i know ppls opinions on reclaiming “queer” vary a lot (and thats fine–personally i dont really have a problem w people reclaiming but only as long as they respect a lotta people dont wanna be called that) but i really think its gross as fuck when big companies and corporations try to use that word for like. marketing and merchandising shit. like uh hey fuck you brand who said u could do that. gettin a bit too buddy-buddy with the rainbow capitalism there
I am old enough and spent enough time in RL queer spaces that the first time I heard some radfem gold-star lesbian try the “queer is a slur” thing in a gay bar the guy picking up his drink next to her responded “Well they don’t call it ‘fag studies’ do they?” and laughed. And I remember him every time this shit crosses my dash.
Queer has been reclaimed since the goddamn '60s. Queer has also been the academic term for “anything to do with LGBTQIA+” for decades. My college in the '00s offered both a “Queer Film Theory” course and a “Queering the Literature” course, for Film and English majors respectively.
Businesses aren’t calling you queer because they just learned they can, they’re calling you queer because their marketing playbooks (and senior marketing staff) are TOO OLD for the TERF-led re-slurifying of queer to have hit them yet.
We tried a non-slur umbrella term in MOGAI and the TERFs turned it into a goddamn joke in two seconds flat. They’ve been working on queer for years and at some point you have to realize that it’s not the term that’s the problem, it’s that some people don’t want an umbrella. They want neat, tidy terms they can rigidly define, and an excuse to leave some people out in the rain.
Rainbow capitalism is a PITA and all, but please learn your history, kids.
“it’s that some people don’t want an umbrella. They want neat, tidy terms they can rigidly define, and an excuse to leave some people out in the rain.”
Yeah, TERFs aren’t exactly hiding the whole “solidarity is bad and you’re bad for attempting solidarity” thing. They don’t even like bisexuals!
Why do I feel like this also has something to do with the whole “adults should never interact at all ever with minors on the internet even if it’s totally benign and banal” phenomenon, too? Like the playbook is ‘keep the minors ignorant of their history by segregating them off into their own little bubble away from older queer folks so they’ll just accept whatever we tell them and we’ll control the narrative of the future’?
Could just be a conspiracy theory on my part, but … I really wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a connection.
Because I saw this issue raised on a similar post: They refer to it as “Queer Studies” in academia because that’s what queer people said they wanted it to be called; that it was the term they wanted used by EVERYONE to refer to the field as. It wasn’t a term heaped upon the community by outsiders, it was the term picked BY the community as the most inclusive. It’s the term that gets used by people being respectful; if they’re being derogatory, they call it something else. (As referenced by the story above with the guy in the bar.)
So miss us with the, “Only queer people should be allowed to call it Queer Studies; why do all these other people think THEY get to call it that?! They should call it something else!!” this time around, please.
(And recognize what it suggests when you say academia / the general public should change the term to a series of specific- and easily pared- letters.)
