changed.” Or, as you point out, it might prevent me from getting to know them more. The example of how the gay community in particular defines “bi” is a great example. I know lesbians who don’t even want to have anything to do with women who identify as “bi.” That’s obviously a shame, but more importantly, misguided. Human sexuality for females is a very fluid thing. Some women who identify as gay or bi may end up with men, but that doesn’t mean that they were posing all along or that they are betraying the community. Their tastes may have just changed over time to allow for a stronger sexual attraction to the opposite sex than they had previously. Likewise, there will be straight-identified women who end up in lesbian relationships. And really, isn’t that kind of freedom beautiful?
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Jessica, I couldn’t have said that better myself. The fluidity of sexuality that women may have is a stark contrast to the restrictions that exist for male sexuality. Any thoughts for how labels and their significance come in to play for this population?
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By “this population,” I’m assuming you mean males. It’s funny, but I haven’t spent nearly as much time pondering the significance in the male community. I’m obviously not in a particularly good place to make judgments, not being male myself, but reflecting on it now, the thing that strikes me is that among my straight male friends there are relatively few terms in play that deal with how they define their sexuality and the sexuality of other males around them. They generally stick with a handful of words that deal with orientation (gay, straight, bi) and comments about how much sex they’re getting. Among my gay male friends, the words for sexual identity are far more diverse (twink, bear, top, bottom, etc.). Perhaps it’s just that people that fall outside of the traditional sexual dynamic have to do a lot more self-reflection and examination as they grow up. They may have more defined terms because they have clearer ideas about who they are sexually and what they want. This would go for fetishists and kinksters, as well I suppose. Of course, I’m just kind of thinking out loud here, so don’t mind my rambling!
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[...] Are you queer? [...]
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[...] Are You Queer? [...]
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