Queer: People

Queer people of colour and trans actors have finally become visible - but hate crime is up, queer asylum seekers have been viewed with suspicion and sex education still fails to be queer-friendly 

Yawn!

Less of this right-on wank in 2016, pls, Indy Voices.

Anyone who still uses 'queer' in 2015 to suggest radicalism is a middle class twat.

And folk knows what that QAF photo is doing here.

Gay: So It Goes

Frank Kameny archive.

Reclaiming words, when done effectively, is all about power, Thorne [Tony, curator of the Slang And New Language Archive] tells me. “Reappropriation of ethnic and sexual slurs starts as an act of bravado by a few of the oppressed, then may become an empowering mechanism for a much wider community. It’s pleasingly ironic that those discriminated against have learned the Orwellian trick employed by the state and the establishment of hijacking everyday language (as in ‘doublespeak’) for their own nefarious purposes. Alternative discourse ousts and replaces the discourses of power.”

Paul Baker, professor of English Language at Lancaster University, agrees. “Control language and you control the society,” he says...

Reclaiming words is not a new phenomenon. Thorne points out: “Reversing pejoratives has a long history going back to cavalier, sans-culotte, Tory and Whig.” [Or Christian or communist - FB]. 

Modern reclaiming has had mixed success. He says: “Recently such terms as slut, gay and ginger (and to some extent nerd and geek) have been rebranded – perhaps with a tinge of irony.” As someone who has been all five of those things, I can safely say that some have been better reclaimed than others.

Paul Baker says; “Queer was reclaimed by academics and activists in the early 1990s. There was a shouty defiance about queer too – it wasn’t just pride, it was political activism and opposition to homophobic government policy like section 28. It was a disruptive and anarchic response to conservative forces at that time. But in reality very few people actually engaged with this wider ‘anything against the normal’ meaning of queer.
 
“That’s one of the problems with reclaiming concepts: not only do you have a set of people who don’t understand that the word has been reclaimed in the first place, so they continue to use it in the older negative way, but you can also have different understandings of what the reclaiming actually means. And even if you’re in on it, you still may not want to participate.” We are seeing a similar thing play out now with the word “gay”...

Gary Nunn, in his monthly Guardian blog, Mind Your Language.

Note the irony of how quickly 'queer' became re-reclaimed; it's now usually used as an empty signifier of 'radicalism' by homosexualists who are about as radical as a wobbly pink blancmange.

Fagburn wonders if the word 'gay' - which has been reclaimed as a pejorative - will eventually go the same way as 'sod' and 'bugger', and become completely detatched from its homosexual meaning.

PS The UK release of the documentary Do I Sound Gay? 'inspired' a discussion on Woman's Hour today, Is there a gay dialect? (!), where Lucy Jones, an assistant professor of sociolinguistics, made the incredibly silly claim that polari was used as a code - no, it was just slang. If  'academic experts' just repeat nonsense they Googled and don't get picked up on it, no wonder we are doomed...

Queer: Class War

Tricia Tuttle, the BFI’s deputy director of festivals, said: “Queer filmmakers have delivered some of cinema’s most striking, vital, challenging, provocative and beautiful films and BFI Flare has been key in bringing these to UK audiences over the last 29 years...'

The Guardian online.

Why is it only the gay middle classes who now use the term 'queer'?

An empty signifier of pseudo-radicalism.

That name again... Tricia Tuttle!

Update: How can you be a 'queer' 'LGBT' woman exactly? Either your're a lesbian or not. Did George Carlin die in vain?

Michael Stipe: How Queer!

It’s been 20 years since I announced to the world that I was queer – and that I had found the strength and the voice to say that, and to move forward with my life as a completely out, publicly queer individual.

It was September 1994, and my band REM had released the two biggest records of our career. With Out of Time and Automatic for the People, we had sold more than 25m records worldwide, and we were ramping up to tour for the first time in five years. I was more famous than I could have ever imagined. For the promotion of our next album, Monster, and its world tour, I decided to publicly announce my sexuality. I said simply that I had enjoyed sex with men and women my entire adult life. It was a simple fact, and I’m happy I announced it...

Michael Stipe, The Guardian Short Cuts.

Well done Michael!

Still seems shaming you can't say you're 'gay', though.

Someone describing themselves as 'queer' 25 years ago may have at least sounded transgressive and radical, but now... not so much.

PS Fagburn seems to recall a UK press release for REM's 2001 album, Reveal, trumpeting that Stipe had just come out. Who knew that it would carry on being such a great marketing tool?

PPS There are rumours Stipe has recently, secretly got gaymarried.