If you don't find
->-bleeped-<- offensive, please read this:
http://nodesignation.com/?p=187Especially if you're a trans guy or female-assigned at birth genderqueer, etc. I don't say that because I have any problem with you guys, but because their experience with the word is, for various cultural and historical reasons, probably a lot less likely to imbue it with anywhere near the same viscerally painful connotations as it often does for trans women.
But whatever your gender, sex, or identity, it's not enough to say "I don't find it offensive." So what if you don't? Do you speak for all people to whom that term might, from time to time, be applied? I'm not saying that you can't use it. But if you want to, I
am asking that you take responsibility for how it might affect others.
Trista, I don't find queer offensive. I'm queer. I have lots of queer friends. I think queer folk are the best kind. I use it, and will continue to use it, because it's really useful to me: Sometimes being trans and being a lesbian are closely related issues, because of how they set me apart from the mainstream. Sometimes I fell that calling myself a lesbian puts too strong an emphasis on gender, whereas calling myself queer just means that I don't care who the mainstream thinks I should love, and lets me just have my own tastes.
But I recognize that some people have a different experience, and I know there are many ways in which it hurts. Please read that blog post, and tell me what you think about it, and
why you have a problem with it -- because that will help me be more sensitive. Of course, you don't
have to tell me; I'm just asking.
For the record, I think "->-bleeped-<-dar" is sufficiently silly and sardonic that it falls within the category of "repurposing" that the author describes at the end of the article. I'm perfectly happy to use it and to hear other people use it, because I think it shines a light on the problematic nature of the whole concept it describes.
