bendingsignpost:

asynca:

I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have been in the queer movement for 20+ years, to have studied queer theory, to have contributed to you potentially enjoying the rights you have today because I was part of a groundswell of lobbying and direct action in the 1990s….

…to have a 15 year old who’s spent maybe 8 months being political and has never inquired about queer history anonymously message me, “EXCUSE ME QU**R IS A SLUR LMAO OMG EMBARRASSSING AN aCTUAL ADULT WHO THINKS IT’S OKAY TO USE QU**R!~!!!!”

Dude, we are a slur. Queer folks are a slur to conservative straight people. Everything we are will be used as a slur by everyone who hates us. Gay is a slur. Lesbian is a slur. People will try to use all of our words against us. Don’t fucking let them get into your head to the point at which you’re telling actual queer people not to use the words we’ve used to unite ourselves and empower ourselves for decades. 

I’m with an anti-bullying LGBTQ+ group, and we talk at a lot of high schools. Typically, when we ask what anti-LGBTQ+ language people have been hearing (and the answer is always yes they have been hearing it, yes that day, yes even if we’re talking to them in the first period of the day), the word that is most commonly used as an insult is “gay.” 

There are others, but typically the only time I hear the word “queer” is when we’re going down the list of terms ourselves. Some slurs are lesbian-centric, some are the good ol’ firewood insult, sometimes we get trans stuff, but mostly, it’s “That’s so gay” “he’s so gay” “what are you, gay?” etc. 

Now, who thinks the right thing to do is teaching the kids–the very kids who are already being bullied–that the solution is to no longer ID as gay? 

“Oh, sure, it’s fine for a guy to like guys, but don’t call it gay, that’s a bad word, can’t you see that it’s a bad word”?

Fuck no. That’s just adding more bullying. You fight or teach the bullies, you don’t become them. 

tl;dr: You want less bullshit in the world, you don’t pile it on the people who are already buried in it.