Never said there should be no solidarity, but Trans people were/are also huge civil rights activists and we haven’t added races into the acronym—was just pointing out that it can cause confusion.
Gender and sexuality are socially entwined: how often have you heard that a gay man isn’t a man, that a woman is too pretty (read: feminine) to be a lesbian, that “gay” traits and “traits of the opposite gender” are one and the same, or at least have heavy overlap?
There is going to be bleeding between groups, both internal to the community by people who fall into multiple categories or revel in the freedom that umbrella terms like “queer” bring to them, and without, by those who look at a heterosexual drag queen and only see a freak. Slicing it apart is how you force people to choose terms that don’t apply to them for the sake of remaining within a community, which goes against everything that MY queerdom stands for.
I’d rather outsiders be confused than my own people not feel at home.
We added races to the flag though. Intersectionality is the way.
And there’s a reason my generation embraced the word “queer” because it encompassed anyone gender nonconforming without demanding that they define themselves. Trans, gay, nonbinary, ace are all gender nonconforming identities in some way.
As a Gen X, “queer” still makes me wince internally since I remember when it was only a slur and hadn’t been taken back. But I’m glad it was!
I feel like millennials are in a weird place with this one? I personally grew up in the f***** world, hearing queer in any context almost never. It was a word I mostly read in old and fantasy books that meant strange or unusual. Don’t get me wrong, I’m from the south and knew and know all the slurs (I’ve always had the unseemly duty of teaching my wife what slurs mean when she encounters a new one in art or media =/) but queer wasn’t in regular circulation in my life. To me, the weird part about the reclamation was that it felt like reviving a dead word.
Well not really. Its a fallacy. By adding more and more it becomes more and more ridiculous. To the point that the lgbt community who was once shunned by a religious majority. Has now become religious in turn to try and accomodate every single group that is perceived as weak.
And I’m asking why it should matter in this context. Even in its earliest form the gay rights movement considered gender non-conforming individuals as an inherent part of the community, and no one cared if others were confused (frankly, they were all too busy fighting for their fucking lives). Why should we care to differentiate now when our predecessors didn’t at a time when their safety and lives were at stake? Only reason it’s being questioned now is because, exactly as the comic points out, the issue is being pushed by far right groups to create a wedge between us.
I agree it’s worth explaining—here’s my logic
Public understanding is an important part of changing social norms. People need to be able to conceptualize things in order to understand them. Using clear terminology is an important part of this. Lumping together sexual preferences with gender expression muddies understanding.
Some people think others should simply tolerate differences but I think we are looking for acceptance and not mere tolerance. I think acceptance requires understanding. I think clear terminology aides understanding.
This is way too much good faith for extremist hate and exclusion. Do you suggest what, trans people should just fight on their own? It’s not just a fight about what bathrooms to use and we are already seeing the signs that after trans, the rest of the alphabet is next.
And they are including race into it more and more because the singular similarity is that it’s a group of people that are hated viciously and have their rights and freedoms and saftey threatened for things they cannot control about themselves.
If you really don’t understand that, and even as part of the community, think it’s just a problem that it confuses people because it’s not about love but gender identity (and thus being able to love yourself) then well, I would really like to go live in that world where hate is only because of confusion and understanding. That’s definitely a factor but not here.
