for actual facts queer representation, call danny mahealani.
…so, I started writing this as a tumblr post for a friend who wanted an explanation of what the word, "queer" means. then tumblr decided to be a pain in my ass about posting the thing and started giving me all kinds of, "post cannot be empty" errors because apparently, my post was too long and tumblr objected. Grumps grumps grumps, this makes me feel angry, heavy aggravated sighing, ETC.
@Khai okay, I'm going to try to be brief and to the point about this, but… we'll see how that goes.
so, "queer" has a lot of potential uses, actually. like I'm not even kidding here, there's a thing in academia called queer theory and queer theory really can't decide what the fuck it is because it originated as a way of basically slashing canonical literary texts*, but it's expanded to cover a lot of different topics and discussions, and one of the many discussions going on within queer theory basically just comes down to, "so wait, what the Hell exactly IS queer theory? and what the Hell do we mean when we use the word 'queer'?" and the only unifying, defining trait of this discussion is that no one can agree with anyone about anything.
that being said, there are a few particular uses of the word, "queer" that are the most common ones out there and the ones you should be the most aware of. The biggest, most popular one of these, and the way that "queer" gets used in a lot of fannish discussions (like… talking about queer characters, queer representation, queer headcanons, etc etc.) is just using "queer" as an umbrella term that means, "this person is not cisgender and/or heterosexual."
…which is, in fairness, a debatable definition because there are some people (in particular, straight trans* women) who get included/forced under the queer umbrella not by their own choice, but by bigots who have decided that these women are queer by default because they're trans*, so… some straight trans* women choose to reclaim the word and that's their right to do so, but others don't and assuming that all straight trans* people are by necessity queer is cissexist, which is why I personally prefer to say, "queer and/or trans*" when talking about these things. there's a slight issue there in that it could come off like I'm saying that trans* people can't consider themselves queer if they want to, but… I haven't really found a more effective way of doing things that also isn't hugely cissexist in that it assumes that straight trans* people are queer by default, so… it's not perfect, but it's what I prefer to do because it's a step up from the accidental cissexism.
(and then there are other debates about who does or doesn't get to count as queer under that definition and they mostly end up involving people saying things like, "heteroromantic asexual people are the same thing as straight people who do experience sexual attraction (and very obviously there is no such thing as a heteroromantic asexual trans* person or at least there isn't judging on these discussions since no one ever brings up the possibility that I've seen)" or, "bisexual and pansexual and polysexual people who are in het relationships basically have straight privilege" or, "asexual and demisexual people don't really exist they're just a bunch of slut-shaming prudes" or otherwise being erasing and elitist and gross and like… no? no no no? nyet? nein? non? I could say it in Spanish if that gets the point across more clearly how about NO.
like, the whole debate is disgusting to me because… no. just no. fifty thousand shade of NO. asexual, demisexual, bi, pan, and polysexual people ARE NOT CISHET, even heteroromantic asexual people ARE NOT CISHET as such BECAUSE THEY ARE ASEXUAL NOT HETEROSEXUAL. do they necessarily have the same experiences of queer-related oppression as monosexual gay dudes and lesbians? of course not, but that doesn't mean that they're not queer and just… augh, monosexims and consexism [asexual spectrum erasure, presumption that "sexual" is the default and the norm and that any asexual people are clearly somehow "sick" or "deficient," the sort of shit that leads to things like people making, "lol what are you a bacterium" jokes when people try to come out as ace and/or saying things like, "god you're so homophobic for insisting that asexual people exist and that their asexuality is their orientation in the same way that hetero, homo, or bisexuality is someone else's orientation, as opposed to it being like a kink or a fetish"… I'm not even remotely kidding about either of these things, like the former is so common as to be cliche at this point and the latter is actually a thing that someone said to me once]… and yeah, uh. I've gotten off-track here a bit. I just have a lot of feelings and like 95% of them are angry right now from thinking about this.)
the next most common way of using the word, "queer" is the way that some people use it as an identity in and of itself, usually because they feel like other identities don't really do it for them or don't really include them or something similar for one reason or another. and… there are three major strains here that I've observed: 1. there are some people who use "queer" as a shorthand way of saying that they're not cishet, but also identify as something else; 2. there are some people who use "queer" as a way of describing their sexual orientation or (somewhat less frequently though not entirely unheard of) their gender identity for the reasons I laid out earlier, they don't feel like other identities really capture who they are and they don't identify with the other words available to them, but they know that they aren't cishet, so they use "queer";
and 3. there are some people who may or may not identify as anything under the queer umbrella in particular (so like… gay, lesbian, trans*, non-binary, bisexual, asexual, or anything else), but regardless of what identity they do or don't feel fits their sexuality and/or gender identity, they very specifically use "queer" as a way of stating a sort of hybrid social and political identity and/or intentionality that arise(s) out of their sexuality and/or gender identity. this use of the word "queer" as an identity also falls under another one of the major uses of the term, which is using "queer" as a way to refer to identities and/or practices that are specifically anti-heteronormative and/or anti-cisnormative (ideally, these practices also challenge white supremacy and classism since class, whiteness and white privilege, and colonialism are so tightly wound up in societal constructions of heteronormativity and cisnormativity but, uh let's just say that in practice this does not often work out so well because a lot of my fellow white queer people are racist homoimperialist douchebags and the fact that they're queer does not make them magically less awful in this regard…
actually, in my experience and based on things I've read, the fact that they're queer makes them a lot worse in this regard because when you try to call them on doing fucked up things, they pull out the good old fashioned, "but I'm queer and that means I can't oppress anyone on any other axis god why are you oppressing me" card [case in point: VG, as far as I know, though apparently there are conflicting reports on whether he's white, Native American, or who even knows what else]
and then there's a trend of excusing sexual racism in monosexual gay male communities with things like, "but it's a part of gay male culture to assume that all black men have enormous dicks and always want to top you into the mattress, and it's a part of gay male culture to assume that all East Asian men are passive effeminate submissive bottoms, and it's a part of gay male culture to assume that all Latino guys are aggressively hypermasculine devoutly Roman Catholic closet cases [and based on what area you live in, they'll probably be assumed to be of one particular heritage even thought this might not be true; like in California, Texas, and Michigan, the default assumption is that all Latino guys are Mexican until proven otherwise, but in New York, the default assumption tends to be that all Latino guys are Puerto Rican until proven otherwise, and in Florida, the assumption tends to be that they're Cuban until proven otherwise because as we all know, all Latino identities and heritages are basically the same thing and thus totally interchangeable], not to mention all of the other racist assumptions that get casually bandied about with regard to gay men of color, GOD WHY ARE YOU UPSET ABOUT US SAYING THE RACIST THING IT'S PART OF GAY CULTURE WEREN'T YOU LISTENING STOP BEING SO HOMOPHOBIC UGH"
…again, VG makes himself a good case in point here because the subject matter differed considerably but… you know all the times he's trotted out, "but statutory rape is part of gay male culture and we don't consider it an abuse of power over an easily influenced minor so neither should you and I had an older boyfriend who was good to me while the boyfriend who was my own age abused me and this means that Sterek is in no way shape or form any kind of abusive and anyone who thinks otherwise is mean nasty homophobe who should shut up"? …yeah, the defense of sexual racism and more general forms of racism in the gay male community is a lot like that, at least in the form and structure of the arguments, because clearly, something being "a part of gay male culture" means that the thing is completely sacrosanct and undeserving of any criticism ever. so yeah, erm. point being that no really, a lot of my fellow white queer people suck and are racist assholes and I sincerely hope that y'all never have to argue with them because most of them are exactly like AW and AD and VG in this regard and they absolutely refuse to change or listen to reason about anything, they are a pizza burn on the roof of the world's mouth).
now, in general, I'm personally okay with the use of, "queer" in this more politicized way, even though I have a lot of issues with the way that it gets actualized because I have a lot of issues with a lot of my fellow white queer people, and I'm okay with it because… I can understand the impulse behind wanting to have a word that explicitly and very intentionally refers not just to identifying as queer in the sense of, "not cis and/or het" but also to identifying as queer in the sense of challenging heteronormativity and cisnormativity.
like, those are the two biggest social structures that all queer people end up chafing against and getting oppressed by, and there are nuances to the specific nature of different people's experiences here (like QPOC [queer people of color] have their experiences additionally impacted by racism, queer women have to deal with misogyny that impacts them in very specific ways because they are women who are queer, disabled queer people have to deal with ableism from within and without the so-called queer community and let me tell you what there is a huge tendency among neurotypical and non-disabled queer people to assume that disabled, mentally ill, and neuroatypical queer people just outright don't exist and I want to stab this tendency in the fucking throat oh my god, trans* people get a ton of shit from within and without the so-called queer community in particular trans* women and even more particularly trans* women of color, bisexual and pansexual and polysexual and asexual people have to deal with monosexism and consexism respectively, again both from within and without the so-called queer community)…
but heteronormativity/heterosexism and cisnormativity/cissexism permeate and impact all of these experiences of oppression and in an ideal world, we could come together and create solidarity among queer people to fight these things effectively. …unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world and a lot of white queer people are assholes, and in particular, a lot of white cis monosexual queer people are assholes and they've made themselves into the dominant face of the queer rights and liberation movement, even though the movement was really started by trans* people and a lot of the major leaders were trans* women of color, and even though these assholes are usually not really seeking liberation so much as they're seeking to assimilate into the white non-disabled cishet mainstream and get a slice of the white cishet privilege cake and they really just want to get power for themselves while telling everyone who doesn't fit into their box of acceptable behaviors to fuck off and go die in a ditch somewhere.
fig 1.: this is how aforementioned assholes make me feel.
…but the problem that some people have raised with the use of the more politicized version of, "queer" is that it is, in itself, a potential form of queer elitism and that it kind of lends itself toward fostering an attitude that's like, "you must behave in these anti-assimilationist, radically un-closeted, anti-heteronormative, anti-cisnormative, etc etc etc. ways or else you're not a good queer person and you're inherently wrong and you don't get to call yourself queer for any reason whatsoever even if no other identities work for you and you don't deserve to feel a sense of queer community or queer belonging or any of that" and like… I'd say that this is reading too much into things and trying to dismiss very valid criticisms of the tendency toward cishomonormativity and cishomoimperialism in mainstream (white cis monosexual) queer so-called communities… BUT:
a. yeah no, in my time, I have seen several Angry Queer In The Political Sense BloggersTM who made basically that exact same argument that I just satirically laid out… only they made it in complete fucking seriousness and using a lot of really manipulative rhetoric where they phrase things just so in a way that makes it impossible for you to disagree with them without either accidentally saying something that's oppressive in an -ist or -phobic kind of way, or accidentally saying something that's oppressive in a tone policing kind of way (or that could be misconstrued as tone policing even though I'm of the mind that it'd be less tone policing and more going, "uhm but the way you have presented these facts and arguments is manipulative as fuck and kind of disingenuous and you should really stop brow-beating people into agreeing with you like that");
and b. more importantly? not only does that argument exist and have a not insignificant number of people who stand behind it, but there are also more tacit versions of it that exist in the mainstream queer so-called community (like the exhortation for queer people everywhere to come out on International Coming Out Day or the belief that if you aren't out in every single public sphere that you are a member of, then you don't deserve access to queer spaces or queer community or queer belonging because you're clearly "not queer enough" for that) and like. This sort of thing isn't entirely the fault of the politicized use of the word "queer" but this kind of thinking is a HUGE intersectionality fail in a lot of ways (predominantly ways related to classism and racism, but… the general gist of the fail here is that there are a lot of cases in which it is actively dangerous in some way or another for queer people to be vocally out, and racism and classism are the biggest issues where this line of thinking totally falls apart but that's not to say that other forms of intersectional oppression aren't at work here too)… and yeah, the more political use of "queer" didn't CREATE these problems and it doesn't inherently perpetuate them, but at the same time, the actuality of how the politicized version of "queer" gets used most of the time DOES perpetuate these issues and… that's a very valid concern to bring up, so like. while I'm generally okay with the idea of the politicized use of the word, "queer," I also really understand the numerous objections to it.
…and the last major use of the word, "queer" that you should be aware of is the most problematic of them, and it's the sense where "queer" means, "anything that is deviant or non-normative be it sexually or gender-wise." and like… okay, so the book for my colloquium on women's and gender studies class has an essay about the term queer (to explain: the entire book is a collection of essays that investigate, complicate, and problematize the way that certain terms are defined and used in women's, gender, sexuality, and feminist studies writings and departments and junk. it's a really good book and the essays in it are for the most part fantastic and so… the essay on the term "queer" is explaining how we use the word in my discipline and investigating various issues with how the term is used)…
so, in this essay, the author says that the problem of the, "anything that is deviant and non-normative" definition of "queer" is that it, "can be… politically incoherent-especially if included in this category are practices like pedophilia alongside nonmarried sexual relationships and an array of unconventional romantic arrangements" (Jennifer Purvis, "Queer," in Rethinking Women's And Gender Studies, ed. Catherine M. Orr, Ann Braithwaite, & Diane Lichtenstein, pg. 192). and, uhm. well. okay, I don't DISagree with that… but I think there's an even bigger problem with this definition of "queer" than, "well, it's politically incoherent."
like… regardless of its use, "queer" in the sense of sexuality or gender identity-related anything originated as a dehumanizing slur. it is now not so commonly used as a slur anymore (though this is largely a regional variation and dependent on a LOT of factors) and it is largely considered to be reclaimed… but the, "anything deviant and non-normative" way of using "queer" is most often being put forth by cishet white people who happen to be polyamorous, or cishet white people who happen to be kinky (the cishet members of the BDSM community are the biggest offenders here but I think that's probably a function of how the BDSM community actually exists whereas there aren't a lot of communities for other kinks, and then the BDSM community is more vocal and generally considered to be more socially acceptable than, say, the feed(er)ism community**), or white cishet people who fetishize cis queer men and women, or white cis male pedophiles. and their argument basically goes, "but my kinks are as inherent to my sexuality as your attraction to people of your same gender and I could get fired from my job for saying that I'm into BDSM at work so that's totally the same thing as being oppressed for your sexuality or gender identity."
and like… no? no, bad, stop? your kinks (or whatever the hell you want to call pedophilia because it sure as fuck isn't a kink in my book, like… kinks can be problematic and kinks can totally deserve criticism, sure, but… there's a pretty huge distinction between things like, "I enjoy it when my partner chokes me" and, "I enjoy reading slave!fic AUs"… and, "I get off on sexualizing and thinking about raping children")… but as I was saying: kinks are not the same thing as a sexual orientation or a gender identity, regardless of how much you need the thing in order to get off. Kinks are sexual practices and… y'know what? Maybe you wouldn't get hypothetically fired from your job for saying that you're into BDSM because of "kink shaming" and "vanilla privilege"; maybe you would get hypothetically fired from your job for doing this thing because there is a time and a place for those kinds of discussions, and there are times and places and contexts where those kinds of discussions are ina-fucking-ppropriate, and MAYBE YOU SHOULD NOT TALK ABOUT YOUR SEX LIFE AT WORK PERIOD BECAUSE IT'S UNPROFESSIONAL UNLESS YOU ARE, LIKE, A SEXUAL COUNSELOR OR EMPLOYED AT THE LOCAL DILDO EMPORIUM OR SOMETHING. THIS SEEMS LIKE BASIC COMMON SENSE TO ME BUT APPARENTLY IT'S NOT??
and like, yes. legitimate kink-shaming does happen sometimes and it's an awful thing when it happens, and yes people in polyamorous relationships often have the validity of their feelings for their partners called into question and often have the nature of their relationships heinously misconstrued and stuff, and I'm not saying that those things don't happen… but I AM saying that calling them part of the "queer" experience is at best a misnomer and at worst a form of appropriation if the kinky or polyamorous people doing the thing are cishet. like, there is actually a cishet white woman writing in queer academia who identifies herself as queer because she likes pegging her cishet boyfriend. and… no. no. no no no. NO. the fact that you like pegging him and the fact that he likes taking it up the ass DOES NOT MAKE EITHER OF YOU STOP BEING CISHET AND YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE SHIT THAT QUEER-AS-IN-NEITHER-CIS-NOR-HET PEOPLE GO THROUGH BECAUSE YOU ARE CISHET AND WOULD NEVER HAVE THE WORD QUEER USED AS A SLUR AGAINST YOU. ALL OF THAT MEANS THAT YOU DO NOT GET TO "RECLAIM" THE WORD QUEER BECAUSE IT'S NOT YOUR WORD TO RECLAIM. WHAT IS SO FUCKING HARD TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT THAT CONCEPT.
…well, apparently a lot is so fucking hard to understand about this concept because in my experience, trying to call people out on doing this thing usually gets you accused of being a "vanilla privilege"-having mean nasty kink-shamer and then you get flamed and dragged through the mud and oh my god I'm so angry about this that I'm literally shaking like. …just don't ever use "queer" in this way, okay? it is not a good way to use the word, it is in fact a very very bad way to use the word because it conflates things that cannot be conflated all willy nilly like that and just. don't do it. please. I am not above begging you guys not to do the thing.
fig. 2: this is what I would like to say to everyone who uses "queer" in the way that I just described.
SO. with all that said: the big, super-important thing to keep in mind about the word, "queer," regardless of how it's being used in any given conversation, is that it's a reclaimed slur. It came into vogue as a way of demeaning LGBTQ* people in I think the late nineteenth century, and then it just got more and more popular during the twentieth century until people started reclaiming it after the Stonewall Riots (so, started in 1969 and then started gaining more traction throughout the seventies and eighties, and it really hit its stride in the nineties, which is also when academia started to use the word "queer" in a reclaimed sense).
so the thing with it being a reclaimed slur is that there are some uses and contexts where it's okay for a cishet person to use the word "queer." like, if someone explicitly identifies as queer and asks you to describe them as queer, then… yes. say, "queer" in that scenario. the use of "queer" in discussions of things like queer representation are somewhat more debated, but the general unspoken consensus there seems to be that it's okay for cishet people to use phrases like, "queer representation" and, "queer characters" because… it's a convenient shorthand and more inclusive than, "LGBTQ*" or, "gay" or, "lesbian" or what have you.
then there's the example of using "queer" as a verb, which… this is also a kind of touchy subject for some people because the use of "queer" as a verb originated in academia and a lot of the time, when academia does the thing, they're not actually talking about queer people or queer representation or anything; they're talking about taking concepts like, "the family" and, "marriage" and questioning and destabilizing the common social constructions and conceptions of and social and cultural baggage attached to these things, which… okay. it usually works okay with the politicized usage of "queer" (though sometimes it goes more in the direction of the, "deviant and non-normative" use of the word)… but it often has very little to do with the lived realities and the experiences of queer people, so it still bothers some folks and strikes them as a kind of appropriation of a reclaimed slur.
but like, on the other hand? the most common use of "queer" as a verb that's gotten outside of the academy is the phrase, "queering the text," which basically means… all the stuff that we do when we come up with queer headcanons or write fic with queer interpretations of the characters. "Queering the text" has a few other uses that I can't recall right now, but the most dominant one just means looking at a text (so, a story, a book, a movie, a TV show, or whatever) where the creators just expect you to believe that all of the characters are cishet because they said so and going, "lol no fuck that I think Scott McCall is genderqueer and pansexual and if you don't like it, you can lick my clit." and… that's generally accepted as an instance where it's totally cool for cishet people to say, "queer" because… it's the easiest and most convenient way of describing what you're doing, and it specifically refers to putting more queer people into media so… yeah. that's generally an okay thing to say.
but, uh. aside from specific examples and trying to generalize from them in an attempt to be more helpful here, a good ground rule for saying, "queer" when you're cishet is just to be sensitive to the fact that there are a LOT of different ways in which the term is used and queer people (meaning those who actually have any kind of right to identify as queer, i.e. people who aren't cishet) have a LOT of different opinions about cishet people saying, "queer" based on its history as a reclaimed slur, so… these are some examples of times when it's generally accepted for cishet people to use the word, but if a queer person ever asks you to stop saying the word around them, then… be respectful and stop. and I know you guys will, because you guys aren't douchebags, but… I've gotten in way too many fights with people about this subject to think that I can just not say the thing, basically? so. this has been a post. it has been an overly long post and I'm sorry for that, but… I wanted to explain the thing as thoroughly as possible? and I had a lot of feelings? and… yeah. and if anyone wants me to like, delete this and post it on my blog with a read more instead, then I would be more than glad to do so, just… let me know and stuff. ♥
*: …I realize that the way I phrased this might lead you to believe that I'm kidding here. I am NOT kidding. like, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is one of the leading minds in queer theory and she wrote this book, first published in 1985, called Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. and in the book, she went through a bunch of texts from English literature and talked about their "homosocial desire" which isn't exactly the same thing as watching a show with your slash goggles on… but it's a really eerily similar sort of concept, only one gets you paid nicely and published and invited places as a guest speaker and given tons of critical accolades, while the other is used on the Internet to completely discredit your opinions about everything ever even though you could be the most ridiculous, canon-distorting, OOC fanon!Sterek shipper in the world and you would still be participating in a practice that can trace its roots back to at LEAST a bunch of stuffy dead ancient Greek dudes debating whether Achilles or Patroclus was the top, or if they were legitimately just friends.
and I say, "at least" here because I choose to believe that there were similar debates about Gilgamesh and Enkidu… but I don't actually know if those debates happened for real or not so the earliest historical example I have of people doing what slash fans do is the debates about whether or not Achilles or Patroclus were having anal penetrative sex, and if they were (which most people thought they were except for like one weirdo who apparently didn't read The Iliad very closely and I don't remember his name right now he shipped Achilles/Briseis even though Briseis was Achilles's prisoner of war… though, in fairness here, the ancient Greeks were even more virulently misogynistic than contemporary Western society and people in contemporary Western society still ship Achilles/Briseis like it's romantic and tragic and beautiful and… no. just no)… so, if Achilles and Patroclus were indeed frickle fracking with each other, then who topped. serious business scholarly debates have been conducted about this subject for literally centuries. this is my culture as a bb academic. this is what I've signed up to do with my life and… not gonna lie, I question the wisdom of this decision at least a few times a week for exactly this reason (among several others but this one comes up a lot).
…also, Kosofsky Sedgwick published another major queer theory text in 1990 called The Epistemology of the Closet, and that one, Between Men, and Judith Butler's Gender Trouble are basically the three central, foundational texts of queer theory, and if anyone is interested, I have hacked and slightly less than legal PDFs of all of them that I'm more than willing to share. though… for the sake of your own wellbeings, I will strongly urge against reading the Judith Butler unless you really really want to spend countless hours doing the reading equivalent of beating your head against a brick wall in the hopes that this will turn the wall into diamonds. like. she's really important to queer theory and academic feminist discourse. she isn't right about everything and actually there are a lot of places where I think she's just outright wrong, but she's a really brilliant thinker and she has great ideas about some things…
but she is completely fucking incomprehensible, she KNOWS that she's completely fucking incomprehensible, and in the 1999 introduction to Gender Trouble, she spouts off some of the most patently ridiculous pseudo-social justice activist rhetoric that I've ever read in other to make an attempt at justifying why she's completely fucking incomprehensible when the reality of things is that she's just a bitter, self-righteous, classist, elitist hag who… might have friends but clearly doesn't have an editor even though she desperately fucking needs one. like, if I hated myself ever so slightly more, I would volunteer myself as tribute and edit the fuck out of her shit and write like an illustrated introduction to Judith Butler or an annotated version of Gender Trouble that explains exactly what the fuck she's saying just so no more bb gender studies students would ever have to feel stupid because they don't understand Judith Butler when no, no, babies, you're not stupid at all, THERE ARE PEOPLE WITH MULTIPLE PHDS WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND JUDITH BUTLER AND SHE REFUSES TO EDIT HER SHIT IN A WAY THAT MAKES IT MORE ACCESSIBLE AND IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND HER THEN IT IS CLEARLY YOUR FAULT FOR BEING TOO DUPED BY PATRIARCHALLY INSCRIBED CONCEPTIONS OF GENDER AND I JUST. AUGH.
fig. 3: Judith Butler is Lucy and everyone who has ever been assigned to read anything written by Judith Butler is Charlie Brown. I'm not even remotely exaggerating about this. This is the most accurate pictorial depiction of reading Judith Butler that I can think of. Seriously: she's completely brilliant in a lot of ways, but trust me when I say that you have so many better things that you can do with your time than read any of her books.
…so, that's my disclaimer about Judith Butler. and that's my attempt at explaining what "queer" means. and… clearly the short and to the point thing didn't work out so well, but we all probably saw that coming at this point because…
fig. 4: literally me on any given day, about basically every topic that I could possibly have anything to say about.
**: which, as someone who is queer and also into chubby!kink and feed(er)ism, isn't to say that there isn't a huge issue of appropriating the term, "queer" and elements of the queer community by cishet people who are into chubby!kink and feed(er)ism. because… ohhhh, there is so that problem. it is a HUGE problem and it's one of the many reasons why I generally just don't associate with people in the non-fandom circles of the chubby!kink and feed(er)ism community. it's probably the biggest reason why I don't do the thing because like… yeah. okay. most people don't understand your kink for gaining weight or helping your partner(s) gain weight, and your kink is largely considered socially unacceptable for a lot of reasons… but that doesn't mean you get to call yourself queer when you're cishet and it definitely doesn't give you a license to coin a phrase like, "come out of the cupboard" (which is how a lot of people in the feed(er)ims and chubby!kink community describe disclosing to people that they have these kinks). like. people not understanding your kink is not the same fucking thing as people actively discriminating against you because of your sexuality and/or gender identity. WHAT. IS SO FUCKING HARD. TO UNDERSTAND. ABOUT THIS. FUCKING. CONCEPT. JESUS CHRIST.
my name is Kassie and this has been your periodic episode of, "I just have a lot of feelings about queer stuff." And now, the weather.
@Khai okay, I'm going to try to be brief and to the point about this, but… we'll see how that goes.
so, "queer" has a lot of potential uses, actually. like I'm not even kidding here, there's a thing in academia called queer theory and queer theory really can't decide what the fuck it is because it originated as a way of basically slashing canonical literary texts*, but it's expanded to cover a lot of different topics and discussions, and one of the many discussions going on within queer theory basically just comes down to, "so wait, what the Hell exactly IS queer theory? and what the Hell do we mean when we use the word 'queer'?" and the only unifying, defining trait of this discussion is that no one can agree with anyone about anything.
that being said, there are a few particular uses of the word, "queer" that are the most common ones out there and the ones you should be the most aware of. The biggest, most popular one of these, and the way that "queer" gets used in a lot of fannish discussions (like… talking about queer characters, queer representation, queer headcanons, etc etc.) is just using "queer" as an umbrella term that means, "this person is not cisgender and/or heterosexual."
…which is, in fairness, a debatable definition because there are some people (in particular, straight trans* women) who get included/forced under the queer umbrella not by their own choice, but by bigots who have decided that these women are queer by default because they're trans*, so… some straight trans* women choose to reclaim the word and that's their right to do so, but others don't and assuming that all straight trans* people are by necessity queer is cissexist, which is why I personally prefer to say, "queer and/or trans*" when talking about these things. there's a slight issue there in that it could come off like I'm saying that trans* people can't consider themselves queer if they want to, but… I haven't really found a more effective way of doing things that also isn't hugely cissexist in that it assumes that straight trans* people are queer by default, so… it's not perfect, but it's what I prefer to do because it's a step up from the accidental cissexism.
(and then there are other debates about who does or doesn't get to count as queer under that definition and they mostly end up involving people saying things like, "heteroromantic asexual people are the same thing as straight people who do experience sexual attraction (and very obviously there is no such thing as a heteroromantic asexual trans* person or at least there isn't judging on these discussions since no one ever brings up the possibility that I've seen)" or, "bisexual and pansexual and polysexual people who are in het relationships basically have straight privilege" or, "asexual and demisexual people don't really exist they're just a bunch of slut-shaming prudes" or otherwise being erasing and elitist and gross and like… no? no no no? nyet? nein? non? I could say it in Spanish if that gets the point across more clearly how about NO.
like, the whole debate is disgusting to me because… no. just no. fifty thousand shade of NO. asexual, demisexual, bi, pan, and polysexual people ARE NOT CISHET, even heteroromantic asexual people ARE NOT CISHET as such BECAUSE THEY ARE ASEXUAL NOT HETEROSEXUAL. do they necessarily have the same experiences of queer-related oppression as monosexual gay dudes and lesbians? of course not, but that doesn't mean that they're not queer and just… augh, monosexims and consexism [asexual spectrum erasure, presumption that "sexual" is the default and the norm and that any asexual people are clearly somehow "sick" or "deficient," the sort of shit that leads to things like people making, "lol what are you a bacterium" jokes when people try to come out as ace and/or saying things like, "god you're so homophobic for insisting that asexual people exist and that their asexuality is their orientation in the same way that hetero, homo, or bisexuality is someone else's orientation, as opposed to it being like a kink or a fetish"… I'm not even remotely kidding about either of these things, like the former is so common as to be cliche at this point and the latter is actually a thing that someone said to me once]… and yeah, uh. I've gotten off-track here a bit. I just have a lot of feelings and like 95% of them are angry right now from thinking about this.)
the next most common way of using the word, "queer" is the way that some people use it as an identity in and of itself, usually because they feel like other identities don't really do it for them or don't really include them or something similar for one reason or another. and… there are three major strains here that I've observed: 1. there are some people who use "queer" as a shorthand way of saying that they're not cishet, but also identify as something else; 2. there are some people who use "queer" as a way of describing their sexual orientation or (somewhat less frequently though not entirely unheard of) their gender identity for the reasons I laid out earlier, they don't feel like other identities really capture who they are and they don't identify with the other words available to them, but they know that they aren't cishet, so they use "queer";
and 3. there are some people who may or may not identify as anything under the queer umbrella in particular (so like… gay, lesbian, trans*, non-binary, bisexual, asexual, or anything else), but regardless of what identity they do or don't feel fits their sexuality and/or gender identity, they very specifically use "queer" as a way of stating a sort of hybrid social and political identity and/or intentionality that arise(s) out of their sexuality and/or gender identity. this use of the word "queer" as an identity also falls under another one of the major uses of the term, which is using "queer" as a way to refer to identities and/or practices that are specifically anti-heteronormative and/or anti-cisnormative (ideally, these practices also challenge white supremacy and classism since class, whiteness and white privilege, and colonialism are so tightly wound up in societal constructions of heteronormativity and cisnormativity but, uh let's just say that in practice this does not often work out so well because a lot of my fellow white queer people are racist homoimperialist douchebags and the fact that they're queer does not make them magically less awful in this regard…
actually, in my experience and based on things I've read, the fact that they're queer makes them a lot worse in this regard because when you try to call them on doing fucked up things, they pull out the good old fashioned, "but I'm queer and that means I can't oppress anyone on any other axis god why are you oppressing me" card [case in point: VG, as far as I know, though apparently there are conflicting reports on whether he's white, Native American, or who even knows what else]
and then there's a trend of excusing sexual racism in monosexual gay male communities with things like, "but it's a part of gay male culture to assume that all black men have enormous dicks and always want to top you into the mattress, and it's a part of gay male culture to assume that all East Asian men are passive effeminate submissive bottoms, and it's a part of gay male culture to assume that all Latino guys are aggressively hypermasculine devoutly Roman Catholic closet cases [and based on what area you live in, they'll probably be assumed to be of one particular heritage even thought this might not be true; like in California, Texas, and Michigan, the default assumption is that all Latino guys are Mexican until proven otherwise, but in New York, the default assumption tends to be that all Latino guys are Puerto Rican until proven otherwise, and in Florida, the assumption tends to be that they're Cuban until proven otherwise because as we all know, all Latino identities and heritages are basically the same thing and thus totally interchangeable], not to mention all of the other racist assumptions that get casually bandied about with regard to gay men of color, GOD WHY ARE YOU UPSET ABOUT US SAYING THE RACIST THING IT'S PART OF GAY CULTURE WEREN'T YOU LISTENING STOP BEING SO HOMOPHOBIC UGH"
…again, VG makes himself a good case in point here because the subject matter differed considerably but… you know all the times he's trotted out, "but statutory rape is part of gay male culture and we don't consider it an abuse of power over an easily influenced minor so neither should you and I had an older boyfriend who was good to me while the boyfriend who was my own age abused me and this means that Sterek is in no way shape or form any kind of abusive and anyone who thinks otherwise is mean nasty homophobe who should shut up"? …yeah, the defense of sexual racism and more general forms of racism in the gay male community is a lot like that, at least in the form and structure of the arguments, because clearly, something being "a part of gay male culture" means that the thing is completely sacrosanct and undeserving of any criticism ever. so yeah, erm. point being that no really, a lot of my fellow white queer people suck and are racist assholes and I sincerely hope that y'all never have to argue with them because most of them are exactly like AW and AD and VG in this regard and they absolutely refuse to change or listen to reason about anything, they are a pizza burn on the roof of the world's mouth).
now, in general, I'm personally okay with the use of, "queer" in this more politicized way, even though I have a lot of issues with the way that it gets actualized because I have a lot of issues with a lot of my fellow white queer people, and I'm okay with it because… I can understand the impulse behind wanting to have a word that explicitly and very intentionally refers not just to identifying as queer in the sense of, "not cis and/or het" but also to identifying as queer in the sense of challenging heteronormativity and cisnormativity.
like, those are the two biggest social structures that all queer people end up chafing against and getting oppressed by, and there are nuances to the specific nature of different people's experiences here (like QPOC [queer people of color] have their experiences additionally impacted by racism, queer women have to deal with misogyny that impacts them in very specific ways because they are women who are queer, disabled queer people have to deal with ableism from within and without the so-called queer community and let me tell you what there is a huge tendency among neurotypical and non-disabled queer people to assume that disabled, mentally ill, and neuroatypical queer people just outright don't exist and I want to stab this tendency in the fucking throat oh my god, trans* people get a ton of shit from within and without the so-called queer community in particular trans* women and even more particularly trans* women of color, bisexual and pansexual and polysexual and asexual people have to deal with monosexism and consexism respectively, again both from within and without the so-called queer community)…
but heteronormativity/heterosexism and cisnormativity/cissexism permeate and impact all of these experiences of oppression and in an ideal world, we could come together and create solidarity among queer people to fight these things effectively. …unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world and a lot of white queer people are assholes, and in particular, a lot of white cis monosexual queer people are assholes and they've made themselves into the dominant face of the queer rights and liberation movement, even though the movement was really started by trans* people and a lot of the major leaders were trans* women of color, and even though these assholes are usually not really seeking liberation so much as they're seeking to assimilate into the white non-disabled cishet mainstream and get a slice of the white cishet privilege cake and they really just want to get power for themselves while telling everyone who doesn't fit into their box of acceptable behaviors to fuck off and go die in a ditch somewhere.
fig 1.: this is how aforementioned assholes make me feel.
…but the problem that some people have raised with the use of the more politicized version of, "queer" is that it is, in itself, a potential form of queer elitism and that it kind of lends itself toward fostering an attitude that's like, "you must behave in these anti-assimilationist, radically un-closeted, anti-heteronormative, anti-cisnormative, etc etc etc. ways or else you're not a good queer person and you're inherently wrong and you don't get to call yourself queer for any reason whatsoever even if no other identities work for you and you don't deserve to feel a sense of queer community or queer belonging or any of that" and like… I'd say that this is reading too much into things and trying to dismiss very valid criticisms of the tendency toward cishomonormativity and cishomoimperialism in mainstream (white cis monosexual) queer so-called communities… BUT:
a. yeah no, in my time, I have seen several Angry Queer In The Political Sense BloggersTM who made basically that exact same argument that I just satirically laid out… only they made it in complete fucking seriousness and using a lot of really manipulative rhetoric where they phrase things just so in a way that makes it impossible for you to disagree with them without either accidentally saying something that's oppressive in an -ist or -phobic kind of way, or accidentally saying something that's oppressive in a tone policing kind of way (or that could be misconstrued as tone policing even though I'm of the mind that it'd be less tone policing and more going, "uhm but the way you have presented these facts and arguments is manipulative as fuck and kind of disingenuous and you should really stop brow-beating people into agreeing with you like that");
and b. more importantly? not only does that argument exist and have a not insignificant number of people who stand behind it, but there are also more tacit versions of it that exist in the mainstream queer so-called community (like the exhortation for queer people everywhere to come out on International Coming Out Day or the belief that if you aren't out in every single public sphere that you are a member of, then you don't deserve access to queer spaces or queer community or queer belonging because you're clearly "not queer enough" for that) and like. This sort of thing isn't entirely the fault of the politicized use of the word "queer" but this kind of thinking is a HUGE intersectionality fail in a lot of ways (predominantly ways related to classism and racism, but… the general gist of the fail here is that there are a lot of cases in which it is actively dangerous in some way or another for queer people to be vocally out, and racism and classism are the biggest issues where this line of thinking totally falls apart but that's not to say that other forms of intersectional oppression aren't at work here too)… and yeah, the more political use of "queer" didn't CREATE these problems and it doesn't inherently perpetuate them, but at the same time, the actuality of how the politicized version of "queer" gets used most of the time DOES perpetuate these issues and… that's a very valid concern to bring up, so like. while I'm generally okay with the idea of the politicized use of the word, "queer," I also really understand the numerous objections to it.
…and the last major use of the word, "queer" that you should be aware of is the most problematic of them, and it's the sense where "queer" means, "anything that is deviant or non-normative be it sexually or gender-wise." and like… okay, so the book for my colloquium on women's and gender studies class has an essay about the term queer (to explain: the entire book is a collection of essays that investigate, complicate, and problematize the way that certain terms are defined and used in women's, gender, sexuality, and feminist studies writings and departments and junk. it's a really good book and the essays in it are for the most part fantastic and so… the essay on the term "queer" is explaining how we use the word in my discipline and investigating various issues with how the term is used)…
so, in this essay, the author says that the problem of the, "anything that is deviant and non-normative" definition of "queer" is that it, "can be… politically incoherent-especially if included in this category are practices like pedophilia alongside nonmarried sexual relationships and an array of unconventional romantic arrangements" (Jennifer Purvis, "Queer," in Rethinking Women's And Gender Studies, ed. Catherine M. Orr, Ann Braithwaite, & Diane Lichtenstein, pg. 192). and, uhm. well. okay, I don't DISagree with that… but I think there's an even bigger problem with this definition of "queer" than, "well, it's politically incoherent."
like… regardless of its use, "queer" in the sense of sexuality or gender identity-related anything originated as a dehumanizing slur. it is now not so commonly used as a slur anymore (though this is largely a regional variation and dependent on a LOT of factors) and it is largely considered to be reclaimed… but the, "anything deviant and non-normative" way of using "queer" is most often being put forth by cishet white people who happen to be polyamorous, or cishet white people who happen to be kinky (the cishet members of the BDSM community are the biggest offenders here but I think that's probably a function of how the BDSM community actually exists whereas there aren't a lot of communities for other kinks, and then the BDSM community is more vocal and generally considered to be more socially acceptable than, say, the feed(er)ism community**), or white cishet people who fetishize cis queer men and women, or white cis male pedophiles. and their argument basically goes, "but my kinks are as inherent to my sexuality as your attraction to people of your same gender and I could get fired from my job for saying that I'm into BDSM at work so that's totally the same thing as being oppressed for your sexuality or gender identity."
and like… no? no, bad, stop? your kinks (or whatever the hell you want to call pedophilia because it sure as fuck isn't a kink in my book, like… kinks can be problematic and kinks can totally deserve criticism, sure, but… there's a pretty huge distinction between things like, "I enjoy it when my partner chokes me" and, "I enjoy reading slave!fic AUs"… and, "I get off on sexualizing and thinking about raping children")… but as I was saying: kinks are not the same thing as a sexual orientation or a gender identity, regardless of how much you need the thing in order to get off. Kinks are sexual practices and… y'know what? Maybe you wouldn't get hypothetically fired from your job for saying that you're into BDSM because of "kink shaming" and "vanilla privilege"; maybe you would get hypothetically fired from your job for doing this thing because there is a time and a place for those kinds of discussions, and there are times and places and contexts where those kinds of discussions are ina-fucking-ppropriate, and MAYBE YOU SHOULD NOT TALK ABOUT YOUR SEX LIFE AT WORK PERIOD BECAUSE IT'S UNPROFESSIONAL UNLESS YOU ARE, LIKE, A SEXUAL COUNSELOR OR EMPLOYED AT THE LOCAL DILDO EMPORIUM OR SOMETHING. THIS SEEMS LIKE BASIC COMMON SENSE TO ME BUT APPARENTLY IT'S NOT??
and like, yes. legitimate kink-shaming does happen sometimes and it's an awful thing when it happens, and yes people in polyamorous relationships often have the validity of their feelings for their partners called into question and often have the nature of their relationships heinously misconstrued and stuff, and I'm not saying that those things don't happen… but I AM saying that calling them part of the "queer" experience is at best a misnomer and at worst a form of appropriation if the kinky or polyamorous people doing the thing are cishet. like, there is actually a cishet white woman writing in queer academia who identifies herself as queer because she likes pegging her cishet boyfriend. and… no. no. no no no. NO. the fact that you like pegging him and the fact that he likes taking it up the ass DOES NOT MAKE EITHER OF YOU STOP BEING CISHET AND YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE SHIT THAT QUEER-AS-IN-NEITHER-CIS-NOR-HET PEOPLE GO THROUGH BECAUSE YOU ARE CISHET AND WOULD NEVER HAVE THE WORD QUEER USED AS A SLUR AGAINST YOU. ALL OF THAT MEANS THAT YOU DO NOT GET TO "RECLAIM" THE WORD QUEER BECAUSE IT'S NOT YOUR WORD TO RECLAIM. WHAT IS SO FUCKING HARD TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT THAT CONCEPT.
…well, apparently a lot is so fucking hard to understand about this concept because in my experience, trying to call people out on doing this thing usually gets you accused of being a "vanilla privilege"-having mean nasty kink-shamer and then you get flamed and dragged through the mud and oh my god I'm so angry about this that I'm literally shaking like. …just don't ever use "queer" in this way, okay? it is not a good way to use the word, it is in fact a very very bad way to use the word because it conflates things that cannot be conflated all willy nilly like that and just. don't do it. please. I am not above begging you guys not to do the thing.
fig. 2: this is what I would like to say to everyone who uses "queer" in the way that I just described.
SO. with all that said: the big, super-important thing to keep in mind about the word, "queer," regardless of how it's being used in any given conversation, is that it's a reclaimed slur. It came into vogue as a way of demeaning LGBTQ* people in I think the late nineteenth century, and then it just got more and more popular during the twentieth century until people started reclaiming it after the Stonewall Riots (so, started in 1969 and then started gaining more traction throughout the seventies and eighties, and it really hit its stride in the nineties, which is also when academia started to use the word "queer" in a reclaimed sense).
so the thing with it being a reclaimed slur is that there are some uses and contexts where it's okay for a cishet person to use the word "queer." like, if someone explicitly identifies as queer and asks you to describe them as queer, then… yes. say, "queer" in that scenario. the use of "queer" in discussions of things like queer representation are somewhat more debated, but the general unspoken consensus there seems to be that it's okay for cishet people to use phrases like, "queer representation" and, "queer characters" because… it's a convenient shorthand and more inclusive than, "LGBTQ*" or, "gay" or, "lesbian" or what have you.
then there's the example of using "queer" as a verb, which… this is also a kind of touchy subject for some people because the use of "queer" as a verb originated in academia and a lot of the time, when academia does the thing, they're not actually talking about queer people or queer representation or anything; they're talking about taking concepts like, "the family" and, "marriage" and questioning and destabilizing the common social constructions and conceptions of and social and cultural baggage attached to these things, which… okay. it usually works okay with the politicized usage of "queer" (though sometimes it goes more in the direction of the, "deviant and non-normative" use of the word)… but it often has very little to do with the lived realities and the experiences of queer people, so it still bothers some folks and strikes them as a kind of appropriation of a reclaimed slur.
but like, on the other hand? the most common use of "queer" as a verb that's gotten outside of the academy is the phrase, "queering the text," which basically means… all the stuff that we do when we come up with queer headcanons or write fic with queer interpretations of the characters. "Queering the text" has a few other uses that I can't recall right now, but the most dominant one just means looking at a text (so, a story, a book, a movie, a TV show, or whatever) where the creators just expect you to believe that all of the characters are cishet because they said so and going, "lol no fuck that I think Scott McCall is genderqueer and pansexual and if you don't like it, you can lick my clit." and… that's generally accepted as an instance where it's totally cool for cishet people to say, "queer" because… it's the easiest and most convenient way of describing what you're doing, and it specifically refers to putting more queer people into media so… yeah. that's generally an okay thing to say.
but, uh. aside from specific examples and trying to generalize from them in an attempt to be more helpful here, a good ground rule for saying, "queer" when you're cishet is just to be sensitive to the fact that there are a LOT of different ways in which the term is used and queer people (meaning those who actually have any kind of right to identify as queer, i.e. people who aren't cishet) have a LOT of different opinions about cishet people saying, "queer" based on its history as a reclaimed slur, so… these are some examples of times when it's generally accepted for cishet people to use the word, but if a queer person ever asks you to stop saying the word around them, then… be respectful and stop. and I know you guys will, because you guys aren't douchebags, but… I've gotten in way too many fights with people about this subject to think that I can just not say the thing, basically? so. this has been a post. it has been an overly long post and I'm sorry for that, but… I wanted to explain the thing as thoroughly as possible? and I had a lot of feelings? and… yeah. and if anyone wants me to like, delete this and post it on my blog with a read more instead, then I would be more than glad to do so, just… let me know and stuff. ♥
*: …I realize that the way I phrased this might lead you to believe that I'm kidding here. I am NOT kidding. like, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is one of the leading minds in queer theory and she wrote this book, first published in 1985, called Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. and in the book, she went through a bunch of texts from English literature and talked about their "homosocial desire" which isn't exactly the same thing as watching a show with your slash goggles on… but it's a really eerily similar sort of concept, only one gets you paid nicely and published and invited places as a guest speaker and given tons of critical accolades, while the other is used on the Internet to completely discredit your opinions about everything ever even though you could be the most ridiculous, canon-distorting, OOC fanon!Sterek shipper in the world and you would still be participating in a practice that can trace its roots back to at LEAST a bunch of stuffy dead ancient Greek dudes debating whether Achilles or Patroclus was the top, or if they were legitimately just friends.
and I say, "at least" here because I choose to believe that there were similar debates about Gilgamesh and Enkidu… but I don't actually know if those debates happened for real or not so the earliest historical example I have of people doing what slash fans do is the debates about whether or not Achilles or Patroclus were having anal penetrative sex, and if they were (which most people thought they were except for like one weirdo who apparently didn't read The Iliad very closely and I don't remember his name right now he shipped Achilles/Briseis even though Briseis was Achilles's prisoner of war… though, in fairness here, the ancient Greeks were even more virulently misogynistic than contemporary Western society and people in contemporary Western society still ship Achilles/Briseis like it's romantic and tragic and beautiful and… no. just no)… so, if Achilles and Patroclus were indeed frickle fracking with each other, then who topped. serious business scholarly debates have been conducted about this subject for literally centuries. this is my culture as a bb academic. this is what I've signed up to do with my life and… not gonna lie, I question the wisdom of this decision at least a few times a week for exactly this reason (among several others but this one comes up a lot).
…also, Kosofsky Sedgwick published another major queer theory text in 1990 called The Epistemology of the Closet, and that one, Between Men, and Judith Butler's Gender Trouble are basically the three central, foundational texts of queer theory, and if anyone is interested, I have hacked and slightly less than legal PDFs of all of them that I'm more than willing to share. though… for the sake of your own wellbeings, I will strongly urge against reading the Judith Butler unless you really really want to spend countless hours doing the reading equivalent of beating your head against a brick wall in the hopes that this will turn the wall into diamonds. like. she's really important to queer theory and academic feminist discourse. she isn't right about everything and actually there are a lot of places where I think she's just outright wrong, but she's a really brilliant thinker and she has great ideas about some things…
but she is completely fucking incomprehensible, she KNOWS that she's completely fucking incomprehensible, and in the 1999 introduction to Gender Trouble, she spouts off some of the most patently ridiculous pseudo-social justice activist rhetoric that I've ever read in other to make an attempt at justifying why she's completely fucking incomprehensible when the reality of things is that she's just a bitter, self-righteous, classist, elitist hag who… might have friends but clearly doesn't have an editor even though she desperately fucking needs one. like, if I hated myself ever so slightly more, I would volunteer myself as tribute and edit the fuck out of her shit and write like an illustrated introduction to Judith Butler or an annotated version of Gender Trouble that explains exactly what the fuck she's saying just so no more bb gender studies students would ever have to feel stupid because they don't understand Judith Butler when no, no, babies, you're not stupid at all, THERE ARE PEOPLE WITH MULTIPLE PHDS WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND JUDITH BUTLER AND SHE REFUSES TO EDIT HER SHIT IN A WAY THAT MAKES IT MORE ACCESSIBLE AND IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND HER THEN IT IS CLEARLY YOUR FAULT FOR BEING TOO DUPED BY PATRIARCHALLY INSCRIBED CONCEPTIONS OF GENDER AND I JUST. AUGH.
fig. 3: Judith Butler is Lucy and everyone who has ever been assigned to read anything written by Judith Butler is Charlie Brown. I'm not even remotely exaggerating about this. This is the most accurate pictorial depiction of reading Judith Butler that I can think of. Seriously: she's completely brilliant in a lot of ways, but trust me when I say that you have so many better things that you can do with your time than read any of her books.
…so, that's my disclaimer about Judith Butler. and that's my attempt at explaining what "queer" means. and… clearly the short and to the point thing didn't work out so well, but we all probably saw that coming at this point because…
fig. 4: literally me on any given day, about basically every topic that I could possibly have anything to say about.
**: which, as someone who is queer and also into chubby!kink and feed(er)ism, isn't to say that there isn't a huge issue of appropriating the term, "queer" and elements of the queer community by cishet people who are into chubby!kink and feed(er)ism. because… ohhhh, there is so that problem. it is a HUGE problem and it's one of the many reasons why I generally just don't associate with people in the non-fandom circles of the chubby!kink and feed(er)ism community. it's probably the biggest reason why I don't do the thing because like… yeah. okay. most people don't understand your kink for gaining weight or helping your partner(s) gain weight, and your kink is largely considered socially unacceptable for a lot of reasons… but that doesn't mean you get to call yourself queer when you're cishet and it definitely doesn't give you a license to coin a phrase like, "come out of the cupboard" (which is how a lot of people in the feed(er)ims and chubby!kink community describe disclosing to people that they have these kinks). like. people not understanding your kink is not the same fucking thing as people actively discriminating against you because of your sexuality and/or gender identity. WHAT. IS SO FUCKING HARD. TO UNDERSTAND. ABOUT THIS. FUCKING. CONCEPT. JESUS CHRIST.
my name is Kassie and this has been your periodic episode of, "I just have a lot of feelings about queer stuff." And now, the weather.