X-cess is right, quoting Roland Barthes in
Death of the Author when he wrote that there is "no outside of the text." Today it is well and truly accepted in academic and political domains to use the word 'queer' to speak to theories, ideas, politics, issues etc that come from and address people who do not fit into heterosexist/heterocentric (itself an irony) arenas. To use '
GLBT' is inadequate, and dare I say, somewhat unpronouncable, a bit like Prince calling himself by that silly symbol..., as there are those who deny that they are included in that label but whom the discussion ought/seems to address and include, and to use a word such as pansexual is inappropriate since not all people who fall outside of the label heterosexual or heterocentric are positioned merely by their sexual preferences or only by sexual politics. 'Queer' is also a word that reduces the power of those who would denegrate us simply by its assumption by the non-hetero communities.
The fact that people feel offended by even us using these words seems to have something to do with a sense of reduction: If we believe/feel that a term has been used that reduces our meaning to only include that of a sexual nature (a nature that is pointedly not accepted by the larger and dominant straight community), then we are insulted because that is what we struggle against as we search for validity and expanded meaning in the broader community that we do in fact contribute to meaningfully and generously but are often denied access to or respect in. If the words are not applied as nouns, but as adjectives and the sentence doesn't declare us to only exist in a sexual nature, then we generally find the language less or even unoffensive. There is a world of difference between being gay, and being
a gay; being queer and being
a queer. One allows for other experiences and space for a broad and inclusive social meaning, the second allows space only to exist as a sexually (and historically, definitively in the broad heterosexual community, abhorrent) entity.
As discussed extensively by many literary theorists and social commentators, and perhaps none more persuasively than Lee Edelman in his book,
Homographesis, using the (also relatively modern) words of 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual' to speak to the various ideas we are concerned with is dreadfully fraught, too! The fact is that relatively few people will be very happy about the discussion of any ideas/persons/politics etc that include this group of ideas and words for a very long time.
But! - unless we all want to reduce our conversations to include only the most basic of language that is so bland it can only offend by implying the listener/reader has no capacity to comprehend or participate in a more 'fruity' or impassioned exchange, we ought to seriously consider that expanding our repetoire of words can actually reduce over-generalisation or the risk of improperly inferring, as well as lead to broader minds - our own included. No language is neatly wrapped to only mean one thing, and really, who wants for there to never be a risk of taking offence? "Beauty needs ugliness," said Crazy Jane to the Bishop when he challenged her right to walk the High Street.
](/images/smilies/bang.gif "Brick wall ](*,)")
