You're QUEER. Get used to it!

Apart from the offensive use of Queer, another problem is that all too often the narrative, as it seems here, is told by outsiders. Often those who've experienced terrible discrimination, bullying by parents; are physically plain, etc. etc. Multitudinous reasons. Yet plenty of gay people feel completely at ease with themselves and society. Yet one rarely hears their stories. One of my late friends, a masculine confident guy, grew up in the 1940s, was proud of saying he'd had sex in every capital city of the world, and said that never for a moment did he feel an outsider. He loved his life. I don't think he was a unicorn. I think it was common experience. But history is told by the loudest voices.

Honestly, people (especially strangers) can say whatever they want about me.

I HATE the word queer and refuse to use it.

The word 'queer' has extremely negative connotations that will never go away. It's an ugly, harmful and hurtful word. I don't want to 'own' it. I want it buried in the ash heap of history.

No-one seems to ask us gay men if we mind being called “queer” and “cis”. If we do object, WE’RE the problem. I give up.

[quote]R4 I give up.

That’ll be the day.

R5 What the fuck does that mean?

You must respect their pronouns but say you don’t want to be called cis and they go nuts.

I am GAY!

[quote] And preferably a victim.

It's fashionable to be a victim.

[quote] Zoë Coombs Marr is an Australian comedian…

I don't think so.

I doubt there'll be much laughter or wit in this tearjerking melodrama.

[quote]R6 What the fuck does that mean?

That you’ll never shut up.

Even if you remove the sexulized negative slur it used to be and still is in many cases, the original intent still was similar to describing something or someone as odd. Not special, not unique, it's another way of saying odd, strange. In the most negative type of way.

QUEER (synonym) = Odd, Strange, Peculiar, Bizarre, Freakish, Questionable, Suspect, Corrupt, Nefarious, Criminal, Shady, Fraudulent, Unnatural, Deviant, Deceitful, Sick.

r12 do black now.

I am a proud member of the LGBTQAAII+ community and say whatever my community leaders tell me to this week!

I am a proud member of the LGBTQAAII+ community.

Corporations love me because I have the Pink Dollar.

But they insist I be celibate.

Robert Owen, the Welsh socialist and philanthropist said two centuries ago—

[quote] No-one seems to ask us gay men if we mind being called “queer”

The corporations prefer 'queer' because it's non-threatening like unicorns and rainbows.

The corporations don't like 'gay' because it reminds them of sexy gay men buggering each other.

Our community leaders are not self-serving grifters who have no firmly held beliefs and who are sucking at the teats of corporations and community donations and who have lost touch with the average LGB in the streets! NO THEY ARE NOT!

She makes a very valid point. Queer is about connection, inclusion, etc. And, just looking at the responses in this thread and DL in general, the conservative trolls are all about disconnect, distancing, exclusion, borderline seclusion.

There is greater strenght in numbers when all are on the same page, like being a united front against the right wing and their Don't Say Gay discrimination laws and banning Gay / LGBT / Queer books.

Of course, the conservatives don't want the Gays / LGBTs/ Queers to be a united front, so they do the whole Divide & Conquer shit. Because the trannies are a bigger threat to the gays and kids, while completely ignoring priests who do the actual grooming and raping. The Lesbians are ugly and can't take a joke, the Bis are so sneaky cheating on you behind your back, the Gays are too femme and just unmanly in general, and the Queers are posers who pretend to have or want sex with anyone while being too busy dying their hair in some garish color.

The conservatives are all about "No, there cannot ever be common ground, ever! The differences are too big to push them aside and join forces (against us)!".

Making alliances with people who support things that are harmful to you is not "connection". You are just being used in that case.

[quote] Making alliances with people who support things that are harmful to you is not "connection".

LOL. You mean like Log Cabin Republicans siding with the Conservative Christians and their push for gay conversion therapy?

That is not happening on the Queer side. No teen starts gender transitioning without their consent. But gay teens get sent to gay conversion camps against their will. That is fact.

[quote]The corporations prefer 'queer' because it's non-threatening like unicorns and rainbows.

No it's not, that's not the definition of Queer. Look it up.

Isn't "queer" a slur to the gay community as "nigger" is a slur to the black community, and as "kike" is a slur to the Jewish community, etc? There are so many pejorative terms that so many varied communities find utterly offensive, they should all be Removed from the lexicon.

Umm, no. I'm gay. Queer is just an umbrella term. And I don't find it abnormal or victimizing. Well, no more than gay. I don't use it though since it's so vague.

R23. Some of those slurs have been reclaimed.

Yes, Queer is still a slur in many, many countries including the US. I am gay, I find it offensive. Trying to take it back like black people do with the N world was always a stupid idea. If you notice, the N word is also not being used as much that way even in the "endearing" way from one black person to another.

Queer: Differing in some way from what is usual or normal : odd, strange, weird - Merriam-Webster (An Actual Dictionary, not Slackerpedia)

Those who hate us surely warmly welcome the adoption of the term queer, over gay, given one of its meanings is abnormal.

It's an absolute total GIFT to them.

And a massive backward step for us.

The idiots who first adopted queer were narcissistic self-identified inner city 'radicals'. The ghastly Foucault was their sage, and they considered 'gay' had become identified with too bourgeois an identity after the middle class came out and the gay dollar embraced them. They wished to signify their specialness and hence started using queer. Fuck 'em.

R27. What has Foucault got to do with any of this?

I'm curious what people here would suggest as an alternative to queer. Gay as a term is pretty specific.

R1 Beautifully put.

As has been said, the term Queer is corporate speak and is being used by LGBT+ grifters to pander to corporations, because of their obligations to diversity. I see no benefit in the LGBT+ community trying to embrace a word that's a slur.

If people want to have labels attached to them then that's their business. I'm a person first and foremost, then a gay man. A happy one. A contented one. Comfortable in my own skin. I don't need another badge to wear, because it's being forced on me by 'LGBT+ community' grifters or corporations.

7:20

Language is imperfect & subjective. Why do you care how other people choose to refer to themselves? You have to consider perhaps, that it ain’t about you. In giving others permission to have that freedom you give it to yourself as well. Everybody wins. Now go be gay & have a wonderful day.

[quote]What has Foucault got to do with any of this?

Sadly, too much of everything. Go read up about the roots of queer theory that now poisons academia.

So you feel that way about the N-word too, R32? Good for you!

R33. Only thing I know about Foucault is from his Discipline and Punishment book.

I don't remember anything about sexuality in that. It was a good book though.

r12

[quote] given to social pleasures

[quote] also : licentious

[quote] lacking legal or moral restraints

[quote] especially : disregarding sexual restraints

[quote] to work hard : toil

[quote] to tire by strenuous activity : exhaust

R19...So convenient to call people trolls who don't wish to be called a term that has always been & always be a tool to degrade & reduce the dignity of fellow humans. You must also be one of those posters who likes to enter a thread you don't approve of just to say that the subject is just a conservative talking point--when people are clearly having a rational, reasonable discussion about what you've decided isn't a valid topic.

The word queer is particularly aggressive because it was the term that people used to be polite about their bigotry. It was the used by sweet aunties, grannies & anyone who wanted to get their disapproval across with a smile on their face & for sure did not want a "queer" moving in nextdoor. When somebody called me a fag I knew exactly where they were coming from. When somebody called me queer I knew they had much more than disapproval for the person I am.

R32 You’re an absolute nob-end.

I don't care if other people wish to be referred to as queer, but don't call me queer - I think it's rude and degrading, and I wish people wouldn't assume that because you like it, it's fine as an umbrella term for everyone. It isn't.

I agree, R42. My other issue with it is the way that it is used by the media. Most white newscasters wouldn't dream of talking about the N***** community on the news, but have no problem talking about the Queer community, or Queer youth, etc...

You don't get to reclaim a slur that can't be applied to you. That's why black people can use the N word, and white people an't.

There is also the fact that Queer is pretty much meaningless these days. I once had a dream where I kissed another girl - I'm Queer!

None of those terms have been 'reclaimed' in the sense that those not part of the community freely use them, R24, unlike 'queer', which straights now feel able to use without any problem.

[quote]I'm curious what people here would suggest as an alternative to queer. Gay as a term is pretty specific.

Gay works for me.

If gay wasn't my first choice, I'd prefer being called a bugger to being called queer.

[quote]Of course, the conservatives don't want the Gays / LGBTs/ Queers to be a united front, so they do the whole Divide & Conquer shit. Because the trannies are a bigger threat to the gays and kids, while completely ignoring priests who do the actual grooming and raping. The Lesbians are ugly and can't take a joke, the Bis are so sneaky cheating on you behind your back, the Gays are too femme and just unmanly in general, and the Queers are posers who pretend to have or want sex with anyone while being too busy dying their hair in some garish color.

What is the definition of 'queer' in this context? We know who the gays, lesbians, bi and trans are - so outside of those groups - who are 'queers' ?

You're also no longer: pretty, witty, and gay!

Julie Jordan is queer.

As long as I get dick you can call me anything you want.

Queer and Queer Culture has always existed. Of course, everybody can identify the way they want, but that doesn't give them the right to dictate others how to label themselves.

One of the first slogans in the gay rights movement was "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!". Then there is Queer Cinema. Oh, NOW after centuries you have the "courage" to go on an anonymous message board and whine "I never agreed to reclaiming queer! It's offensive to meeeeeee! Pay attention to meeee, and how the word queer hurts meee! Stop using queer! Listen to meeee!".

You don't like the word queer? Fine, but don't be that snowflake cunt who makes an entire rights movement about himself and his triggered ass. Leave queer to those who want to use it, and hold on to your gay or homosexual. Make sure it will be etched on your tombstone that nobody mistakes you as a queer after you died.

In those contexts r52, queer is very clearly a synonym for gay, a way of throwing a slur back in people's faces. We're here, we're queer doesn't mean, we're here, we have some vague identity that's really hard to pin down but includes all kinds of groups that just feel kind of different from heteronormative ideals.

r53 so, we're moving onto homo... sapiens.

r53 is being human too inclusive? do we really need other terms? besides what is the point of gay if there are lesbians? Lesbian just means gay women. Do you think gay men should identify as lesbians?

R52’s knowledge of gay history is very scant.

I'm not offended by Queer but I don't think you get the right to use the term if all you've done is get fat, dye your hair purple and maybe ate a snatch once in college.

OP:

[quote]You're QUEER. Get used to it! Queer! Queer! Queer!

Also OP:

[quote]How do we pull the plug on this q-word shit?

By not typing it multiple times, posting about it on Datalounge (not the first time I'm sure), constructing a victimhood for yourself, claiming forced compliance by another group.

[quote]I HATE the word queer and refuse to use it.

But you just did.

r58 when they're in college, they're queer. If the grow bitter with age, they identify as "political lesbians" which usually involves a vow of celibacy... at least with women.

Never.

Good for you for sharing your psychosis with Group, R59! From now on there can only be healing. One step at a time, darling.

We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going away

Hey, we're gay! Let's go on a cruise in May!

R5, You have a point about conservatives using the "Divide & Conquer" strategy to take down LG and BTQ, and I agree with what you’re saying there, but I also think it‘s fair for gay men and lesbians to assert their orientation and have exclusive spaces and language without BTQ having a meltdown and throwing tantrums.

Sorry^, that was meant for R19, not R5.

constructing a victimhood for yourself,

And that's how straight people blame gay people for homophobia.

They say we are making "victims of ourselves."

Meanwhile, they scream like babies if they hear the word "queer."

R4, I’m sure plenty of gay men have been asked but don’t care or are indifferent. Oddly enough, I’ve seen more bisexuals identifying as gay and some straights whinging about this than actual gay men.

[quote]I’m sure plenty of gay men have been asked but don’t care or are indifferent.

About being called a queer?

R70, A lot of the older generation of gay men (50+) don’t seem to have an issue with it; some 30–40 year olds oppose it, whereas 25 and below are a mix between support and indifference.

Hmm^. Not so sure about that.

[quote]A lot of the older generation of gay men (50+) don’t seem to have an issue with it;

This part.

Stop trying to convince us to accept being called qu**r.

It’s illiberal to force a minority group to be called something they don’t want to be called.

I swear, these so called “progressives” actually come from conservative homes. They have no clue what it means to be liberal.

“Progressives” probably rarely voted until Bernie Sanders came around in 2016.

R74 It’s the constant motherfucking gaslighting for me.

R74/76, there is no sinister agenda making you label yourself anything. Literally. This whole thing is about differing philosophies on how this word has evolved in different ways, in different cultures, and in different parts of the globe over a span of a hundred years or so. Every time some Professor Nutloaf at a random college somewhere is critical of a word's usage and blogs about it, the dinosaurs come out with the "They're forcing us to relabel ourselves!!" hysterics.

Then they declare on here that they will "always be GAY!" and we are like "no one's stopping you gramps!" 🙄

Professor Nutloaf is one person, with one opinion. She studies language and etymology, and writes about them. Ten people read one of her blogs, including one pearl-clutcher who's been in momma's basement way too long and now we all gotta hear about it.

[quote] As long as I get dick

That will stop, R51, when you attain your fifth decade.

Let's be honest, "queer" used to mean gay/lesbian but now it means trans/NB. The gay experience (growing up with a sexual orientation you can't change) is being appropriated as the template for the trans experience (growing up with a particular gender identity that you can't change).

But that's not what "trans" means. It's mostly depressed blue haired teenagers with preferred pronouns, straight men who get erections wearing dresses, and autistic lesbians getting elective masectomies instead of going to therapy. Gender has become a catch-all excuse for acting out a variety of personality disorders.

Here are some fine examples of "Queer"

Miss Chocolate is 'queer'.

Oh God, a thousand times YES, R79. I always recall the sweet modest boy behind a local bookshop cash register who I watched over a year slowly transition via hormones. As per the narrative of Gay-Lib, Trans-Lib has its place, but together with Drag, it has absolutely hijacked Gay and Lesbian public identity. vis almost every single World Pride 2023 event is being publicly represented by drag queens! They and trannies have become the public face of gay identity in 2023. It's a utter DISASTER for gay people. Sexuality and Gender, while aligned, are very different things. Now virtually all that young gay teenagers are being exposed to, as representatives of themselves, are drags and trannies!!! There's barely an average looking woman or man – let alone a masculine man – to be seen in promotions of gay events. What kind of message does that send to impressionable young people? It's more than fucking TERRIBLE. And all the greater public can see is that gay people appear to be facile CLOWNS. All the wins and sympathy won due to the years of AIDS are slowly being eroded. I don't think gay leaders and the gay media have woken up to it, or put 2 and 2 together. They won't until the backlash is fully underway. I'm genuinely worried about the erosion of gay rights because of this.

We have this thread every 2 months.

R83 And? It's relevant as long as it's relevant.

I'm old so I remember the days when we homos took over the epithet "queer", just as people of color took over the epithet "n....r", in order to take it away from some in the hetero community who used it to hurt us.

But I keep forgetting that many of the younger set today are far more sensitive & touchy than we were.

This topic is so weird. You have gay people who claim "queer" was and always will be a slur, that they grew up hearing it as a slur, and that its latest usage is the doing of young people (think Gen Z) who don't know their history or respect their elders. Then you have others who claim it was reclaimed decades ago, they always saw it as an ironic slur reclaimed from the oppressors, and the contemporary offense is exclusive to "young people being too sensitive."

Which is it? I'm 56 and it was archaic as a playground slur when I was growing up in the 70s-80s. In the 90s it was all over college campuses as a reclaimed slur repurposed for the in-group. I don't know a single person under 40 who takes offense at it. Every gay person I know under 30 uses it as an umbrella term for LGBT and as identity alongside "gay." A lot of older people use it that way now too, including me.

Whether generational, geographic, or just personal, it seems everyone has some variation in how they view, hear and experience the word queer. There seems to be zero consistency on DL about this. Very odd.

I don’t think “queer” is used for transgender people. “Queer” only seems used towards gay men and lesbians, by the media. This is intentional.

[quote]The gay experience (growing up with a sexual orientation you can't change) is being appropriated as the template for the trans experience

You can thank the letter between LG and T for that. Bisexuals decided to appropriate and redefine gay and homosexual to include themselves because they felt left out of the gay experience. They wanted to be called “queer” as well, and now that has expanded to include Trans/NB, who are using the same template.

So you see, the B are largely responsible for why gay men and lesbians are in this mess in the first place and how we’ve circled back to people saying being gay is a choice or preference… So it makes no sense to tack them on either since they have more in common with the trans community.

Drop the acronyms.

I absolutely agree, we don’t need an acronym when referring to gay people. We can just say gay (or lesbian) and leave it at that.

“Queer” and LGBTQ+ are both equivalent to Yugoslavia. It’s a grouping of disparate people who don’t even like each other, forced into a union because some people thought we’re somehow similar and we would be better off in a larger grouping rather than in our own logical groups. I can’t wait for the dissolution when gay men can be their own group again with their own things.

If you call me the Q word, I'll spit in your eye.

Most of us on this site are NOT Britons. They love that word, but resent the word gypsy. To Americans, the word gypsy is NOT a slur. Not at all.

gypsy, gypsy, gypsy

Gypsy is a slur in any context you fucking moron.

Let people be called what they want to be called. If they want to be called queer or cis, then call them that. If they don't like those words, then don't call them that. Just stop forcing labels on people who don't want them. And that goes for everyone. Just be polite and respectful to people.

It is odd, R86. I remember reading 'Queers Read This' way back in 1991 and finding it mind-blowing. The tiny section explaining the reclamation of the word queer meant very little to me at the time as it wasn't a word I heard much anyway, other than perhaps by my grandparents. A few years later it was wall to wall Queer As Fuck t-shirts and coffee mugs, queer film festivals, and every other venue having queer in the title. It was always controversial but when journalists started using it with 'it's okay, we can say that word now' statements it all seemed very mainstream. I wish we could put as much energy into things like housing, healthcare, and safety as we do debating this word.

Queer is an easy umbrella term, but I've never once gotten pushback for calling myself Gay. Do go on with your pearl clutching and outrage, OP.

"Queer" is not a replacement for "gay." It's an umbrella term for LGBT or a separate identity altogether. You can be queer and gay. You can be queer and not gay. And you can even proclaim yourself gay but not queer,

It's okay. You'll be okay, OP. I promise.

This is why I stopped paying attention. I sit on the other side critical waiting for something I can relate to in all this.

When are we f-ggots? With the “a”.

That's next year, r99.

Ya, know, "reclaiming" it and all.

[quote]Let people be called what they want to be called. If they want to be called queer or cis, then call them that. If they don't like those words, then don't call them that.

This all sounds quite quaint, but what do you do when the news and corporations refers to everyone who's gay or lesbian as queer?

r101 mind as well.. they reported "political lesbians" aka str8 women as lesbians. so, lesbian no longer has any meaning. besides what's the point of gay? if same sex attracted women can be both gay and lesbian. and if lesbians are gay, then gay men just being described as gay.. might be confused for lesbians.

I beg to differ R71, My husband (59) and I (64) as well as a lot of our friends in our age group are offended by the term. I remember bullies in school would use “fag,” but adults and even teachers would sneeringly say “queer.”

Here's what I'm talking about, r102.

[quote]He and his husband were previously known for being leading plaintiffs in a series of marriage equality lawsuits before the state legalized it, and were [bold]a visible queer couple[/bold] in Maryland.

I find this offensive. They're not a 'queer couple,' they're married gay men.

R105 or it's both.

A gay couple is also queer, like a black couple is also a POC couple.

I missed R71, whose description of acceptance of the term vacillating back and forth in acceptance from one generation to the next is completely foreign to me. In my experience 40 and under are most likely to use "queer" (with 20-somethings almost monolithic in its usage), while 60 and up are most likely to be offended. 40-60 are literally in the middle, either okay with it or offended by it, reflecting an upbringing when the term as a hard slur was mostly falling out of common usage. Many in that 40-60 group are indifferent to it, or just see it as a stupid affectation and aren't offended by it.

[quote]A gay couple is also queer,

No. That's the whole fucking point!

Gay DOES NOT equal queer, FFS.

[quote]A gay couple is also queer, like a black couple is also a POC couple.

This poster is straight out of the 50s. This is who the hard left is. He basically called gays “queers” and blacks “coloreds”. This is who they are. There is nothing “progressive” about these people.

Any conservative straight yob reading this thread would be cheering. Divide and conquer. Shift the focus to letters of the alphabet to disunite them, draw their attention away from the ongoing erosion of their rights and values. Our rights are never safe, never guaranteed. Stop playing alphabet soup and realize the danger we are all in, all the time. UNITE.

I’m not uniting with a group of people who call me a queer.

@110, we can do both.

The fact that this debate goes back and forth again and again is actually a really good sign, to my mind, that 'queer' is NOT a good descriptor. People will never be in total agreement, of course, but this .

I agree with the idea that people can use whatever terms they like personally, but R101 makes a really good point: what happens when a term that is controversial like this and offends many suddenly becomes the standard in journalism, in government, etc.? I think people have a right to debate this and don't have to feel comfortable with it.

I agree with R66.

[quote]There's barely an average looking woman or man – let alone a masculine man

I have a friend involved in a lot of promotion and interviews around World Pride, and I must say I have noticed a lack of diversity in the people promoted. It's become less that way, it feels to me. I didn't see one gay man who looked like most of the gay men I know. Even my friend, who is an "average gay man" was made up to look like a drag queen. Everything is beautifully colorful and crazy and over the top... and the same everywhere, resulting in it ironically seeming a lot less interesting and less diverse than it used to.

Gay is internal. It is who we are. It is determined by us.

Queer is external. It is what people present as and they can stop presenting as that whenver they choose to do so. It is determined by people outside of oneself because of its external nature. It's the "look at me" phenomena.

That's why it's an insult to call gay people queer.

Oops, pressed send before I finished a sentence:

"People will never be in total agreement, of course, but this word seems too controversial to ever be generally accepted."

The new season of Survivor has two gay men and three queer women according to their own wording. I don't think it's gay men in particular who the queer thing is trying to redefine.

Gay men are thrust into the word “queer”, like they’ve been their whole lives.

I entirely support the concept of taking back the word queer. The issue, however, is that a bunch of self-appointed leaders in the LGBT community gave straight people permission to use the word too. That's not what taking back a word means.

R109 unlike you, I wasn't alive in the 50s

Christ you cunts are insufferable.

[quote][R109] unlike you, I wasn't alive in the 50s.

I was 45 in 1955.

[quote]cunts

All these white gay progressives with their hate speech—“queer”, “c-nt”. It’s too much.

R122 I'm not white, but you're definitely a cunt.

It's always hilarious to me that so many gay men here resort to misogynistic hate and slurs in supposed defense of the gay community (well the male part at least because you're dissing all the lesbians with your misogyny, too). Doesn't the cognitive dissonance give you all a headache?

[quote][R122] I'm not white, but you're definitely a cunt.

And you’re definitely hard left. A blue Deplorable.

I'm a gay man. I describe myself as a gay man, but I have no problem with queer as an umbrella term.

It's not a dick, don't take it so hard.

gay was once a slur.. so, some were upset by that but the younger generation forced them into using it.

Everyone must be allowed to define their own identity, and when they do, that identity must be respected - unless their identity involves objecting to being called "queer" or "cis." Then they must be destroyed

Oh, and R128 in addition to that, the term "homosexual" has now been identified as problematic and if you use that to describe yourself well... we know what kind of a person YOU are, and it's NOT a good one!

When was 'gay' a slur?

R129 has a terrifying imagination

Nope, R131, this has been claimed by people already. Glossaries used by the government in my country don't use "homosexual" anymore (but still bi- and hetero- sexual) because people claim 'homosexual' is an offensive term. It's also happened in other organisations too.

R132 and what country, pray tell, is that?

I am queer in the manner of Oscar Wilde, not the word appropriators.

Oh you're so smug, R133. It's Australia, and the information was posted here just last week. The department that advises the government on the correct terminology to use in regards to sexual orientation and gender identity leaves out homosexual, and makes a number of other strange alterations to definitions.

Eldergay thread. Language changes adapt or die.

R135 sorry I don't scan eldergay threads about the terror of Gen Z 24/7.

[quote]Language changes adapt or die.

It is true that language changes. It is usually a more gradual, natural change over time, though I would say.

Look, I really am not surprised this is a controversial topic. Why is it not possible to debate things like this anymore - instead it's all: "unless you agree with this position you are a terrible person" type arguing.

R138 it's hard to have an "in good faith" debate when this forum has been flooded with trolls for years. It's impossible to tell who's actually debating and who's just stirring up shit.

R138 Egads!

"You're a troll arguing in bad faith if you don't want to call yourself queer."

It's just another word. People may choose to use it and even prefer it to the words that you use and prefer. You are not the arbiter of language usage.

Stop your control-freak bullshit, would you please? I don't think you can read/hear what you actually sound like. It's not good, ladies.

People who call themselves queer are always On The Right Side Of History™.

[quote]It's just another word. People may choose to use it and even prefer it to the words that you use and prefer. You are not the arbiter of language usage.

I agree with this, except in the instance where some words are then used in journalism, government etc. to define an entire group of people, including those who don't use it (and for legitimate historical reasons). I think many people wouldn't care about 'queer' so much if it hadn't become the term to use for all of us, you know?

I don't think there's a simple answer to this all up, because the word seriously hurts some people and inspires others.

R144 what is a preferred umbrella term, in your opinion?

It’s better than QUILTBAG, I’ll give you that.

If we’re going to reclaim slurs, I’d rather be called a homo.

See, R145 that is a fascinating question in itself. It also raises further questions like who do we include under an umbrella, and why? What is our community, etc? I really don't know. I never really had a problem with LGBT, I have to say, but all the extra letters make it seem unwieldy for sure. I hear many gay men and women privately joking about the "LGBTABCDEFG..." community for example.

What to they officially use in place of the word 'homosexual' in Australia if they still use hetero- and bi-sexual?

Heterosexual, bisexual, and others? Heterosexuals, bisexuals, and non-hetero/bisexuals? 'Hets, bis, and 'those people, you know who we're talking about, don't make us spell it out'?

"We decide what a woman is, what a man is, and what you are, whether you agree or not!

The umbrella terms should simply be 'gay community' which includes gay men and women. Everyone else can go make their own groups and call themselves whatever they want. Just leave us out of your mess.

They still have "gay" and "lesbian" in the glossary, R148. But they are defined as:

[quote]Gay: an individual who identifies as a man and is sexually and/or romantically attracted to other people who identify as men. The term gay can also be used in relation to women who are sexually and romantically attracted to other women.

[quote]Lesbian: an individual who identifies as a woman and is sexually and/or romantically attracted to other people who identify as women.

The glossary also says:

[quote]Homonormativity: a term that describes the privileging of certain people or relationships within the queer community (usually cisgender, white, gay men).

If people are free to call me queer, then I feel free to use the word tranny

Everyone should just use whatever words feel most comfortable for them. If "Queer" is what works for you - use it. If it's Gay or LGBTQ or whatever - you use the terms you like best.

You get to choose for yourself, nobody can or should choose for you.

I'd be happy with that, personally R150. It's actually the term I tend to use naturally myself (or 'gay and lesbian community'). I imagine many others would have issues though.

We’re here

Don’t call us queer

Get used to it.

Fuck you, r119. Ageism is just as bad as racism, sexism or homophobia.

Datalounge applauds ageism.

Datalounge is stuck in 2015. I can't imagine being hurt over this word for so long.

R158 you mean 1989...at max

R153, stop being disingenuous. We don't get to choose when media guides across the country are telling everyone to call all of us queer every time they right about anything related to the gay community. It's especially galling in articles and news reports that are exclusively about something affecting solely gay men or lesbians and they still use the word queer.

R160 they right...

OH DEAR!!!!

r130

[quote] Gay meaning “merry”, “exuberantly joyful”, can be traced back to medieval French gai, but its earlier origins are unknown. For the past two or three centuries gay has had sexual overtones in general. In the eighteenth century lewd behaviour was part of the “gay life”, enjoyed by both men and women. Rakes and men-about-town were called “gay blades”. A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue published in 1811 gives “the gaying instrument” as a slang term for the penis.

[quote] In the nineteenth century, good-time girls and streetwalkers were called “gay ladies” and brothels were called “gay houses”. Male hustlers plied the same streets as female prostitutes, and the word gay acquired a homosexual connotation. One of the male prostitutes rounded up during the Cleveland Street scandal of 1889 described himself in court as “gay”. Some people argue that Walt Whitman used the word gay with a knowing wink to the hustlers who plied their trade in 1860s Brooklyn. In London, Rev. John Church, a minister who performed marriages between men at a homosexual brothel in Vere Street in 1810, was described in a pamphlet of 1813 as “the gay parson”: the word gay was italicized, obviously to call attention to it.

[quote] Admittedly, evidence that the word “gay” was applied specifically to homosexual men as early as this is weak. However, I would hesitate to categorically rule out the possibility that homosexual connotations go back even further. For example, in Mary Pix’s play The Adventures in Madrid, which was performed in 1706, a girl dressed as a boy is pursued by a man named “Gaylove” who calls her his little “Ganymede” and “fairy”. Surely this means what it seems to mean?

[quote] We can say without doubt that gay was used in the 1930s in Midwest America as slang for “homosexual”. In a Dictionary of Underworld Slang published in 1933, a gay cat was defined as “a homosexual boy”. It was prison slang for the younger man who serviced older partners. Jack London in The Road published in 1907 said a gay cat was an apprentice hobo. In the hobo subculture of the 1920s and 1930s, it was common for older and younger tramps to pair up. The young hobo would keep a look-out while the older man did some pilfering. It’s not hard to see how gay cat became slang for a punk who offered sex in return for money, or a treat, or protection.

[quote] The upper classes became familiar with the term by the late 1930s, probably while “slumming it” in the underworld, or perhaps through artistic bohemian circles. Some early movies even used the word “gay” as a coded reference. In the 1938 comedy Bringing Up Baby, when Cary Grant is asked why he’s wearing a frilly nightgown, he replies “I just went gay all of a sudden.” Apparently this line wasn’t scripted, but was ad-libbed by Grant on the spur of the moment. Some argue that this code-word was used in even earlier movies.

[quote] Speaking of codes, Gertrude Stein in her story “Miss Furr and Miss Skeene” (published 1922 but written 1908–11) describes a female couple who are more than just merry: “They were guite regularly gay there, Helen Furr and Georgine Skeen, they were regularly gay there where they were gay. To be regularly gay was to do every day the gay thing that they did every day. To be regularly gay was to end every day at the same time after they had been regularly gay.” But perhaps Miss Stein’s writing is too deeply encoded.

^

[quote] The word queer was used by gay men about a decade earlier than gay, and it similarly has a centuries-long non-gay history, meaning odd, eccentric, disreputable or bent. The earliest documented homosexual use is a 1914 description of a party in Long Beach, California, when some “chickens” were invited to meet some prominent “queers”. It was the most commonly used term (together with fairy) before World War II. It was used mainly by “ordinary” and “straight-acting” gay men in preference to a host of words for effeminate gay men: nellie queens, margeries, fairies, pansies, nancy-boys.

[quote] By the 1940s the homosexual meaning of gay was common knowledge to those in the gay subculture and in the bohemian demi-monde in America. It became common in Britain in the 1950s. From the late 1950s it was increasingly extended to cover women as well as men. There were organizations for “gay men and women”, and in the commercial subculture there were “gay women’s bars”. For a short period, about 1965 to 1973, lesbian activists employed it, but they began rejecting it as the gay liberation movement began fragmenting into ever-purer ideological camps.

[quote] Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, there had been many campaigns for “homosexual” equality, and by the time of the Stonewall Riots of June 1969, there were 50 “homosexual” and “homophile” organizations in the United States. Immediately following the riots, political activists embraced the slang term gay which was now common in the street culture, and attached it to their liberation movement. By the end of 1970 there were 200 organizations calling themselves “gay”, and by the end of 1973 there were more than 1,000 “gay and lesbian” organizations, not only in San Francisco, Chicago and New York, but across the United States. There is no doubt that an explosion had occurred. Was it caused by a word?

[quote] Probably not. There were other important factors: the sexual revolution, the black liberation movement, the women’s liberation movement, the student anti-war movement, and the rise of popular youth culture. But we should not underestimate the power of words, and the power of words used as visual images. Crucial to the gay explosion was the formation of the Gay Liberation Front in July 1969, and the adoption of the slogans “Gay Power”, “Gay is Good” and “Gay Pride”. GAY was perfect as a short, powerful, arresting image, on posters, on lapel badges, on manifestos.

[quote] Gay became a powerful word for organisations, leaflets, newspapers and magazines, publishing collectives, T-shirts. Two New York papers titled GAY and Gay Power were founded in 1969 and quickly achieved a circulation of 25,000 – compared to earlier “homophile” papers that were lucky to reach 200 readers. London’s Gay News was born in 1972.

[quote] Gay became the global standard in numerous countries, displacing indigenous terms. For example, in 1972 the kathoeys or transvestite and transgender male prostitutes of Thailand reconceptualized themselves as masculine “gay kings” and effeminate “gay queens”. Queerwords don’t construct identities, but they can widen or narrow the possibilities for expression.

[quote] Words can be powerful motivating forces, but it would be a mistake to assume that an identity doesn’t exist prior to the words currently used to describe that identity. For example, plenty of words were used to identify different types of gay men in England in the eighteenth century: molly, endorser, Gany-boy, madge cull, mameluke, margery, patapouf, queen and aunt. These words were in addition to older terms such as catamite, sodomite and buggerer. Eighteenth-century lesbians were called tommies, tribades, sapphists – and lesbians.

[quote] Terms like “unnaturalist” or “invert” (which were both used in the eighteenth century) and “homosexual” (coined in 1868), were eventually taken up by the modern medical establishment, but they had no impact on the working-class subcultures where most queer words are employed.

It will be up to Datalounge's Queers to bring this place to 2023. They are modern, they are cutting-edge, they are revolutionary!

R161, I was just going to Oh dear myself but the stick up your ass beat me to it!

I have posted a couple times on DL recently in other (perhaps now deleted) threads that in my employer’s diversity glossary that “homosexual” is considered an offensive slur.

Our VP of marketing is a gay man & he's pushing people to put pronouns in their email signatures.

Thankfully, he’s largely being ignored.

My guess is that the homophobes are just fine with calling him “queer”. They don’t have to whisper it behind his back!

If one were to call me that at work, I would have no recourse.

R162/R163 - stop spamming the dataounge. Post a link like a civilized human being, if you can manage that.

foppish

R161/R162, that's a history of the word gay but I don't see the slur part anywhere.

Same is true for “preferred pronouns,” r158.

r167 So people can say "I don't click links" and so, they can avoid arguments that invalidate their view.... either way screams of how it's wrong. A "civlized" human being would have a better knowledge of history.

r169 You see what you want to see. The way in which it has been used was akin to foppish in some cases. It was also used to describe the slutty.

Yes, r164, they will solve all the world’s problems & we will finally have utopia at long last!!!

Thanks to the generation that ate tide pods & glorified the Kardashians.

R165 I borrowed it from you!

R160, we cannot choose the way that media refers to us, that is correct. As ever, they will use different words and terms and there is nothing anyone can do about that. You're spitting into the wind.

The answer is to call ourselves whatever we want. You don't like this word or that one - fine. Don't use them yourself. That's as far as it can go. You have no business telling the rest of us how we may or may not refer to ourselves and each other nor what words are acceptable.

Most people don't use "faggot" anymore, maybe "queer" and other words you don't like will fall out of fashion. Language evolves, no telling where it's going to go. Wherever it goes, you won't be leading it.

R166 as you said, HE'S BEING IGNORED.

I never announce my pronouns. On occasion, if I'm at an LGBTQ event, they'll have pronoun buttons and I'll wear one. If someone asks my pronouns, I tell them. But no one forces me to announce them, no one's ever given me shit for not having them on my social media. And the world goes on.

It's really not the crisis situation you imagine.

R171, then where is the slur part in what you copied over? Point it out. It's being used as a descriptive, even among the gay people of those times. Gay isn't, and never has been, a slur.

stupid people become radicalized easily

R174, define the word 'queer'.

No one talks about pronouns or trans people as much as Datalounge.

R179, you've obviously never met trans people.

You'd think they'd appreciate the attention then, R179. They're always seeking it.

Government departments do, R179. I work in one.

And I make this comment without adding opinion.

R180 I have, I just don't obsess over them like Datalounge.

The ones I know in real life are (mostly) fairly relaxed and I don't spend my days looking for Twitter people to obsess over.

I'm gay, I'm cis (who ever dreamed that would be a thing?), and I like my men Castro clone circa 1978, and if you don't like that you can fuck off.

[quote] No one talks about pronouns or trans people as much as Datalounge.

That's true right now, R179, but it hasn't always been this way and it doesn't have to be this way.

We never gave much of a thought to Trans people around here. It simply wasn't an issue. Then a bunch of women (many of them straight) invaded our site and have been camping out here ever since. Other sites won't allow them to post their hate speech, vile slurs and violent fantasies about Trans - they kick them out and ban them from their sites. I wish we'd do the same.

They ruin the datalounge for those of us who aren't Trans obsessives. They attract bigots and haters.

We don't actually give a flying fuck about Trans. They're welcome here, of course, and they're certainly more welcome than these fucked up control-freak straight women.

[quote]I don't spend my days looking for Twitter people to obsess over.

Twitter really does seem to be a hodge-podge of some of the weirdest of humanity. I guess it's the character limit, it's got rid of a lot of nuance in argument, maybe?

[quote]I like my men Castro clone circa 1978

Oof! Mmm. Yes. Oh, yes, I'm with you here.

r178 see other definitions, too

r37 r 38

Were you offended by Queer Nation back in the 90s, too?

You guys are easily offended

Queer then is not queer today.

r178

the dictionary says homosexuals is now often disparaging + offensive, too

also, that gay can be offensive especially in describing other people.

apparently, everything is offensive.

and has baggage

BACK IN MY DAY!

[quote]Were you offended by Queer Nation back in the 90s, too?

I wasn't around then, but my understanding is that many people were. Someone else correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Queer Nation represented a particular form of political engagement that not everyone aligned with? They didn't represent all gay men, is what I'm saying, I guess.

[quote]Queer then is not queer today.

This is also true. Plus back then, it was being reclaimed, by those who did, by the people it was used as a slur against. And even chants like: "we're here, we're queer" etc, I think were designed more from the aspect of throwing the slur back in the faces of the homophobes, like: "you call us queer, well ok, we're queer then, you still have to deal with us".

But yes, others could explain this better, or correct me where I'm wrong.

[quote]Any conservative straight yob reading this thread would be cheering. Divide and conquer. Shift the focus to letters of the alphabet to disunite them, draw their attention away from the ongoing erosion of their rights and values

You're nuts if you think all the letters, other than among the activists, are currently "united".

ACT UP only came up with that chant because [bold]they were desperate to bring attention to the AIDS crisis[/bold]… which Reagan had ignored & allowed to spread.

[quote]we cannot choose the way that media refers to us, that is correct. As ever, they will use different words and terms and there is nothing anyone can do about that. You're spitting into the wind.

Picture hearing this on the news:

"At Friday's Saint Patrick's Day Parade, the Mick community will be celebrating with parades. St. Patrick's Day celebrations come right on the heels of Colored History Month, but we'll have to wait until October when the Dago community has their parade."

Yeah, all those people would be quiet and not call the station, since they're "spitting in the wind." I'm sure.

[quote]I never really had a problem with LGBT, I have to say, but all the extra letters

And symbols now. Don't forget the symbols.

Pretty soon we'll add umlauts and gang signs to the list.

Oh, yeah, that "+" - the term really now can mean ANYTHING, if there is this + just waiting to add more and more and more.

so, which party will you be voting for in 2024?

R199, unfortunately, Dems will lose because of this shit. Is it worth it to you?

I will go as far as LGBT. Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered. Oh, and the 'nonbinary' people. They're gay.

I refuse to use the word 'queer.' It's an ugly, harmful and derogatory word. And I don't want to own it. The word 'queer' should be buried in the ash heap of history.

To R65.... "Hey, I am GAY!! Queers, take ur word & GO AWAY!"

So many fragile little snowfllakes in this thread.

Words come, words go, people change what they call other people or groups on a regular basis. You're not going to force it to happen.

They actually DID use the word "colored" on the news back in the old days as well as a lot of other words that they would not use now. As I posted earlier, language evolves. Whatever words are popular one year may fall out of favor a few years down the road. You never know.

It's certainly not something to get all bent out of shape over.

I think, when sort of traditional straight people thought about gay rights, the right to gay marriage, etc., they thought, Well, there has always been same-sex attraction, and it isn't fair that people who have that attraction have to hide their feelings, and are subject to violence, and are treated unequally by the law, and they gradually--well, really not all that gradually--came to not want to endorse that prejudice. But this new movement--I'm not going to say it continues to be the gay-rights movement, because it's something else--says, Oh, there's really no such thing as two sexes or genders, that's just been imposed by an oppressive society, and everything that human society has believed to be real and solid from time immemorial is actually inimical and needs to be undermined, and if you're a man or a woman, you're "cis" (WTF?) and therefore exercise unearned privilege--it's more complicated than that, but if our new activists think that they're not handing the right wing tons of ammunition with this stuff, they're crazy.

Dr Eric Cervini likes queer.

He's young and you're all old.

[quote]Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered

The word is "transgender." There is no past tense or any tense at all. Like the other three words, it's a noun and an adjective, but it's not a verb. You don't say "Gayed" or "Lesbianed."

As a homosexual I am offended by the idea that the word homosexual is considered offensive.

Also, my friends and I gayed it up at a party last weekend, and I talked to my friend Gert, and she and her wife lesbianed each other just last month, R206.

We're here, we're gay but it's no one's business, it doesn't define us, anyway we think we're straight acting, we're not like those blue-haired queers, we hate trans people, and women, and effeminate men, and we don't even know what non binary is, maybe daddy will love us if we just butch it up some more, why are we even marching again?

Non-binary people aren’t gay. They are straight people trying to be interesting.

R204 think of ‘cis’ like ‘hetero’ and yes there was boring resistance to that too when it was introduced. Think of yourself as a tired dickhead, unable to learn from experience and project those learnings onto different but parallel situations, repeating the same arguments against others that were (quite recently) leveraged against you x.

I'm QWEAR.

Get ovre ti.

Most non-binary people don't claim to be gay, although some are. Non-binary is not a sexual identity like gay or lesbian, it's a gender identity. Most non-binary people consider themselves trans. Some are indeed heterosexual and don't claim to be otherwise. Sexuality and gender are two completely separate things. You can be trans or non-binary and also be straight or gay or bisexual. Gender identities don't cancel out sexual identities.

Sometimes I feel like Datalounge is full of 60-something conservative Christian shut-ins who hate anything that didn't exist in 1950. Sometimes I think it might be.

[quote] Most non-binary people don't claim to be gay, although some are.

I guarantee all those people will stop using that label in the next five years.

They will have come to their senses.

[quote] Most non-binary people consider themselves trans.

R212 Do they have sex and orgasms?

You cannot be non-binary (ungendered/unsexed) and have a sexual orientation at all. It is not possible, except maybe asexual because then you are a nothing attracted to nothing.

I’d ask how one can be non-binary and trans at the same time, but I’ve seen that question get asked here several times before, with it getting ignored or dismissed with a “it’s not my [italic]job[/italic] to educate you!”

DL fave Sam Brinton would bounce between the two labels whenever it suited* him.

[quote]I guarantee all those people will stop using that label in the next five years. They will have come to their senses.

No way am I going to be friendly to people who behaved this way. Pretend that these hard left extremists, who twisted facts, deceived, manipulated, called gays f-ggots, and women c-nts, which I see here from the pro-trans, pro-non-binary, pro-LGBTQ posters on this site hourly, daily, (for years), is absolutely out of the question. No way are these people just going to “come to their senses”. Fuck them, I say.

R217 touch grass

[quote] Fuck them…

R217 But will you stick your hard penis into their surgical wound?

To accept non-binary as something means to also accept that the binary exists, and I just don't believe it does. It feels regressive to me (if we're going to bring up the 1950s) to say there is a specific way to be masculine and a specific way to be feminine and that that is the binary. No one fits those stereotypes, in fact, you might argue that EVERYONE is gender nonconforming. The healthy thing, I think, is to realise that being a man and being a woman can exist along a range of expressions - that the hairy truck driver and the effete ballet dancer and everything in between are all valid examples of being a man, and the butch army sergeant and the girly princess type and everything in between are all valid examples of being a woman.

[quote]Eric Cervini likes queer.

R205. We don't give a shit. We hate the word queer.

[quote]You can be trans or non-binary and also be straight or gay or bisexual.

R212. I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about.

[quote]One of the first slogans in the gay rights movement was "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!

Actually it was "what do we want, gay rights now".

[quote] gay rights now

Those are the words that appear in that 1979 poster that appears at the 30 second mark in the OP's video.

[quote] think of ‘cis’ like ‘hetero’ and yes there was boring resistance to that too when it was introduced.

Except I dont know any straight people who introduce themselves as hetero. They know what it means, but they dont use it. If anything if they are asked, 99% of the time they will say I am NOT gay or they will say I am STRAIGHT.

I have an idea, let’s discuss semantics while the rug gets pulled from under us! We’ll take the high road! 🙄

I went to Datalounge Help to check what its terminology is. Here I found:

"This site contains all kinds of pointless shit posted by very peculiar people."

So presumably Datalounge's official stance on the matter is that we are VPPs.

Endless image examples of queer here.

All unfuckable-looking.

I just love the myopic cunts here! If we don't like the word "queer" being used to label us as gay people, that somehow means we hate all trans people and all women and everything else that apparently liking the word "queer" represents. FUCK OFF YOU DUMB CUNTS with your simplistic views and desperate need to control and endorse other people's thoughts and use of language.

There is no LGBTQIA+ "community" mostly because the TQIA+ part is determined to dictate absolutely everything for the gay and lesbians. If you don't like it, you're out of step and out of time and a fossil not worth considering (even if you're barely 30). This utter contempt for gay and lesbian people by the rest of the rainbow is what fuels all this anger. TELLING people HOW they must be is counter to everything that gays and lesbians have been working towards for over 50 years.

[quote]desperate need to control and endorse other people's thoughts and use of language.

This is how it's coming across to me too. Thank you for saying above too; it's irritating seeing people be accused of bigotry that they clearly don't have, as an attempt at shutting the conversation down because these people don't want to listen to different opinions, including those that have facts that make them uncomfortable.

There's that quote I saw around that I'm reminded of:

"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering."

Amen, R229.

I would also add that I didn't fight to overcome my religious upbringing, and come out, deal with estrangement from my family, and finally learn to accept myself as a gay man, just to be subsumed into some larger amorphous umbrella identity.

Especially if the term for that identity was used as a weapon against me from first grade on.. Gay=lame is not the same as queer=faggot, or smear the queer.

R216, I am happy to educate you. Non-binary is a subset of trans, and refers to people who were assigned male or female at birth (like nearly all of us), but who identify as neither. Non-binary is included under the umbrella of trans because it refers to someone who transitions from one gender identity (a binary male/female one assigned at birth) to another (a non-binary one).

R232 No-one is "assigned" a sex at birth, you absolute mong. Non-binary isn't anything to do with trans because "attention seeking" isn't a gender identity, it's a personality disorder.

Non-binary = avoid! Attention seeking narcissist approaches.

BTW, people are assigned male or female at fertilization, not birth. The sperm that fertilizes the egg does the assigning.

r233

R25- For Some reason I find the word homosexual offensive.

Homosexual is “clinical”, but it doesn’t sting like queer or f-ggot does.

R235, trying to conflate intersex people, which is a genetic condition, with attention seeking non-binary bullshit is offensive, and damaging to intersex people.

Yes, sometimes things go wrong with conception and gestation. That isn't the same as the freaks on the internet who demonstrate as they change from male to female and back - usually by scrunching up their face, squinting, and changing the pitch of their voice slightly.

Attention seeking Sam Smith is not the same as a person born with a genetic abnormality.

R235 Using intersex people as a way to make a gotcha point is utterly disingenuous. Are we really saying that because 0.5% of all births are intersex and therefore the sex of the baby is not observable that means that the sex for the other 99.5% are “assigned” rather than observed? Ridiculous.

R162, I was going to say interesting find, but realized Wikipedia is the source (lol stupid me), just look at their definition of gay men and lesbian. TRAs must be running the place or something…. Wikipedia is useless for accurate and reliable information.

R205, I actually like Eric, and I think he has good intentions, but he has a habit of diminishing his expertise when he’s peddling falsehoods about gay history in favour of TQ.

I listened to an interview today with a woman who left an Orthodox Jewish community. She claimed throughout to be queer. Then she mentioned her upcoming marriage to a man.

It's all just a stance now, isn't it?

R188, Queer Nation was a controversial group even back then, particularly its co-founder Michael Petrelis.

[quote]They actually DID use the word "colored" on the news back in the old days

Yes, they also unironically used "Negro." The point is should we go back to that time? No, because it's offensive in the same way 'queer' is offensive.

[quote]Non-binary is a subset of trans, and refers to people who were [bold]assigned male or female at birth (like nearly all of us)[/bold], but who identify as neither.

Wow, you are deep, deep, [italic]deep[/italic] into the dogma. I actually am fascinated by gays like you - are you British by any chance? I've seen that UK gays in particular really subscribe to the LGBTQIA+ talking points. There's a reason there's no American equivalent to Owen Jones, although Chasten B. comes close.

So if non-binary is a trans subset, does that make all non-binaries trans by definition? Also, if someone says "non-binary is bullshit" (as I'm sure you've seen that phrase many times here), does that fall squarely into the realm of transphobia?

Do you think non-binaries should have the same social credit, affirmation, asspats, etc. as trans people who actually went the extra mile of hormones, surgeries, etc.?

Christ, some of you clearly need help.

I don't get into all the trans/enby shit, but I don't live in terror of it like those of you in this thread. I call people what they want to be called, apologize if I make a mistake, roll my eyes in private at some of the silliness, AND NOTHING BAD HAPPENS.

The pronouns aren't gonna hurt you, hun.

r247

R247 “I call people what they want to be called” is ridiculous. No-one knows how you refer to them when they are not in your presence and to dictate that is the height of narcissism. The fact that you “roll your eyes in private” just means you’re a disingenuous conformist who is terrified of speaking sense to idiots. No-one “lives in terror” of TRAs and non-binary attention seekers, it’s just some of us have the balls to question this nonsense that’s taken over all rational thought.

[quote]No-one knows how you refer to them when they are not in your presence and to dictate that is the height of narcissism.

Thank you. I just tried to explain this on another thread, but you did it much better and more succinctly.

R249 taken over all rational thought....aka obsessives on Datalounge and Twitter.

In the real world...most of us don't think about trans people or pronouns constantly.

I've never met anyone who goes by ze/zir, etc (I know they exist, but I've never met them) but it doesn't hurt or terrify me to call someone they or them. I've never gotten yelled at for using the wrong pronouns. No one's ever come to me and said "you misgendered me when you were talking to Stacy."

It's not a big deal, hun. You act like there's an army of Blue Haired People with pitchforks and torches parading through the streets. You really need to touch some grass.

R251 Bless your heart and your “it’s never happened to me so it doesn’t exist” way of life. By the way, you’ll find all the “obsessives” are the TRAs and non-binaries who expect people buying coffee to be telepathic. You know coffee shops, right? Those things that exist in the real world.

OP- Don't be lazy. Read the whole thing, moron.

You think queer is a good word, but I do not. You think that gypsy is a bad word, but I do not.

IF I can't use gypsy for fear of hurting people unintentionally, then it follows that you must not use the word queer for the same reason.

DUH!

Queer Gypsy is my new band name.

R208 "we don't even know what non binary is"

It's true, we don't. Can you explain it? Is it, like, when a guy grows a three-days' growth of beard, but then puts purple eye shadow on? And for how long do you expect that to remain interesting?

[quote] we don't even know what non binary is

It's when 2 young people go out on a Saturday night and stare at each other. Because they don't know how to do sex.

As long as they stare at each other with permission, I suppose that's ok.

We don't want them to get arrested.

I saw a reasonably attractive, young man wearing a "Trans Rights" message T-shirt this morning.

I tried to engage him in conversation but everything he said was abstract and vague, hypothetical and theoretical. It sounded like he was talking about Algebra or Calculus.

Uh, can we get back to the 113-year-old at r121?

[quote]A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue published in 1811 gives “the gaying instrument” as a slang term for the penis.

I'll have to start using that.

I'm here! I'm queer ! Get used to it.

R259 Everything he said was abstract and vague, hypothetical and theoretical so I automatically assumed he was a virgin with NO experience of any penis-action.

Watching World Pride is Sydney has been watching the clear end goal of this Queer bullshit. R82 is bang on, the whole of pride is an extravaganza for non binary, trans and POC. The guides, the brochures, the events are all free of images of gay men unless they’re in makeup. My husband and I avoided the whole thing. All of our friends did as well, it was insulting. I’m totally happy for the Queer term if it is an umbrella term, but when you see a group so totally excluded you can’t help but question it.

The local version of the Guardian newspaper ran a comment piece today quoting Queer Non Binary people as saying the events and parties had too many men and that they felt excluded, the typical line that anything for gay men is about male entitlement, even though it had virtually no content for us…. So tiring. for 45 years Mardi ages has been a gay and lesbian party with inclusivity for it’s for friends and allies. Now it feels like someone else’s party.

[quote] World Pride is Sydney

The word 'gay' is barely seen in any of its publicity.

The word was definitely not used in the opening speeches.

There was a sign at the start of today's march saying men should NOT take their shirt off.

[quote]There was a sign at the start of today's march saying men should NOT take their shirt off.

Was this to make it so the "men" with tit scars didn't get their fee-fees hurt? I hope all the gay men took that sign to heart...and walked around without pants instead!

OMG, …. I mean it was very sunny maybe it wa to avoid sunburn! Lol

Thanks for the posts about World Pride, they are very interesting. I didn’t go, I moved away from Sydney recently and didn’t feel like returning, but other friends of mine have said similar afterwards. Also parade too long and too corporate were the other comments.

Apparently some woman lay down on the road to protest the police being in the march, but apparently she mistook the police float and actually lay down in front of the one for disabled children or something? Oh my!

One friend of mine was involved in a lot of the promotion. When I looked, as others said above, hardly any gay men and when there were they were dragged up to high heaven. Even my friend was made up in a way he never would be usually.

[quote] The local version of the Guardian newspaper ran a comment piece today quoting Queer Non Binary people as saying the events and parties had too many men and that they felt excluded, the typical line that anything for gay men is about male entitlement, even though it had virtually no content for us…

Those damn selfish gay men making it all about them! I mean anyone would think the parade began as a protest and that it was gay men bundled into the backs of police vans and bashed up in 1978.

I don’t understand how these people were excluded when the promotion was nearly all about them?

Talking with friends in real life about this now, it’s amazing how as soon as you mention confusion at some of the weirder identity stuff how it opens the floodgates and everyone is in agreement that it doesn’t make sense, they just don’t want to say it out loud.

The nice thing too is that these real life discursions don’t devolve into hatred at other people or nastiness or anything like that as far as I’ve experienced. People wish others well, they just secretly think some of the more out there stuff is a bit nonsensical and doesn’t have anything to do with gay men and women.

I read that Guardian article and as a “moneyed - somewhat -and gay man”, I would prefer to go to a smaller event too. Why do those arguments always make it seem like all us gay men feel as one about things and that we want to be exclusive? And can’t the guys who go to those events have something geared more towards them if they want (if that even is the intention)? Why not? Isn’t the point of these events to have something for gays as usually we don’t have this geared towards us in mainstream life? As that girl said, she goes elsewhere because she wants to be somewhere more comfortable for her and we all make those choices. Many friends of mine went straight home after the parade or to a mate’s house. I’m not sure why this needed to be a big point.

R269 I was chatting with a friend today about world pride who went to events. An old school Sydney chick who’s been a gay friend for 30 years and she was like ‘what the fuck was world pride’ it sucked. Apart from a few parties full of circuit queens on steroids everyone else stayed away who was gay. So fucked up. Then every event was full of corporate sponsorship where the gays present were in drag and straight people or non binary types could pose in front of a rainbow instagram backdrop for their socials. Community….. was absent.

It appears that Syndey World Pride followed the example of the NYC Pride Parade last summer. There were five honorees at that event and none were gay men. They were all trans or non-binary.

Chase Strangio, who has ruined the ACLU with her trans-rights bullshit, was one of those honored.

When actual gay men complained that there were no gay men honored, Strangio shot back that "he" is a gay man.

Chase Strangio has zipper tits and a vagina.

Gay men and lesbians are under assault by the letters to the right of LGB.

We must separate from these disgusting enbys and trains.

R.I.P. “gay”.

Queer is offensive and "cis" is offensive.

Accepting that label signals agreement with the harmful and pseudoscientific notion that your brain and body can literally be "mismatched." This isn't how biology works.

Masculine girls and feminine boys are not out of alignment. It's natural.

They’re not listening, r273. We can tell them until we’re blue in the face that we don’t want to be called queer nor cis & they’ll just keep trying to persuade us to accept being called a slur.

Yet, if we dare use the “wrong” pronouns, we are bigoted nazis that need to be punched & die in a grease fire.

We need to reserve grease fires for only the most serious crimes, like wearing white shoes after Labor Day.

R271 - that was such a bizarre situation. I think Bill Maher even mentioned it on his show and Strangio rather unintentionally hilariously tweeted:

[quote]I have a lot of reactions to the Bill Maher segment but why does he assume I am not a gay man?

Strangio must be a masochist - she had to know that the majority of the responses were going to be “because you’re not!”

I wonder who the chosen for this year’s World Pride were?

[quote] they’ll just keep trying to persuade us to accept being called a slur.

With all due respect R274, I don’t think that there is often much or any persuading going on. I’ve said that I do not want to have the term “cis” applied to me. The responses were blank stares and indifference— as if I was an alien from another galaxy and had just spoken gibberish.

Strangio WANTS people to attack her so she can be the victim and the most marginalized of all the marginalized.

The surname ‘Strangio’ is just so apt! 😂

Sounds like a Marvel villain^.

Ahaha, R280. I don’t know much from Marvel, but I’m sure we could create a new series based on this! Actual Gay Man vs Strangio!

R271, B are a major reason why LG are in this mess with T in the first place. Some of the biggest supporters of T are the Bs, and vice versa.

Why is this always overlooked? L and G have been under assault from B for a very long time and they’ve been leeching off LG for far too long.

R246, One false identity doesn’t trump another false identity regardless of how much surgery or not they’ve had between them. Weird take.

R239, Trans already conflated intersex with their identity (and the damage was done) long before the non-binary trend began. Blaming Sam Smith for any of this is just lazy. He’s not the cause, he’s the symptom.

[quote] Then every event was full of corporate sponsorship

Yes, R270. Employees of these corporations were paid to attend these expensive "Pride" events.

They outnumbered the genuine gays.

R265, R267

I looked at my picture of the warning sign at the beginning of the Bridge 'march'.

There was the declaration "Keep your shirt on! Anyone not wearing a top of some sort may be asked to put one on."

[quote]They’re not listening, [R273]. We can tell them until we’re blue in the face that we don’t want to be called queer nor cis & they’ll just keep trying to persuade us to accept being called a slur.

All tactics of "How to deal with bullies" apply. And do like Liz Warren: "Nevertheless, she persisted."

[quote]Non-binary is included under the umbrella of trans because it refers to someone who transitions from one gender identity (a binary male/female one assigned at birth) to another (a non-binary one).

In the span of time R232 typed this drivel, Demi Lovato did another quick round of re-de-re-de-transitioning.

In my entire 40 year life, I've never heard a lesbian or bisexual or woman in general be called Queer by straight people, the way they have used it to slur gay or bisexual men

Never ever

It's ludicrous that so many young women have adapted that term, when they don't face almost none of the hatred in society that gay/bisexual men do, it's almost like "What about me, I'm a victim too, I'm QUEEER!'

And then the kicker, in 10 years they're partnered up with a straight guy who HATES gay men

You can't make this shit up, it's almost like they're making a mockery over the shit gay/bisexual MEN face

I'm queer and I'm used to it.

Any person with brains functioning would stop to use 'Queer' to label themselves or someone.

Queer = Queer Theory = If you know the history behind of the 'Queer theory' you should not include this word in your vocabulary..

[quote] I looked at my picture of the warning sign at the beginning of the Bridge 'march'.

[quote]There was the declaration "Keep your shirt on! Anyone not wearing a top of some sort may be asked to put one on."

Huh? Has whoever put that sign up never been to a parade before? Some boys are in the gym and restricting their diets for 6 months prior, morning to night, specifically so they can go shirtless at the events. It’s always been like that.

What on earth was the rationale for that sign? I don’t get it.

^plus, there are men who walk around outdoors in Sydney, generally, without shirts on. Are they asked to put them on too?

[quote] What on earth was the rationale for that sign?

The rationale was that this was a million dollar event which claimed to bring 600 million in tourist dollars to the city.

It was massively expensive event and shut down the Sydney Harbour Bridge which is the most important transport connection between the northern and southern suburbs.

There were thousands of staff (I assume heterosexual) who liked the theoretical idea of "inclusivity" but didn't want to see half-nude men expressing their sexuality.

Is being merely shirtless ‘expressing sexuality’? I can see uptight people being like that, and sadly you do not these people who love to signal how cool they are with things while being freaked out by the reality.

But it all seems so weird to me.

^you do SEE, not ‘not’, ugh!

If the men remove their shirts then the transmen also remove their shirts (because they’re better men than men apparently) and no-one has the money to pay for the amount of therapy required after that horror show.

I was curious, so went to the event page, and yep - it was a condition of entry, but no explanation as to why!

“Keep your shirt on! Anyone not wearing a top of some sort may be asked to put one on.”

Same as the sign spotted above. Ma perché?

To be fair white gay men over 60 tend to get outraged/offended by, well, everything.

[quote] Ma perché?

Because the corporations want happy rainbow colors and non-threatening words like 'inclusive' and 'community'. They don't want sexy men sodomising each other.

So why don't we just go completely 19th century old-school and go with "invert"?

R299 Exactly. They want the gay without the homosexuality, hence how “queer” has taken over everything. It’s no organic change of language usage, it’s planned and approved at a corporate level.

I agree this is not grassroots. We don’t have this kind of power!

The homophobes want

1. “homosexual” as a slur &

2. “queer” to be acceptable.

I’m baffled how liberals do not see the elephant in the room. And get so mad at us for pointing it out!!

Plus "invert" will give outraged eldertrolls a chance to relive their school years.

[quote]They don't want sexy men sodomising each other.

I would say that a person who views shirtless men and immediately sees them as butt fucking has… issues, haha!

But yeah, the ‘we don’t want this to be controversial’ attitude is disappointing. There are people out there who find gayness controversial just as is, so where die that leave us?

^does*

[quote] we don’t want this to be controversial

They don't want controversy. They want Pink Dollars.

R291 r292 r293, it seems like gay men are too homosexual for the queer corporate diversity crowd! A couple of bare chests and some butt cleveage reminds everyone of sodomy…..rather some lass with a pink bob hairdo and a non specific sexual identity be the face of queer culture. So proud…..

[qupte] It's ludicrous that so many young women have adapted that term, when they don't face almost none of the hatred in society that gay/bisexual men do, it's almost like "What about me, I'm a victim too, I'm QUEEER!' And then the kicker, in 10 years they're partnered up with a straight guy...

You just described my partners niece. She's queer, Queer, QUEER! Married 3 times to 3 different men. She had a butch girlfriend for a hot 5 minutes but of course it didn't last long, conveniently location near the gayborhood and a way to move out of her home town. And would never have married her. But she's QUEER! I asked her what that meant to her one day and she side that means she could sleep with whoever she wanted men or woman while in a relationship. So then I said can you husband sleep with any woman or men he wants? You have an open relationship then? She replied, "oh no, I dont really think of it that way."

hershey's chocolate bar

RightWingLounge

No, HardLeftWingLounge

Or just HardLeftLounge.

BubbleLounge.

Sensible people know to avoid the other bubbles' threads.

Some inarticulate Bubblers don't bother debating so they merely FF those who disagree with their attitudes.

R300, or perhaps "uranian". It has a nice Jules Verne, retro-Space Age ring to it.

You guys are slipping, the flag has been redesigned again, now with a purple cock ring and golden shower pride.

I wonder if the little bitch who is profiting from the "progress" version whereby he retains the right is going to get his panties in a wad now that there is a new look in town. I certainly hope so.

And no I am not exaggerating, this guy wants to be paid for use of "his work".

[quote] this guy wants to be paid for use of "his work".

That guy is a piece of work.

The tacky 'progress' flag is like that old parody of Apple packaging redesigned by Microsoft.

R315 I love how people are so dumb now that a simple design that was representative of everyone had to be “updated” to be literal.

The flag gets worse with every update!

Nothing wrong with the original pride flag. And it's public domain.

[quote] And it's public domain.

This might be the saving grace here; people will go with the original over the ridiculous abomination.

Stores in my cities often show the progress one, I've noticed, but during World Pride, places like the town hall just fly the original.

My friends watched this documentary, by the way, just this week and texted me to suggest it to me. It does sound like it deals a bit with the 78ers and Rodney Croome, which is a good sign. Anyone here watch it?

TQ is just a money grab.

It’s Bitcoin^.

For the extremely wealthy^.

What does 'cis' mean anyway? Isn't it just a straight person who was born straight? Why not just say 'straight?'

It's no longer an issue of homosexuality. It's about gender. 24/7.

R328 We are truly in some topsy-turvy timeline. Who really believes the shit being peddled by that swimwear brand? Anyone? A man in bikini bottoms is still a man and that’s perfectly okay but to pretend otherwise is simply insane. Just how did it get to this point?

[quote]Just how did it get to this point?

Meth.

“Cis” is not a synonym of “straight”, R327. It really just means “not trans”.

When “cis” started entering the general discourse, several friends were also under the mistaken impression that it meant “straight”, and they were shocked when I had to correct them.

Side note, why are non-binaries [italic]always[/italic] so unattractive? See the ‘activist’ at R328.

Cis means the gender you were born as. Nothing to do with straight or gay.

My question is why do I suddenly have to describe my gender to someone? If you are Trans, that's fine, but now you are actually forcing a label onto other people, the very thing we are trying to break free of.

Exactly, r332.

What if I’m gender dysphoric & providing pronouns triggers suicidal thoughts?

Well…r332. I think cis means you align with your gender stereotype. Homosexuality goes against the stereotype. I don’t think gays are cis. But it’s all made up & the rules change constantly.

To be fair, when "cis" and "gay" are both used in the same sentence, it's usually in a disparaging way - e.g. "cis gays are the WORST!" or "cis gays need to do this and this and this to show solidarity!"

Actually, I think they simply mean “gays are the worst”^.

[quote]Side note, why are non-binaries always so unattractive?

I hate to be cruel, but I have noticed this too. I think these 'identities' they create are ways to be 'special' and also work as an excuse for them not getting laid by the hot people they want to.

[quote]Actually, I think they simply mean “gays are the worst”

There's a lot of this now, and it's really shitty - especially as these people have used OUR rights organisation to do this.

The thing I can't get my head around with these terms is just a personal thing to me, I guess. As a young boy who had "boy interests" AND "girl interests", who was told so many times: "That's for girls", or sneered at for doing "girly things", it was so important to me to show that I am a boy and then a man, regardless of what my hobbies or interests are. I do feel that if I were a kid today I might have people assuming I was a girl in a boy's body, and I think that's damaging to young gay kids, and homophobic in its idea that gay men really are just women.

I hope I'm making sense. It has to be said, because it's DL, that I have zero problem with trans people though. My only issues around this are with the changing of history/facts/definitions and the weird activists taking over our community.

R337 I think the same thing. If I was a young gay boy today and not in the 80’s I could see I could have fallen down the non binary trans hole. I swore blind I would only be a bottom and felt that was permanent. I was very pretty for a boy and straight guys always tried to hook up with me, used to piss me off… i wanted a gay man. Now I’m a total vers and love topping, but it took time for me to grow into it. The older I got the more masculine I became and the pretty thing wore off.

A lot of my gay friends in the 80’s really wanted to be famous in some way, acting or singing, but most weren’t conventionally good looking. After their attempts at legitimate fame failed they became drag queens. Gave them attention from men who wouldn’t look at them otherwise. Didn’t make them happy though. I mean there is a reason so few naturally hot gay men are on drag race. Today they would have become trans. The gay community has always been cruel about appearance, the band of who is hot quite narrow. Still the same today, or even worse. Being non binary gives them an identity when they’d otherwise be what used to be called ‘wall flowers’. A platform to gather and make friends, feel empowered. I totally understand it in a way, I just wish they weren’t such downers.

R335 When gender ideologues talk among themselves they call us "cissies".

They try to tell us that "cis" isn't a slur. But that's a lie.

[quote]I just wish they weren’t such downers.

They're so po-faced about [italic]everything[/italic]. What a way to live.

R340. Some of that is generational. Gen Z people are, as far as I can tell, almost completely humorless in public, although I'm sure they yuk it up plenty in private. They are so hemmed in by fears of offending people or their own sense of moral self-righteousness that they really can't laugh at much.

R341, I think that is perfectly put. I do also think that fear is spreading to other generations too.