Someone recently asked me a common question that some of you may have wondered about. I thought I would share my off-the-cuff response.

Question:

Why not "Gay"? Serious question. At least where/when I grew up "Gay" was all encompassing and then you could detail it out from there. Why the change? Why "Queer" now.

Answer:

It's a good question.

Both of the words have a similar length of history, and while you might feel like it's new now, it's been used just as long as the word gay in reference to us, if not longer. Terms like "Queer Studies" have been formalized as an academic discipline since at least as far back as the 1980s, but the word in reference to us is obviously far older, sometimes as a slur, sometimes not.

Gay is not generally as all encompassing as queer. It can be used that way at times, especially when used playfully, and because terms should be descriptive not prescriptive, (and loose and not rigid, in my opinion), but generally speaking, it's mostly used for MM and FF relationships/attraction, and obviously more frequently for MM than anything else.

However, queer captures a lot more than this, because queerness has the capacity to be so much more varied and complex than society tends to realize. Gay only really describes attraction and relationships, for example. It doesn't capture the queerness of a straight trans woman, for example (a trans woman who is attracted to men), gay doesn't fully describe the queerness of asexual people (who are not sexually attracted to any gender), gay doesn't fully capture bi or pan experiences, it doesn't really describe non-binary people or intersex people or genderfluid people or Two Spirit indigenous people.

A huge thing that queer is able to capture that gay doesn't is something called the "split-attraction model" which separates the idea that someone can be romantically attracted to one (or more) gender, for example, but sexually attracted to another (or more). A woman who is homoromantic but heterosexual. Or a man who is asexual but homoromantic. This is complex for a lot of people, and gay just doesn't always sit right for some of them.

Some of our experiences we don't always fully understand ourselves, because our experiences can often be confusing because we have to use words created by a society that has tried to erase our existence through widespread colonization and oppression, while we seek to unravel our pain and repression. Using the word queer gives us breathing space to allow ourselves grace and self-discovery. Sometimes our queerness is fluid in a way that gay just doesn't hold the same type of flexibility.

There are so many more things queer can cover and I've just barely touched on them. The vagueness of "queer" is inclusive in this sense. Someone doesn't have to describe every level all the time. Gay is still a wonderful and *fabulous* word. I adore the word gay. It just doesn't capture everything the same way.

I'll also add that there is a socio-political edge to using queer, as well. Because it's a word that has been ours, but also weaponized against us as a slur. So, it's reclamation and an acknowledgment that we have learned to love what society has punished us for and taught us to hate about ourselves. Daily, I am reminded that I am everything I was raised to hate, but I find beauty in finding myself through all of this. A word like queer feels beautiful in the same way I find myself beautiful. I was taught to hate that word, but it was because I was also raised to hate myself for who and what I am.

By learning to love ourselves and assert our right to exist, many of us learn to love the word and use it in our assertion. There is power taken away from the harm that some people intend by using it as a slur when someone can embrace it and say yes, I'm queer, and? Because the word itself isn't the insult in this case. The insult is our existence. Because that's what the word describes, is that we are different from normal.

Embracing the word queer is an implication that yes, we are different than the expectations placed on us by society and our oppression. By calling ourselves queer we are saying we refuse to assimilate, because forced assimilation is death, and I mean that both in a philosophical sense, and for some of us a very real, very life and death sense– it's genocide.

There's a common phrase among the community:

"Not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you"

Queer is resistance as much as it is inclusion and acceptance. It's radical assertion of autonomy and self-determination.

And it's just a fun word.

And, one final note to add to all of this is that while the word is widely embraced by the community, some people still don't like it because of the history of its use against them. I would still never call someone queer who doesn't wish to be called as such, though it's incredibly rare in my circles, and it's usually been the type of gay person who is transphobic, and who believes that all gay people should assimilate, blend in, and act like straight people, but not always. And I don't mean to imply that someone's discomfort with the word automatically means that they are transphobic, it can truly just be discomfort based on their own history with the word. It becomes an issue not when they have difficulty applying it to themselves, but when they imply that no one should use the word. In any event, this has been my experience, and one of the reasons why I say it also has a socio-political edge.

I love the word queer and I appreciate the question. <3

no ends, only means