Are you "gay"? Are you "queer"? What the hell are you?!

[TonyDown]

10 hours ago, José Soplanucas said:

Would you say you are gay AND queer? Honest question, no snark here.

Yes! But that sort of goes without saying based on my post, right?

[TonyDown]

10 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

It's sad after so many years of bigotry to start calling gay people "strange" or "weird' now that we've demonstrated its perfectly normal. If you want to call a hairy dude in a pair of heels and a frock, queer...then I could get on board. That's always gonna be weird. But there are plenty of gay and bisexual peope who lead perfectly normal lives. So why refer to them under an umbrella of weirdness ?

Good point.  It's perfectly fine to be gay. 

Is it necessary to chime in with "by the way, I'm gay" or "I'm queer" at every gathering?

Perhaps when announcing it to strangers or extremely casual acquaintances, would it be weird.

Your choice though. You do you.

 

Edited November 4, 2023 by TonyDown

[+ José Soplanucas]

[+ José Soplanucas]

2 hours ago, TonyDown said:

Yes! But that sort of goes without saying based on my post, right?

Absolutely yes.

You are new in these forums and I had not noticed you before. My apologies, I had to double check. You are probably learning that not everyone here follows the rules of logics. 

[+ nycman]

[mike carey]

5 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

"Queer" means freak.

It always has. It always will.

You can chose to be Humpty Dumpty and say that it means what you chose it to mean — neither more nor less, but that doesn't make it so. A brief perusal of a dictionary will reveal that the basic meanings of the word queer are odd, strange, weird, eccentric or unconventional All of these connote difference from the norm, but at a far less contemptuous register than freak. A case can of course be made that freak is an extension of its meaning, but not that it is the only or original meaning.

Most words gain and lose meanings over time and some end up meaning something completely different. Queer still carries the meanings it had when it entered English usage but it has been used about homosexuality for over a century (and in doing so retains the basic idea of difference from the norm).

The history of the word 'queer', News, La Trobe University

WWW.LATROBE.EDU.AU

---

Reviled, reclaimed and respected: the history of the word ‘queer’

 

[pubic_assistance]

7 hours ago, mike carey said:

You can chose to be Humpty Dumpty and say that it means what you chose it to mean — neither more nor less, but that doesn't make it so.

Willful ignorance of the  perjorative street-slang use of "Queer" doesn't make it different from what we all know about how it's used.

Same way "gay" is often used by millennials to mean "fucked-up". You're not going to find that street-slang in Webster's. Doesn't make it not exist as a commonly used and broadly understood use of the word.

Calling someone "Queer".has always meant they are a freak. Just because some marginalized gays decided to "adopt it" doesn't make it mean something different to people who sling it around as an insult.

How sad to allow an insult to define you.

Edited November 4, 2023 by pubic_assistance
spelling

[+ José Soplanucas]

@mike carey, there is no nail

😇