No argument I have encountered is quite as pointless and virulent as the argument about who gets to count as queer. The most virulent subform of this argument is, of course, whether asexuals count as queer. Seriously, fun game: go on a relatively popular feminist/queer forum, ask whether asexuals are queer, watch everyone scream at each other, eat popcorn.
I really do not have a stake in this argument at all, since as far as I can tell the question of whether asexuals are queer makes absolutely no difference to anything in the actual world. Besides, a lot of people seem to have this idea that there is an Objective Real Definition of Queer and if we argue about it enough we will, through rational argument, discover the Platonic Form of Queer. That’s not how words work though. Words just mean what everyone agrees they mean.
Therefore, I have decided to list out every definition of queer that I have heard, with rationale, in the hopes that everyone will agree that they are all equally valid definitions that mark categories which actually exist and we can just pick the one that’s most suitable for whatever conversation we’re in.
Reclaimed Slur: This definition suggests that, since “queer” is a reclaimed slur, it should only be used in a badass “your insults cannot hurt me, I accept who I am” way. The problem with this is that people who use this argument very rarely carry it to its logical conclusion. “Queer,” as a slur, is primarily used against men who have sex with men and trans people who were male assigned at birth. Male crossdressers have more right to reclaim “queer” than I do.
LGBT: This definition says that “queer” refers to lesbians, gay people, bi people, and trans people. Like, maybe you want another word because you’ve been using the word LGBT too much? That can be a thing. “Queer”, in this definition, reflects the shared history of LGBT people and the fact that the oppressions they face (homophobia, transphobia, biphobia) are intimately linked. (Ace hate, on the other hand, is to the best of my knowledge more more closely related to rape culture and compulsory sexuality than to homophobia or transphobia.) This is the definition that most of the people who are on the “no, asexuals cannot say they’re queer” side use.
LGBT and also asexuals and aromantics: This definition says that since asexuals are also a minority sexual orientation, it makes sense to classify them in the same group as LGB people (the other three minority sexual orientations). Therefore, queer means people with a minority gender history or sexual orientation. (Some people include aromantics, who don’t experience romantic attraction to people, under the queer umbrella as well.)
A broader version of LGBT (plus possibly asexuals): This is the definition I like! There are lots of fuzzy edges around LGBT. Straight men who sometimes sleep with guys when they’re drunk. Women who fall in romantic love with people of all genders but only want to have sex with men. People who thought they were trans but ended up detransitioning. The fuzzy edges are in a very different position from those of us who are actually LGBT; however, it’s also important to acknowledge the ways in which we have similar lived experiences. Of course, this definition comes in asexual/aromantic and asexual/aromantic-free versions. (The fuzzy edges of asexuality are demisexuals and gray-asexuals.)
Gender and sexual minority: Everyone who has a minority gender or sexuality! This is really broad, because it includes not just asexuals, aromantics, and the fuzzy edges around LGBT, but kinky people, poly people, butch women, femme men, and basically anyone who takes at least a sentence to explain their gender or sexual orientation. This category can be justified because of the massive overlap between those groups, and because all these groups face people who think that their sexuality or gender is, for some reason, something other people are allowed to have opinions about.
People who are gender-revolutionary and question the gender binary: The queer writer Kate Bornstein has been known to define sex-positive trans-supportive straight people as “queer heterosexuals” and talk about how everyone who admits that their gender is in some way transgressive or ambiguous (as is everyone’s) is queer. I suppose it is indeed nice to have a word for that.
The subgroup of any of the above definitions that views their sexuality as political. Basically, the Kate Bornstein definition of queer, except limited to LGBT people, or LGBT people plus asexuals and aromantics, or gender and sexual minorities, or whatever. Queers are people who view their genders and sexualities as weapons against the cisheteropatriarchy and who probably write a lot of really terrible poetry about the matter. (By this definition, I’m not queer!)
“and because all these groups”
…?
Fun fact: the current haute debate in acedom is whether or not aseuxality is an objective orientation and that one’s membership thereof must be approved by way of application and committee, or whether it’s just an identity that anyone can use as they personally see fit because policing identities is stupid. I dunno, that seems to be the kind of debate lots of queer communities have so I’d say that makes them queer more than anything else about actually being ace.
(For the I’m in the camp that says “being asexual and aromantic is queer -sometimes-”. Even if only because not every ace would self identify as queer.)
God I hate it when I’ve run out of things to do on the computer other than wait for blog posts to be written so I can comment on them but I can’t do anything else because sick. Keep ‘em coming, Ozy.
I feel like queer-policing, like trans-policing, is fundamentally hetero/cis-normative–it suggests that if you don’t “qualify” as queer through meeting some standard, then you default to straight/cis.
So, y’know, fuck that.
(I do get a little tetchy about straight/cis people identifying as queer because they’re kinky or they’re “allies” or whatever, but honestly outside of Tumblr I haven’t seen a lot of people do that.)
Ugh. Easy answer to the question of whether a person is queer: do they answer “yes” when asked “do you identify as queer?”
Some asexual people identify as queer, I’m sure, and I’m just as sure that others don’t. Homoromantic asexuals may be more likely to identify with the term than heteroromantic ones, but I’ll respect any identity that they express to me. Period.
I mean, yes and no. It does bother me when cis/straight people identify as queer. Maybe that’s identity-policing of me, but I think there has to be a certain point at which a line gets drawn — I would feel similarly uncomfortable, as I think many people would, of a man who is only attracted to women sexually and romantically identifying as gay.
There are plenty of cis/straight cross-dressing people who have pretty strong rights to “queer,” at least if we take the “this is used as a slur and a violent threat against you” classification.
Non-standard gender presentation isn’t something that gets talked about a lot in activist circles, but it’s still totally a thing.
Fair enough. That point is quite valid.
“Everyone who has a minority gender”
So…uhh…wouldn’t that make males queer? Since males are approximately 49% of the American population.
Thanks for running through these definitions.
The only one I had ever heard was the one referring to identifying in any “non-standard” place on the gender spectrum.
Here in Portland though that one involving politics is very popular. I heard people talking about “queer” as a political entity and had absolutely no clue how these people could change their gender identities on a political whim. Makes more sense now :-p.
Are there blogs or article anyone here would suggest where I could go to learn more about the political definition?
as near as i can tell, as a cis man, queer can include everything but cis men. this is kind of an annoyance to me, as it’s my preferred identification.
Note: I think about gender and sexuality a LOT, but I am also very much a Straight White Male.
I feel kind of insulted at the suggestion that I could/should be a queer heterosexual or that my gender/sexual orientation could be ambiguous a la Kate Bornstein even though I am sex-positive and onboard with the whole trans thing. I feel like she is making a claim on me. I agree on many ‘gender-revolutionary’ ideas, but I dislike revolutionary attitudes and in specific get angry at people telling me that I personally am or should be revolutionary. My *own, personal* gender is explicitly anti-ambiguous and anti-transgressive even if it does end up transgressing some fairly common social norms.
I’ve always been confused by people who think that their orientations are weapons.
PsyConomics: Kate Bornstein’s work is very good, very human and empathetic; I’ve heard good things about That’s Revolting: Queer Strategies For Resisting Assimilation, but haven’t read it myself. I have to admit a certain aesthetic distaste for a lot of radical queer stuff, so if someone who knows more could rec something that would be fabulous.
SC: I’m pretty sure cis men who are attracted to men are queer by every current definition.
SC- maybe try reading a bit then?
What if they answer “what exactly do you mean by ‘queer’?”
Thank you for this post, Ozy!
When pressed, I generally describe myself as “somewhat bisexual.” Mainly because I’m not sure how else to describe my personal stance on this: “bisexual, hetero-romantic?” I like the idea of having sex with other women and find women (cis and trans) of several different body types sexy, but as my dating history shows, I’m iffy about having actual romantic relationships with women. I’m not sure if this is due to fear of being outed, or if I just don’t want to date women–homophobia was so deeply integrated into my upbringing that it’s very hard to figure out how much is preference and how much is leftover fear! It took until I was 21 to realize that I was attracted to women at all.
Krause: “I’ve always been confused by people who think that their orientations are weapons.” You and me both. “DIE CIS SCUM!” has become a bit of a joke on a certain forum I go to, because of all the crazies who basically insist that because they are in an oppressed minority, this somehow makes them better than other people. But then, Tumblr Social Justice is different from real social-justice activism.
Army1987: Then you’ve reached an impasse, and must wait for another piece that you can capture diagonally before either of you can move forward. Or was that chess pawns?
Fifteen years ago, in my world, the word “queer” was used semi-flexibly by the LBGT(etc) community as a way to avoid the more culturally negative placed-upon-them term “gay”. “Queer” was, funny enough in my liberal high school, a touch of the “reclaimed”, but mostly just a word that wasn’t “gay”.
At this point, with the immense success of the umbrella-LBGT movement of the last few decades, I really only hear it employed as an apolitical, catch-all term to describe any sort of “non-traditional” gender-role/presentation/affinity/relationship/whatever.
“People who are gender-revolutionary and question the gender binary” seems the best of the above, for me personally, but without the political aspect. Because not all queer people are political (which is a sort of stereotype that can be frustrating, sometimes, when people assume that my non-traditional-gender-whatever means I’m a raging, political meanie– another problem entirely).
You can have some similar fun if you get poly people going about whether poly-ness is itself queer. (My own view — while some people’s poly-ness may be wrapped up in their queerness and vice-versa, being poly does not by itself make a heterosexual person count as queer.)
Encouraging people to identify as “queer heterosexuals” strikes me as not just inaccurate but irresponsible — for the damage they can do to queer people through appropriation, cookie-seeking, and privilege-ignoring when armed with that label, and the damage to themselves when adherents of other (more popular) definitions of “queer” give them flak. Anyway, we already have words like “ally” and “queer rights advocate” to describe people’s ideology (as opposed to their personal orientation/practice).
ozy: you’d think? but events billed as “queer” are usually coded as women/trans/nonbinary. i’ve seen many an okcupid profile as well in which people are like “I like queers” and then a long list of the many flavors of queer, followed by the “if you’re a cis man, get lost.”
that last may be an annoyance, but it’s a pretty minor one; while okcupid has many people whose flavor of queer doesn’t include me, it has at least as many who do include me under the umbrella. it’s silly to feel much more than temporarily irked.
it’s more the sense that being a cis man requires one to be Straight Or Gay/the sense that queerness is defined as everything but being me. how many dicks, silicone and flesh, do i gotta suck?
For me personally, it doesn’t feel right to use the word “queer”, although I’m not quite sure myself entirely why.
So, being a bisexual I’m part of the HBT community. And possibly I’m a transperson too? I don’t know, really. If God came down and presented me with the choice of having any kind of body I’d like and being referred to by any pronoun I’d like by everyone, and if there were no HBT prejudice in the world either so life as married to a man wouldn’t be more or less difficult depending on my choice – I probably wouldn’t go with uterus, boobs and “she”. I’d definitely be bigger with more muscle and flat chest, and maybe I’d be a “zie”, or maybe I’d go the entire way and be a man? But here in the real world, I’m perfectly OKAY with having the body I have and being referred to as “she” and “woman”. So I say I’m a cis-woman if the subject comes up, because of this basic “okayness” I feel about the whole thing.
But it would feel really wrong to call myself “queer”. I THINK it’s because the word “queer”, to me personally, conjures up the image of someone who has to fight prejudices all the time. And I don’t, really. I’m a woman in a monogamous marriage with a man. I’m totally privileged when it comes to sex and gender. Although I would still count as queer on some definitions.
How about a cis hetero man who found out that his formerly self-identified as female partner is for sure gender non-binary, has certain gender dysphoria issues (disassociation related to one’s breasts) and questioning if zir/they is ftm? If I am, and you bet I am, fully accepting of my partner’s established and yet developing new(?) gender and sex identity wherever it might lead, so who the hell does it make me now? We call each other sort of jokingly gay men, disguised as hetero couple. I’m seen in society as a man in a monogamous marriage with a woman. I’m totally privileged when it comes to sex and gender. Although the fuck we would quit those privileges if it were safe for my partner to be open for who zir is in our country. I formerly identified as IQTBLG hetero ally, though it seems I am now personally concerned but I think I would still identify the same in order not to compromise my partner’s safety. I am really insulted by this framing which excludes cissex-hetero as somehow ‘suspect’ allies or ‘suspect gender-queers’ in case they choose to identify like that. I think one of criteria of gender identity disorder goes for gender-queer: (wiki quote) ‘Long-standing disquiet about a sense of incongruity in the gender-assigned role of that sex’ is very real to hetero and cis sex-men. Why the fuck is it ‘feminist’ to ignore these experiences? It is one fight against the fucking cis-white-hetero-monogamousnormative-patriarchy, so there should be a fucking name that includes all TEH PEOPLZ agains it. I am ok with another name for that, I don’t want to steal any groups established identity. So is it ok to use queer as an umbrella term or we as hetero cis-sex males gender non-conforming in different ways than sex with other men need another term to identify? It is fine if we do. But I am not quiet clear yet if there is no historical equivalent of identity like that. ‘Masculinism’ is fine or is it flawed? After all the active years of belonging in local feminist circles I still don’t know if I have the right to qualify as feminist or do I have to refer to myself as pro-feminist, ‘women ally’, feminism friendly masculinist or whatever. And it sucks.
Cliff Pervocracy wrote: (I do get a little tetchy about straight/cis people identifying as queer because they’re kinky or they’re “allies” or whatever, but honestly outside of Tumblr I haven’t seen a lot of people do that.) – so how do I identify for you not to get etchy or does it actually concern anyone but you considering this etchiness? Not asking as troll but as a hetero-cis-sex, gender-queer really concerned about being understood and accepted. Especially by you as there are many things about feminism and rape culture and BDSM and many more I learned first by reading your blog.
thank you for all patient enough to read all this mess.
P.S. I now think that identifying as hetero is no more valid for me anymore. In feminist, queer, IQTBLG circles I now identify as pan-sexual, because hetero means I cannot be attracted to my now non-binary partner if I am indeed hetero. Hetero identity is now just for disguise in a highly IQTBLG intolerant country I live with my partner. I guess pan-sexual, cis-sex, gender-queer is ok for me right now as self identity. If I answered already to my own question, anyway thanks for thought provoking post(s), Ozy, and a chance to sort my still quite new identity considering all the appropriate context.
anon: I tend to be fond of the “heterosexuals like genders different from their own, homosexuals like genders the same as their own, bisexuals like both” way of including nonbinary people in the ordinary model of orientation. (Although it does have the failure mode of turning lesbians who want to date me into bisexuals. C’est la vie.)
I hate the political framing where you’re either queer or one of those mean, opressing, judgemental people who try to police others to live exactly as teh Official Script says. I am cis, hetero, I have loads of priviledges, and I am against the long list of opressions those people are against. But telling me that this means that I must be fluid, or do my heterosexual sex “more queerly” (wtf? in bed, I want freedom and pleasure, not brownie ponts for number of norms crossed). One political-queer guy (he wears the label proudly because he’s poly) once kept asking me again and again fi I am for real sure that I am hetero, have I tried enough, have I worked enough on the question, am I surely sure? Well, fuck you, dude, you don’t get to question other people’s stated identities, whatever they are.
If the political-queers would keep their queer label separate for the kind of queer label which describes actually opressed folks, I could be ok with that. But in practice it does tend to mean “I am better because of who I fuck”.
ah, and ps: the one thing I hate more thant this shit is the term “political lesbian”. You fuck who you fuck and you believe in what you believe, but, as it was written in a SMBC strip, teh moment to leave a movement is whne it starts limiting your freedom to chose partners.
And if the actual, tehcnical definition of the term was different, I don’t care, because if they would have wanted to avoid being misunderstood, they could have made an effort. and tehy have chosen not to.
I think that, also, there’s a huge chasm between “a queer” (noun) and “queer” (adj.). I know that if someone called me “a queer” I’d be a little squicked out and uncomfortable because of all the “fuckin’ queer!” x-phobia attached to it, whereas I routinely describe myself as “queer” in a “it’s not who I am it’s what I do”, sort of way.
@sfdgsdf
> I hate the political framing where you’re either queer or one of those mean, oppressing, judgmental people who try to police others to live exactly as teh Official Script says.
I think that’s part of the problem with “a queer” (noun), where it becomes an embodiment of a person instead of a descriptor of activity/thought. One IS queer, and as such it gets loaded with all sorts of baggage as it gets discussed and defined and shaped into something “acceptable”.
I know cis-hetero masculine men who do things that are “queer”, and it feels more like a buffet than a four-course meal: i.e. “last night my girlfriend pegged me and it was beautifully queer, hot sex. Tonight I’m going to tie her up and make her beg for my touch”.
Political activity isn’t inherent, really, when it comes to identity and orientation. And in a lot of ways I find, personally, that “political” and “queer” are at odds with each other. “Queer” is a non-binary, expansive and freeing part of an individual’s identity, whereas political activity is inherently binary (right/wrong), limiting (action must be within an acceptable political spectrum of ideas) and confrontational. In a lot of ways, I find any idea of the political wrapped up in “queer” identity to be a difficult place to exist at because they’re so opposed in their approaches to the world. That’s where you get endless arguments and conversations about what’s “queer” or if someone is “queer enough”.
In the end, isn’t it more worthwhile to have a world full of queerness instead of a continual process of antagonistic push-and-pull that, in effect, can very quickly turn people away from employing “queer” as a personal label/identity? I say we need more cis-hetero-white-dudes to see that “queerness” is a pretty liberating and wonderful thing, instead of continually telling them they’re not allowed in the queer club?
@sfdgsdf: Okay, feeling oppressed or offended that being openly queer usually involves being loud about who you have sex with, how often, and how you had sex with them, and it’s no coincidence. For a really, really, really long time it was kind of illegal for them to do what they’re doing, do who they’re doing, and basically exist. So getting upset that they’re super stoked about being able to be who they are and have all the sex they want makes you look like a jerk. “Stop making the cisheteros feel bad” doesn’t really fly.
But that’s not to say that there aren’t problems with the “not X enough” monster that likes to rear its ugly head in queer circles (and ethnic circles, and so on and so forth). Because there are. And my androphile asexuality would likely get my queer membership revoked in lots of places. Which is kind of why I don’t give a shit about impressing people.
If you’re talking about things like “heterophobia” and “cisphobia”, then that’s just something you’re going to have to get over. Not every queer thinks in terms of the dichotomy you’ve outlined (in fact I’d wager that most don’t in the least), and when they do, spoiler: they’re not actually talking about you. They’re talking about the social construct of heterosexuality and cissexuality and how those things pretty much are oppressive and evil and make their lives a shitty living hell.
I like girls who look like boys and boys who look like girls. Can I be queer now?
Wow, Danni, the part where you described the conflict between politics and queerness was beautiful. The situation is paradoxal, and politics is important in it’s place. but what you said was just so nice.
I understand that if people are pressed, they press back, and asking them to calculate the force used exactly so they make sure to never ever hurt someone too much wouldn’t be fair. And I have no problems with queer circles who have this identity I don’t have, and are proud of it, and loud, and visible – I’m trying to be as supportive as it is possible without stealing too much space. What I was talking about is that I’d like if the groups of people who share the political idea that all orientations etc are great and support groups for people who are suffering because of the gender- and sexuality-related opressions were treated more like two different things. Like, two overlapping Wenn-diagrams, because there are apolitical orientationally-queers and political non-queers. And the politicals treating non-queer-ness as less elightened is not an useful strategy.
I dislike the definition <> – “Transgressing is good, being boring old vanilla is bad” is an idea I disagree with, just like I disagree with the mainstream idea that transgressing the limits of “normality” is bad. I am one of the “sex-positive trans-supportive straight people”. This definition doesn’t know if it wants to include me or not, but it makes clear that outside of it is only the land of intolerant asshats.
and the sad part is that this confusion in definition happens AFTER Ozy has already cut the meaning of the word queer into a lot of pieces.
I will never be able to use the word. In my day, it was always the prelude to somebody getting beaten up.
I can’t even make my mouth form the word.
I’m a woman with a complicated gender presentation, I have a girlfriend who calls me “Daddy,” and I’m kinky — but I still don’t identify as queer. I don’t because I’m also legally married to a man. I have two kids and an actual white picket fence in front of my house. I feel like I shouldn’t really claim “queer” when a truck backs up to my driveway and drops a palletload of heterosexual privilege twice a month whether I want it or not.
So these days I identify as bisexual.
>Straight men who sometimes sleep with guys when they’re drunk
So… rape victims?
We Are Not Your Afterthought: responding to LGBT Soup | Consider the Tea Cosy
I identify as bisexual, but then last year a queer friend of mine said I can qualify as queer. I feel weird calling myself that though, so I don’t. :-/