If you are a journalist and you want to write about queer people, you may do better to refer to a much more official source: the GLAAD Media Reference Guide. But here are my thoughts.
One of the worst things about language when it comes to the queer community, and why I think it is important to discuss, is this idea people have that queer people are easily offended, that we are always jumping down their throats when they say the wrong thing. Even the word “queer” is a slur that may have been used against older LGBT people, and for those and other reasons, some may object to it. However, I think that any and every word we ever use to describe ourselves, will be made into an insult in the mouths of others, will be used to cause some of us fear. Thus, there is no “right” way to talk about queer people; I use the word queer because it is best for me and others with whom I am beginning to find community. And it is never good when people are held back, by fear of using the wrong language, from having useful conversations about and with queer people.
So, whether you’re straight and cis or you’re queer like me (I am a cis woman and I date women), your use of words may offend people. It is because people have been hurt. It is not always your fault. If you want to mitigate this problem, though, make sure the emphasis is on the people you are talking about. Say “queer people” or “homosexual people” or “pansexual people”, rather than “queers” and “homos” and so on, even if you hear others using such words in casual conversation. Try to relate to queer people mentally, as well–if you can’t, talk to us and look for personal stories, I guarantee it will help.
The same goes if you’re cis, queer or not, when it comes to being a trans ally. Remember “trans” is an adjective too: say “trans woman” when you mean a woman who was assigned male at birth, and when you say “women” you should mean “cis or trans women”, and if you’re talking about people with certain genitals, you can say “assigned female at birth” or “AFAB”. When it comes to the meaning of my words, I usually agree with Natalie Reed’s glossary, though our usages of “queer” differ somewhat as explained. I have increasingly found her highly capable of helping many queer people understand our own experiences, giving us a place to talk without hostility, and giving respect to others she interacts with. Furthermore, her writing has empowered me to be a more active trans ally, rather than afraid of doing it wrong.
When someone objects to your words, say sorry; explain that it is the best word you have on hand; listen to them if they give alternative suggestions; try not to feel too paranoid and guilty, or invest all your self-worth into being a good person and having everyone see your good intents. I found this post by an anti-racist blogger, Talking the Tightrope, to be quite relevant in this case. It was sort of amazing to me, learning to be a trans ally, to realize that most (if not all) transgender people I talk to, who wanted to be part of a larger community of transgender people, have the same fears that I had, of offending others. But in retrospect, I should not have been surprised.
To me, the word “queer” is a statement of political alliance between people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, and/or transgender. It may also include some people who identify as intersex or asexual, and perhaps some other identities, because the word to me means anyone whose gender and sexuality does not conform to what society is telling us it should right now. However, I have heard intersex people raise objection to being lumped in with LGBT people; also, some asexual people may be hetero-romantic (that is take opposite-sex partners), and thus might or might not identify as queer. Also, when anyone says “queer”, they definitely include LGBT people under that term (unless they are failing to consider that transgender people exist, and they may do this even if they say LGBT). That is how I have used these words.
Furthermore, I don’t usually include straight cis people who are polyamorous or BDSM oriented, under queer. They may have reason to join the alliance, but the common thread of queerness I think is about gender nonconformity (and this includes sexual orientation as part of gender), not sexual nonconformity. Why? Because while queer people may be denigrated for our sexual practices, those among us who are most visibly gender-nonconforming are the biggest targets. It is for gender nonconformity that people must live in fear of violence, and that includes walking around with a partner presenting the same gender; nonstandard sexual practices get you marginalized and misunderstood in society, but as far as I know they don’t cause the kind of everyday fear that you get when you live under oppression. I’m not saying any individual can’t identify as queer. I am saying that when I talk to a straight cis person about coming out because I am a cis woman who prefers to date women (cis or trans! Obviously!), and they compare this to coming out as polyamorous, we are not talking about the same thing. Yes, there are people who accept same-sex couples but not polyamorous families. And I should have this conversation with many more people before prouncing definitively that poly people are not oppressed–don’t take my voice as an authority on that, it is just my thinking to date. But, just as I keep in mind that the “closet” means very different things to transsexual people than it does to me, I ask people in cis opposite-sex relationships to make sure they really are empathizing with the fears that queer people have, rather than trying to make our stories your own.
In summary, to me, “queer” is a political term. “LGBT” is the demographic term that I use to refer to people who are queer, because most queer people fall loosely under one or more of those labels. This post will probably expand as I need it to, and may change as my thinking changes. If it changes a lot, I’ll explain my previous articles that link to this.
The use of various words in the LGBTQ… community (whatever that means) still raises some interesting questions beyond what you’ve suggested here. I could spend quite a lot of time here making comments on a variety of threads which you’ve picked up. Allow me to go on about just one of them.
I think it is quite clear that any word can be used as a slur. It can be more or less so depending upon the medium, who is speaking, who is listening, and whether anyone is paying any attention. I am a philosopher and I tend to gravitate to the ‘use as meaning’ idea. In most cases and for most purposes, how a word is deployed in context is the meaning of the word uttered. This particular view is disconcerting to a lot of philosophers and puzzling for a great number of laypeople. After all, words are defined by the dictionary, aren’t they? Well, it is a platitude that dictionaries are both descriptive and normative. They both provide you with the various uses of words in the language and implicitly (or even explicitly) dictates that these are the correct uses. But as anyone who has been told that ‘contact’ or ‘impact’ can be used as a verb can attest, the use of words changes and thus the meanings of words change.
The logician in me reminds us that merely claiming that this is how things have always been, therefore this is how things should thenceforth be, is an error of reasoning—an inappropriate appeal to tradition. To appeal to the way things have always been is by itself of no weight. We must look to why we did those things the way we did and evaluate those reasons. Similarly, we should look to just why we used words the way we did/do and evaluate them. Are there good reasons for changing the way they are used? Sadly (for my campaign to eradicate the verb ‘to impact’), merely gesturing wildly at the past grammatical standards is not very persuasive. If the discussion about which words to use to refer to the various aspects of the LGBTQ panoply is to revolve around wether some word is an adjective or a noun, the battle has already been joined and settled. We have all been impacted with the result.
But if we are looking for political reasons to use this word or that word, then the matter becomes far more ramified. I think you’ve nicely showcased this issue with the word ‘queer’. You point out that the way you use it is primarily political (rather than ontological, for instance). You rehearse a nice little argument for that use that clarifies and draws some fuzzy boundaries around the concept. In other words, I know, more or less, what you mean when you call yourself (I am going to try to refrain from the term ‘identify’; it seems to have certain overtones I wish to avoid) ‘a queer woman.’ However, note that it is not clear (at least to me) why you do not call yourself a lesbian. After all, you say that you are ‘a cis woman who prefers to date women.’ So, I have to wonder what distinction you are making (one way of talking about what philosophers do is in terms of making distinctions; pointing out differences). You say ‘date women’ rather than ‘have sex with women’. Perhaps you are asexual! Perhaps you are homo-romantic (a term which does not get enough play, in my view) but bisexual. Perhaps you wished to keep those aspects to yourself. Perhaps none (or all, from time to time!) of these things are true. I could go on, but the point I hope is clear enough: each speech act means something in context, where context includes the speaker’s intentions, the language in which the speech act takes place, the medium, etc. All of this has to be teased out—unpacked, if you will—in order to understand what exactly these terms mean when they are used. Failing to do so is what generates confusion.
If we see these terms as flags—semaphore—of various aspects of being, we have to be careful about the flag and why we are using any particular flag at any one time. We cannot just make them mean what we want here and now arbitrarily. We need to lay down a practice of using the term in this way for this purpose at these sorts of times. This is how meaning is established in a community. You called ‘LGBT’ a demographic term and distinguish it from a political term, ‘queer’. In other words, LGBT is to be seen as a descriptive term and ‘queer’ as a normative term. I have no quibble with ‘queer’ as a normative term. Seeing as it is political, and you’ve done a very nice job outlining the normative argument for deploying it, we should turn to your implied claim that ‘LGBT’ is merely descriptive. This is more or less where I depart, because I think that it is quite clear that term ‘LGBT’ is far from merely descriptive. To see it as mere demographics is to partially subscribe to a sort of natural kind ontological picture—a sort of essentialism about sexuality and gender—as if it were a feature of the world what gets picked out as members of these categories.
Now, to be sure, I do not think that this social essentialism, if you will, is by design. It seems to be to be an implication of not taking as seriously the political aspects of what counts as ‘gay,’ ‘lesbian,’ ‘bisexual,’ and ‘transgender.’ As you say, some intersex people do not include themselves in the T. Some transsexual people object to being gathered with the transgender people. There are ‘post-operative transsexual women’ who leave the first two qualifiers in that phrase off. Some women who have had heterosexual relationships all their lives find themselves in loving sexual relationships with women. Some of these women do not consider themselves lesbians. Some ‘people of transsexual history’ do not even consider the term ‘transsexual’ applicable after transition (whatever constitutes transition for them) in the same way cancer patients are no longer cancer patients once they have had their illnesses successfully treated. I could go on. It strikes me that the boundaries here are blurry, porous, and ultimately vague. One reaction has been to try to strengthen the set of necessary and sufficient conditions that constitute each category. As with most concepts, these attempts have failed to do much more than alienate and infuriate some and bore the hell out of others.
So, I am very much happy with the political term ‘queer’ to refer to this mishmash of people. I would not use the term to refer to myself though. I am simply a lesbian, if that term makes any sense at all: simply a lesbian. What I am suggesting is that the tightrope to which you refer above is really quite the dialogic straightjacket. If we cannot, without rancour, explore why some terms seem to be able to be reclaimed, like ‘queer,’ while others seem otherwise, like ‘tranny,’ I am afraid that we are not going to be able to have a proper conversation about what these terms mean. And I am talking about people within the LGBTQ community. If we are unable to sort out what the terms we use mean, I hardly think we can blame some poor schmuck in the general population who has little or no interaction with the political aspects of LGBT community for not knowing not to use the term ‘a transgender’.
I fear that the LGBT blogosphere has become a sort of echo chamber and that echo chamber is taken as the standard against which all media should be judged. Whereas the LGBT blogosphere is really not that important to the way the vast majority of people gather their news, process their information, and make their judgements. And when these ‘mainstream’ media turn to look at the LGBT blogosphere, the see a partially academic, partially amateur, partially alternative media driven mishmash of dialogue. Mainstream media really doesn’t seem to like this very much and it seems to confuse them.
There is one other thing. It seems to me that saying that ‘we need to define ourselves and not let straight or cis culture tell us who we are’ is conceptually incoherent. Without putting too fine a point on it, unless everyone is included in the conversation then no one can be without begging the question. For gay men and lesbians, who gets to say ahead of time who counts in these categories, if only people who are already members of those categories get to say what the terms mean? How lesbian do you have to be to be counted as a lesbian? How long do you have to have not had any sexual desire to be asexual? Never? Six months? I could go on. Bootstrapping is a conceptual dead end.
Perhaps it is that only certain people can understand what it is like for someone to be transgender or gay. It has always struck me that this sort of claim conflates ‘experience’ with ‘understanding’. I can understand quite a few things without experiencing them, just as I can experience many things without understanding them. Let’s keep these two things conceptually separate. A trans woman might never have experienced a harsh word, a disapproving stare, or a dismissive attitude because of her being trans. Does that make her less qualified to speak about what counts as ‘trans’? How much oppression does she have to experience? It was argued to me just a little while ago that if a transsexual person hasn’t tried to commit suicide then they really aren’t trans. I hope we can agree that this is nonsense. If we can, then I think the rest of my argument is at least plausible. If you make efforts to understand others in exactly the same way you understand anything while acknowledging that the sincerity of reported experiences of those people, there is no principled reason why everyone cannot participate in the conversation. If a view is rejected, it cannot just be because it comes from a cis person or a straight person or a male person. This is just circumstantial ad hominem. If a view is accepted, it cannot just be because it comes from a trans person or a gay person or a female person. The view has to stand to scrutiny. Even LGBT people make mistakes; not about what they feel, but perhaps about what we should do about it.
What it seems to me that you have uncovered an interesting point—that we require more discussion about the demographic with an explicit and deliberate recognition that the concepts are both political and natural, that the concepts are vague and overlapping, and that everyone gets a say, including those people who are not members of the LGBTQ community.
Hello Diane, thanks for commenting!
Well, there’s a lot to respond to, so I won’t try right now. Most trivial point first: actually I do call myself lesbian, but sometimes that leads to incorrect assumptions. In particular, if people are going to assume (as is predominant) that I date AFAB people, where in fact I date women, I’d like to be able to counteract that assumption. I don’t much care if anyone worries about my sex life; I do care if they think I’m transphobic. Does that make sense?
Also, about the echo chamber: I strongly resent any implication that queer communities don’t try to reach out to others and make conversations go better. There are many queer activists who do exactly that and are good at it. A good chunk of this post is advice on how to talk to queer people as an ally, so I am trying to help–but I admit it would be more understandable by cis queer folks about how to be a trans ally, as this is my experience and I think it can be extrapolated.
The thing I said in the post, about being an ally being called out on privilege: if someone says “please don’t say that, it is offensive to me”, they are offering you the chance to make up for your misstep. You (the ally, that is) should immediately take that chance and not get defensive or escalate the conflict. It is that ability that is so unfortunately rare, but I know many people who have it.
I hear over and over again the idea that queer people are exclusive and easily offended. I remember thinking that way before coming out as queer. I remember thinking that way after coming out too. What changed? I got less insecure, decided to participate in discussions and communities even though someone might snap at me or might not like me, decided I could deal with that, and that’s it. That’s just about all it takes. Seriously–plenty of people who aren’t queer have learned the same lesson.
Could we take the alternative route to making interaction better, and fix the queer community? That is, could we make everyone stop being offended, stop forming subgroups according to their identities, and stop mistrusting straight and/or cis folks? Sure, IF there were no more homophobia and transphobia, IF nobody had been traumatized by these, IF there weren’t so many queer people who have so much trouble with their families that they find it hard to trust anyone. Meanwhile, there are legitimate fears and pressures on us.
Finally, I think you’re right about experience, empathy, and how the enforcement of a standard “transsexual narrative” is a huge problem. But empathy has its limits: if you have cis privilege, you will more often forget what you know about being trans, than if you are a trans person. Sure, trans people may fail to empathize with each other in the same way, but (for example) I bet very few trans people will ever forget to think about how the public restrooms are gendered in any place they need to go.
[...] I had a paragraph on why I used the words I used in this article, but it’s already too long. Instead, I’ve made a long note about my use of words. [...]