I feel a little Queer…
One of the people that I have met on twitter wrote an interesting blog post about the word “Queer” and its place in the 21st Century. Now, to be honest, it’s not something that I’ve thought about recently – as I’ve grown up and settled down the outrage and in-your-face attitude that I once had towards sexuality has dimmed. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe wholeheartedly in equality and will argue vehemently in defence of it. But I’m just not the shocking clothes and high camp guy that I once was. Thankfully there’s plenty of other, younger guys and girls out there doing it themselves!
The thing that piqued my interest about the post though was that I remember back in the mid to late nineties I was a lot more outspoken and was the GLB (as it was then) Officer for my college students’ union. As a group we found out about the Queer Politics movement and decided to take its concepts to heart. This meant a few things. Taking back the words that were used as an offensive term (such as “queer, faggot, puff” and the like) as well as fighting for equality.
Now equality is an unusual phrase – because it means “being treated equal to” not “being treated the same as” and this, I think, is where many of today’s equality fighters are losing their way. If you had a chance to read that post by Peter Tatchell you’ll realise that we can celebrate diversity, that we can embrace differences and still be equal. At work I only have access to one news website (I’m not allowed to mention it because I’ve signed a contract saying that I won’t discuss work in any social media, blog etc… and by mentioning the website I might give away the company) but I’ve seen a load of arguments on there about equality and the fact that there is, for example, a Black and Asian Police organisation to support them, but not one for “Whites”. This isn’t an argument against equality, just as LGBTQ groups aren’t here to fight for more rights. It’s entirely because we face discrimination regularly – even today – that they exist.
But, the way I see it, if we – as a community – have such disparate goals and don’t even agree on the terms that we will use for ourselves, then how can we present a united front to the world? How can we stand together and say “We want to be equal, without having to be the same”? We can have as many Pride Parties and Pride Parades as we like, but until we stand together and say “This is who we are: Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgendered people and Queers, and this is what we want – to be given EQUAL rights without having to fight for them every step of the way”, we’ll just stagnate.
And I can’t believe that we’re still having this same argument about the word Queer – 15 years later!
Image Credit: Wikimedia Foundation
