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LGBTQ-- help
The Gay-Straight Alliance students want to know what Queer means. It's a reclaimed insult, I know that much. They want to know why LBGT isn't enough of an umbrella and they want to know why it's called Queer literature / Queer theory. I don't really know what the answer to why this term is used. Can you help?
Re: LGBTQ-- help
I thought sometimes Q was used for Questioning in that acronym?
Queer means a couple of things, but in most academic uses I've seen, it refers to people who don't fit neatly into any of the aforementioned boxes. Someone who feels that they are not transsexual but who doesn't belong to either the masculine or feminine gender (or male or female sex) may refer to themselves as "gender queer" for example. A person who doesn't think of themselves as gay--or straight---or bisexual, but who pursues relationships with people they want to pursue relationships with.
It's a more inclusive language that gets us even further outside of the binary or even a linear spectrum. The idea is to break down categories and recognize that sex, gender, and sexual orientation can be fluid across a lifetime and don't have to fit within neat little boxes.
i've always thought it was for Questioning, too.
The wiki entry on LGBT is actually an interesting read that might help.
Yeah that's right my name's Yauch!
40/112
I'm adding on here---I used to work with a student who is biologically female but who binds hu's breasts and presents in a stereotypically masculine way. The person has no desire to have sex reassignment surgery, however, so is uncomfortable with being labeled "transgendered." Hu [the gender neutral pronoun preferred by the student] occasionally was in relationships with women, sometimes with men, and sometimes with other persons who considered themselves gender-queer. Because hu presented as stereotypically masculine, hu knew people would assume that hu's female partner would be the "femme" in the relationship, but that wasn't necessarily the case. They might each be butch, or femme, or neither, depending on their days or moods or the situation, like many of us are. The difference is that because I'm straight, no one ever questions whether I'm the "butch" partner or the "femme." I just get to be me--- a person who is stereotypically feminine when I dress up for a date, but very stereotypically masculine when we make financial decisions.
The word itself was chosen as a way of unsettling people, just like the idea behind parts of queer theory is to unsettle the traditional categories.
http://science.jrank.org/pages/8016/Queer-Theory.html
Yeah that's right my name's Yauch!
This is interesting thank you for sharing.
Is queer meant to encompass fetishists such as plushies or furries or horseplay or people who do it with their cars or does it tend towards gender bending only?
(I'm thinking of a vanilla gay person perhaps being offended of being lumped in with "deviant" sex practicioners)
Yeah that's right my name's Yauch!
Good question! As I understand it, it's about sex (biological), gender (cultural expression), and sexual orientation (who we like.) Sexuality (what we like to do with them- which is what the fetishists would fall under) doesn't really have anything to do with the term.
Well, you could always go with LGBTQQI. Yes, that's queer AND questioning. Also, intersex. Acronym soup FTW.
ETA As far as queer studies go, I've heard that it's used as an inclusive term, as it can encompass LGBTI. It's not always a distinct category. Also, it's a gender-neutral term, so that makes it more appealing.
I love the idea of having the students do a search for all of the different identities that could fall under the term "queer" without being solidly in any of the LGBT categories. I don't know much about what they're doing in high school these days, but most of the college and beyond circles I've been in (and I do this professionally, so I've been around a lot!) have used a more inclusive, expanded acronym... more like LGBTQ(queer)Q(questioning)I(intersex)P(pansexual)A(asexual)A(allied). And it can get a lot more complex when you add in the lesser-known identities on the spectrum. When you think of only LGBT it seems silly to have an "umbrella term" like queer, but given the expansiveness and ever-growing number of sexual/gender identities it makes more sense.
Also, someone asked about sexual practices and "queer" identity - in my experience, there is a growing trend to include non-normative/minoritized sexual practices or identities around these practices into the queer umbrella. For example, I have a lot of polyamorous friends and acquaintances who identify as queer even when there are no same-sex partners in the relationship (or they are not the partner engaging in same-sex sexual practices within a poly relationship.) Ditto BDSM folks and other fetish play, although that tends to be an overlap with kink communities, which definitely have a culture separate from queer communities for the most part. I am sure this squicks out a lot of the more normative LGBT-identified people (and admittedly, even me at times) but identity is not the kind of thing that can be effectively policed since it's mostly about how individuals and subcommunities label themselves, and IMO the queer community more broadly is pretty resistant to a slippery slope theory of pushing people of certain identity categories out of the fold... for the most part.
This just confused the absolute hell out of me. Why anyone would just assume someone wants to be this dang confusing just because makes no sense whatsoever. *grabs aspirin for her headache*
ETA For Clarity: I'm referring to the lifestyle choice debate. This seems entirely too cumbersome for it to just be some Oh I think I like blah, blah today.