The Q in GLBTQ

[StationToStation]

So at school, we are sponsoring a booth at the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Queer convention. I have signed up and will be at the booth recruiting future cosmetologist to sign up for our school. Of course also i'll be there in support in our community. I can't wait till the gays see the cute me at the booth, but i diverge lol

So I guess the straight people and some gay people, the two, are wondering why Queer is in our letterhead. They think queer is offensive. Even an asshole at school was like, "isn't queer bad, like fucking queer." I'm a patient person but I wanted to throw my fists at him, but I just got a manicure and Chanel polish. Then a young gay guy piped up and agreed. I had to leave the room.

IMO queer is not a bad word, I take it as someone who doesnt want labels, perhaps is genderfuck. I like the word queer, sometimes i feel more comfortable with that word than homosexual. Homosexual is so clinical. Queer is at your own opinion, what makes you different.

Should the Q be there? Is it offensive? Your thoughts???

 

[StationToStation]

I'll never understand the label/categorization obsession.

I want to sponsor a People Convention.

cats can stay the fuck out.

i get your point, i'm a humanist as well, but there are young gay youth who may be confused and frustrated and these conventions help them. its the "it gets better" before dan savage owned it lol

plus the beauty industry was(still is) the pioneering industry that treated gays equally before any other business.

why not cats? oh you like control, cats hate that lol

 

[StationToStation]

...

I've never heard the word "queer" used in a negative context. To be fair, I don't really understand why it's a part of the rainbow; I always thought it stood for "questioning". I always thought "queer" was an all-inclusive term for the entire spectrum of alternative sexualities.

wow i like that questioning!!! but the school admin did say queer in the text.

 

[quasar]

I was also given to believe that the Q was for questioning. Frankly I'm only just coming round to having a T added never mind a Q. In a few years time we'll have the whole bloody alphabet with all the minorities we seem to be adopting!

 

[jasoncrew03]

Whats the difference between queer and gay?

 

[StationToStation]

I was also given to believe that the Q was for questioning. Frankly I'm only just coming round to having a T added never mind a Q. In a few years time we'll have the whole bloody alphabet with all the minorities we seem to be adopting!

lol omg a thru z

 

[Swellegant]

When I was a baby gayling in college (during the Clinton era, when DADT was considered a groundbreaking advance in gay rights), a lesbian classmate used the term "queer" to apply to me, and I got offended. It had always been the equivalent of "faggot" in my ear, a word used almost interchangeably with it. But she explained that we can take back words and use them however we want.

And the more I thought about it, the more I liked the word: it has more POW, more punch, more afflatus. "Gay" can sound a little mealymouth in some contexts, and it's become gender-specific; "queer" is a smack in the face and can apply equally to everyone in the movement, bisexuals and queens and PFLAGgers, from the DL to the FTM, the bulliest of dykes to the girliest of fag-hags.

I self-identify as gay, but I do refer to myself sometimes as queer. It has an Us-versus-Them feel that is sometimes satisfying.

 

[SilverWolf]

I was also given to believe that the Q was for questioning. Frankly I'm only just coming round to having a T added never mind a Q. In a few years time we'll have the whole bloody alphabet with all the minorities we seem to be adopting!

I think the official acronym is LGBTQQIA. Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual/Transgendered Queer Questioning Intersex Ally

LGBT and LGBTQ is more common. And the Q usually means questioning.

 

[SilverWolf]

Whats the difference between queer and gay?

Seconded. I too have always heard it used for "questioning"

.

Gay pretty much a man or man attracted to the same sex. Queer refers to a person (man, woman, third gender, genderqueer, other) who can be gay, bisexual, poly sexual, pansexual, or other and generally opposes mimicking a heterosexual/hetereonormative society, and generally opposes gender binary norms (basically opposes what society labels appropriate masculine behavior for men and appropriate feminine behavior for women)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer

 

[SilverWolf]

Am I the only one who has seen courses that examine LGBT cinema, history, and gender issues often called Queer Studies being offered at some colleges?

 

[Swellegant]

Am I the only one who has seen courses that examine LGBT cinema, history, and gender issues often called Queer Studies being offered at some colleges?

That's what it was called when I was in college. I think that's how I got used to the word, seeing it in the catalog all the time. "Queer" was the fashionable intellectual word for the 90s. We also said "paradigm" a lot. You can almost tell what years a person went to college by the catchwords they use.

 

[Seasoned]

Q is for queer. I like it if you like it. Hey, it's a big rent and the more the merrier.

 

[SilverWolf]

That's what it was called when I was in college. I think that's how I got used to the word, seeing it in the catalog all the time. "Queer" was the fashionable intellectual word for the 90s. We also said "paradigm" a lot. You can almost tell what years a person went to college by the catchwords they use.

Interesting. I didn't know the word Queer was used back in the 90s for college courses. I'm in college now and I see the term Queer studies.

BTW, off topic but thank you for your posts in my "Am I a prude?" thread They really were a help.

 

[maxpowr9]

"Queer" I always assumed to be the 'other' sexual orientation, meaning whatever you wanted to call it that wasn't the "big 3". Some call it "questioning" which I think is a bit silly.

 

[BearBoi]

I think that by continually expanding our platform, we dilute our message to a point of obscurity (at best), or a joke (at worst).

IMO, LGB says it all.

We are not a fetish community.
We are not a flavour of sexual kink.
We are not people with medically diagnosable and treatable conditions.

We are simply a minority of people with a naturally occurring variation of sexual orientation.

Even including 'transgendered' is a stretch, to me. As I recently posted in the thread, Gay Rights Causes You Disagree With?:

I mostly disagree with including transgendered people in the LGBT community.

Allow me to clarify; I absolutely support civil equality for trans-people. I absolutely believe that transgendered people are real, honest, sincere, and in some cases, even scientifically proven to exist as they claim to be -- a male or female brain in the wrong gendered body. For example, there have been multiple studies which prove that many trans-people have differently structured brains that match the opposite gender of their bodies.

But...

Are they a different form of sexuality?

Most identify as heterosexual, yet assigned to the wrong body by birth. Their brains may be the opposite gender, but their feelings and attractions and ability to fall in love remains heterosexual. (Gay trans people notwithstanding.)

Transgendered people are gaining wider recognition in the medical community as a real medical fact, diagnosable by qualified medical professionals and even treatable via therapy (coming to terms with ones transgendered nature and accepting it), hormone replacement and (in some cases) surgery. Some governments even pay for corrective surgery to those diagnosed as trans.

Homosexuality is not the same thing by a long shot, and the day we suggest it is, is the day we set our own struggle for equality back 100 years. What equals acceptance for trans-people in our society is not what translates to equality for us.

Quite the contrary.

Equating homosexuality to a medically diagnosed condition is exactly what anti-gay physicians have been trying to do for a 100 years. We are people, fully functional and perfectly healthy. We deserve equality on that basic, fundamental level – not by virtue of having a diagnosable medical issue, which can used to defeat that very goal.

As for adding Queer...

Don't get me wrong: if you want to represent a wide rainbow of sexual diversity and various flavours of personal identity, than go for it. But instead of mangling various new letters into an already bloated acronym, why not just create a new thing catering to that specific goal? As it is most people don't know what LGB stands for, let alone tossing in half the alphabet.

 

[Rex]

I've heard of LGBT... never LGBTQ, and to me, queer sounds worse than homosexual. How about "undecided" if you're not sure what you are?

 

[Willie Boy]

Q? Oh, that's just queer. For a moment I thought you were going to try and tell us the Q Continuum (as seen on ST:tNG) was joining forces with the gay community.

 

[SilverWolf]

I've heard of LGBT... never LGBTQ, and to me, queer sounds worse than homosexual. How about "undecided" if you're not sure what you are?

Technically undecided is covered in the second Q which stands for Questioning.

 

[BINOWGAYLATER]

I know a "professional" person - mid 20's - who does much work with gay teens and he has mentioned, on several occasions, LGBTQI -- adding Queer and Intersexed......

i don't get the whole "queer" thing - despite all the explanations -- my only association with the word is negative --- because it gets very tiresome (in the seventh grade) to be called a fat-fucking-four-eyed-queer !! <<<<this because I was a lousy basketball player, and worse baseball player, IDK !

 

[mike1491]

At my school the Q stands for 'questioning'... queer is just redundant.