[BRIEF NOTE] On being queer
Feb. 3rd, 2016 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldIn one of the Facebook groups I belong to, I discovered that there was a controversy over the decision of Huffington Post's Gay Voices, launched in 2011, to rebrand as Queer Voices.
"Queer" is not just a great Garbage song from that band's first album.
"Queer" traces its origins in a slur, a hateful word that is being controversially reclaimed. I'm a person who's fine with this: on an individual level it is one of several words I would use as a self-descriptor, and on a group level, it strikes me as elegant enough to encompass diverse groups. I, by virtue of my life expériences, have not been exposed to its use as a slur. Reclaiming it makes perfect sense to me. It helps that "queer" is much more elegant than any of the increasingly long acronyms being used to describe the diverse non-straight communities.
(What say you?)
A lot has changed since [2011] -- from marriage equality sweeping the nation and parts of the world to Laverne Cox gracing the cover of Time magazine to Miley Cyrus coming out as pansexual -- and we believe that this is an especially critical time for queer people and the queer movement to regroup and redefine its mission in the wake of these incredible, once unimaginable changes to the political and cultural landscape. We hope that HuffPost Queer Voices can be a place where discussions about where we're headed, what matters to us and how we can become the best possible, most authentic versions of ourselves as queer people -- and as a community -- can take place on a daily basis.
We, like many others before us, have chosen to reclaim "queer" and to rename the section HuffPost Queer Voices because we believe that word is the most inclusive and empowering one available to us to speak to and about the community -- and because we are inspired by all of the profound possibilities it holds for self-discovery, self-realization and self-affirmation. We also revere its emphasis on intersectionality, which aids in creating, building and sustaining community while striving to bring about the liberation of all marginalized people, queer or not.
"Queer" functions as an umbrella term that includes not only the lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people of "LGBT," but also those whose identities fall in between, outside of or stretch beyond those categories, including genderqueer people, intersex people, asexual people, pansexual people, polyamorous people and those questioning their sexuality or gender, to name just a few.
"Queer" is not just a great Garbage song from that band's first album.
"Queer" traces its origins in a slur, a hateful word that is being controversially reclaimed. I'm a person who's fine with this: on an individual level it is one of several words I would use as a self-descriptor, and on a group level, it strikes me as elegant enough to encompass diverse groups. I, by virtue of my life expériences, have not been exposed to its use as a slur. Reclaiming it makes perfect sense to me. It helps that "queer" is much more elegant than any of the increasingly long acronyms being used to describe the diverse non-straight communities.
(What say you?)
