nullnaught Wrote:The Community is heartbreakingly self-destructive and ageist. The youth always carry the field here, because the old just aren't beautiful enough, I suppose. I have not seen a strong indication the gay youth can carry as much as they think but I see how the situation as a whole is self destructive.
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nullnaught Wrote:You make your academic work innaccesable to people who you offend when you use controversial language like that. It seems an unusually thoughtless thing for a scholar to do for convenience.
If those people can't set aside their feelings over one word to get to the gist of his work, they probably shouldn't be reading it in the first place. It's about context, isn't it?
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dfiant Wrote:Each to their own as far as I am concern. If anyone wants to call themselves queer, fag, poof or whatever, it doesn't bother me the slightest how other people choose to identify themselves.
Yes, of course, I agree completely. What one wishes to call oneself in private is one's own business. But shouldn't then a controversial name, to some a slur, be censored? Why shouldn't it be when the "N" word is censored to protect some in the black community while others use it fairly freely? A black friend of mine, who I can't name because I don't yet have his permission to name him publicly, pointed out that he gets more respect as a black man than he does as a F----- because the "N" word is censored and the "Q" word is not. Do you see his point?
Privately, yes. Say it all you want, but I don't wish to talk to you at all. Publicly, you should be censored by yourself or any publication or website with fair standards.
Does this make sense? Where am I going off base?
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Miles Prower Wrote:If those people can't set aside their feelings over one word to get to the gist of his work, they probably shouldn't be reading it in the first place.
Are you saying I shouldn't be reading acedemic materials on the subject of sexual/gender non-conformity because my experiences leave me so hurt by the word I can't abide it? What if I find it so distracting and unecessarily hostile that I am left leaving the text aside and going elsewhere for my information? Shouldn't I be allowed to study the subject to? Why do I have to be excluded by the oficial academic language? Because I am not a queer; I am gay, perhaps or a member of The Community if you please. But I can't be included in the word queer because I am so hurt by it. It is a visceral reflex. I get ill.
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nullnaught Wrote:Are you saying I shouldn't be reading acedemic materials on the subject of sexual/gender non-conformity because my experiences leave me so hurt by the word I can't abide it? What if I find it so distracting and unecessarily hostile that I am left leaving the text aside and going elsewhere for my information? Shouldn't I be allowed to study the subject to? Why do I have to be excluded by the oficial academic language? Because I am not a queer; I am gay, perhaps or a member of The Community if you please. But I can't be included in the word queer because I am so hurt by it. It is a visceral reflex. I get ill.
If you're getting physically ill over it - that's not healthy - I just think it seems like it would be easier to try to deal with that in yourself than to try to get everyone else to change their wording. Admittedly, I don't know your situation.
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Miles Prower Wrote:If you're getting physically ill over it - that's not healthy - I just think it seems like it would be easier to try to deal with that in yourself than to try to get everyone else to change their wording. Admittedly, I don't know your situation.
Yes, I have been working on the affter affects of trauma for a long time. I have PTSD over this. I can't get over it any faster than I am and at this rate it looks as if I'll die first. I honestly am trying. But there are others in my position who certainly won't ever get over it and they are excluded by the use. I am fighting for them as well. Just because it would be harder to get people to change their public usage than it would for me to get over it and stop fighting for those who simply can't doesn't mean I ought to, does it?
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Miles Prower Wrote:If you're getting physically ill over it - that's not healthy - I just think it seems like it would be easier to try to deal with that in yourself than to try to get everyone else to change their wording. Admittedly, I don't know your situation.
Yes, I have been trying to get over the after affects of trauma for a long time. I have PTSD. I am disabled, and would like to be able to function fully as a member of this community, but I can't, because I get excluded everywhere I go by the use of this word that doesn't describe me. Perhaps one day I will be over it, as I am working on it, but some people never will be and I am fighting for them as well. Just because it would be easier to get over it and stop fighting for those who can't rather than to change general public usage of the language does that mean I should? I don't think so.
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yes there is a general lack of a functional word to describe us but why pick one your mom would not say? do we have to wear the pink triangle?
"non-normative sexual behavior" or queer
-we are part of the normal sex and have been around for thousands of years. why does every man have to be forced into a straight marriage and destroy ignore his wife. Dent and scratch the prodigy too.
-with billions of humans we are more normal than ever before.
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pellaz Wrote:yes there is a general lack of a functional word to describe us but why pick one your mom would not say? do we have to wear the pink triangle?
"non-normative sexual behavior" or queer
-we are part of the normal sex and have been around for thousands of years. why does every man have to be forced into a straight marriage and destroy ignore his wife. Dent and scratch the prodigy too.
-with billions of humans we are more normal than ever before.
Thank you so much.
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nullnaught Wrote:Are you saying I shouldn't be reading acedemic materials on the subject of sexual/gender non-conformity because my experiences leave me so hurt by the word I can't abide it? What if I find it so distracting and unecessarily hostile that I am left leaving the text aside and going elsewhere for my information? Shouldn't I be allowed to study the subject to? Why do I have to be excluded by the oficial academic language? Because I am not a queer; I am gay, perhaps or a member of The Community if you please. But I can't be included in the word queer because I am so hurt by it. It is a visceral reflex. I get ill.
In the academic context, queer and gay are not synonymous, queer is used precisely to get away from the problems of words like gay, lesbian and bisexual, which to some extent are professed identities. How do we talk about those who don't feel they fit into those strict categories? How do we address certain sexual behaviors in a historical context, where concepts of gay or lesbian identity didn't exist?
David Halperan's definition makes the distinction clearer: "Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence. 'Queer' then, demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative."
In this sense, gay people may be defined as queer (some might begin to argue that gays have moved out of the deviant category into the normative, but I think that would be difficult to defend), but they are not all that queerness is. The S&M community is queer, the fetishist is queer, the pedophile is queer. To discuss the nature of queerness is not really to discuss LGBT people, but to discuss how society as a whole speaks of and understands difference.
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