Lesbian v Queer: Sry I'm not Sry

Lesbian v Queer: Sry I’m not Sry

lucy-flawless:

mikroblogolas:

I know I’m on a break from tumblr and I have an exam tomorrow, but in the meantime, the image I posted the other day has exploded into a lot of (mainly awesome but some completely missing the point) discussion, and I want to clarify a few things. I have a long post coming up when I have time to actually take a break from studying, but until then, here is the short version.

1. The image is NOT saying “Fuck queer people.” It’s saying “Fuck turning ‘queer’ into a monolithic identity in which you are not allowed to determine what you personally want or do not want.”

2. It is NOT saying “lesbian” is better than “queer.” (Or that they’re even mutually exclusive!) It’s about reclaiming “lesbian” in a “queerer-than-thou” radical space where your identity has to follow the party line or it is not OK (as well as in a context of homophobia and misogyny). It’s AGAINST identity-policing, not trying to enforce a new kind of it. There is NOTHING wrong with the identity “queer.” The problem is when the ONLY identity is “queer” and there is only ONE WAY to be queer.

3. To the person who said the image is slut-shaming, WTF? No. Resisting the pressure to be sexually available to everyone is NOT slut-shaming. In your world, is sex positivity a place where no one (least of all women, especially queer women) have any say in who they want to fuck? Fuck that. That doesn’t sound like sex positivity to me; it sounds like rape culture. There is NOTHING slut-shaming about women as autonomous sexual beings, thanks.

“Fuck turning ‘queer’ into a monolithic identity in which you are not allowed to determine what you personally want or do not want.”

Uh, that’s the exact opposite goal of a queer label. Queerness is about self-determination from not fitting into narrow margins, even narrow homosexual-identified margins. In short, if that is the point of this, it makes no fucking sense and it doesn’t convey that at all.

Lesbian does not necessarily equal queer. Queer an gay or lesbian are no longer interchangable terms. Queerness is a broader definer, so I guess if nonbinary folx having an uncomplicated way to identify is noninclusive of lesbians (who already have an explicit identifier and more socially acceptable sexuality), then I kind of don’t care, sry.

[Links are in bolded text, and I highly recommend you check them out.]

Queerness is about self-determination from not fitting into narrow margins, even narrow homosexual-identified margins

Right, okay, so it’s totally horrible for someone to call queer ‘monolithic’, but it’s a-ok to call lesbianism ‘narrow’. Yes, right, I think I follow that train of thought.
Except for the part where it doesn’t make any sense. Right there, by your choice of words, you’re implying that queer > lesbian, because the one is so open-ended.
Well, what I don’t understand is: if queer is so open-ended and all-inclusive, then why does it have such a problem with women who choose to identify in one specific way? Why is lesbianism specifically so bad?

I guess if nonbinary folx having an uncomplicated way to identify is noninclusive of lesbians

Oh my goodness, you don’t care, sry. No one is saying that people can’t identify as queer, lol. They’re saying that it’s hypocritical of people to bash lesbians for choosing to identify in a certain way. No one says YOU MUST ALL BE LESBEANS NAU!1!, they’re saying “Don’t snarl at us because this is our identification”.
I really don’t know how to make it any clearer for you, sry, and I don’t know that I rly care to.

who already have an explicit identifier and more socially acceptable sexuality

Oh, yes. Lesbianism is so socially accepted. Absolutely.
Ask Eudy Simelane about how cool it is to be a lesbia— oh, wait, no, you can’t, she’s dead because someone thought lesbianism was so~o acceptable.
That’s okay, though, because you can ask Teresa Butz! Oh, hold on, she’s dead too, by the hands of a man who testified at his trial that, ” “I was instructed by my God, the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, to attack enemies. I followed the instructions by God.””

What I am NOT doing here is trying to create a heirarchy. All of us are deviants to these people, and the knife that killed Teresa Butz would make no distinction between a queer woman and a lesbian.
What I AM trying to do is refute that nonsense assertion that because there’s porn of lesbians, it’s somehow safer to hold your girlfriend’s hand when you walk down the street.

And even on tumblr, a lesbian gets aggressive verbal abuse from the queer contingent if she dare say she’d really rather not have sexual contact with a penis (regardless of the gender of it’s owner).

So: What I am saying to you is that you can take your sry, and you can take your identity, and you can lean to accept that not everyone’s going to feel comfortable living with an identity that’s been foisted on them by a group of people who really don’t care how they feel about it.
And I’m not even sry.

If I never see the “but men wank off to you so you’re privileged” argument again in my life, from gay men or queer people or straight men or ANYONE, it will be too soon. Entitlement to women’s bodies, be they alone or in contact with other women, is nothing new and frankly not that fun.

Also I really am sick and tired of the “Fuck a Trans person, be inclusive for life!” mentality. I’m no one’s badge of honor.

(Source: not-queer-as-in)