I'm not gay. Get over it.

[kaberett]

I've been fortunate enough to hear from gay kids all across the country. A lot of them don't have supportive families, but some do. I cherish the good stories, but there's often a moment in those good stories that makes my heart hurt: when they tell me how happy they are that their parents "still" love them -- because all those kids knew that not loving them was an option.

Amelia at HuffPo (yes, I know).

This says something that hurts my heart, too: both because it is so achingly true - of myself, of so many other kids - but also because it erases me down to "gay".

"Gay" isn't good shorthand for either GSM or LGBT+, and I do so wish people wouldn't do it.

Comments

please ignore if I'm being insensitive

[liv]

I don't know if I should say this when you're heart-hurting. I... find this a bit difficult, I think. I am trying to follow your clearly argued views and use GSM rather than gay when I'm writing in general terms, but I am struggling with entirely rejecting gay as a shorthand. I am entirely happy not to refer to you personally as gay, that's not even an issue, but for the general case, hm. First there's talking to people who aren't particularly in the culture and would have no idea what GSM means, but that's not the major reason why I am a bit resistant to the ideas in this post.

No, it's that I do feel myself to be gay. Not at all because I am a man who experiences exclusive sexual attraction to men, obviously. But, do you remember the discussion we had when you were talking about the group of people who experience oppression as women? I feel like I experience oppression as gay, basically. The people who have a problem with me, either individually or institutionally, don't care that I am a cissexual but possibly not entirely cisgendered woman who is attracted to people independently of gender and has taken part in mostly non-heteronormative sex with men, women and people whose gender identities need a paragraph to describe. They think less of me because I'm gay, as in not-straight, as in not feminine enough whatever the hell that means.

In some ways, queer is better as a generic, but it's a reclaimed term and sometimes I'm talking to people, especially older people, who either have been hurt by it or used it to hurt. I fear I'm sounding like those annoying people who are all nostalgic about how gay used to mean jolly and happy. But gay has in some ways an honourable history as a generic (as well as a specific) term. It isn't good shorthand, no, just, argh.

Re: please ignore if I'm being insensitive

[kaberett]

Mmm. I wonder how much of it is a generational thing? In that I very much grew up with "gay" as a catch-all insult (in the playground and elsewhere), with the fierceness and pride of reclamation in "queer" - which, yes, feels more inclusive (though not perfect; Trans Stuff Ect Ect).

[do not brain for more response. feel you deserve more response. brain all gon.]

[liv]

Generational is very possible. "Gay" wasn't a playground insult when I was a kid or a generic term for bad when I was a teenager or student. "Gay" was a whispered speculation about a characteristic that people might have but it was terribly shocking to even insinuate it. And then it was a term of identity; when I was about your age right-on people were saying LGB or LGBT (and I can't quite remember when the plus bit showed up), but the ordinary man on the street used gay to mean people-like-me, either in a positive or more often a negative sense.

I have seen too many people visibly wince at "queer"; I like the pride and reclamation, but if I'm in the company of any GSM people over 40, I hesitate. And my grandmother says with a sneer "is he queer or something?" about anyone whose behaviour looks suspect to her, and she no longer quite has the cognitive capacity to remember she's not supposed to say that.

The other thing about gay is that a guy I knew slightly at university convinced Israeli society to start using the term "gay" in Hebrew because it has a homophone which is a classical word for proud or exalted. I like that, even if I don't like the way it's gendered or using male as the default.

Sorry to hear you're short on brain just now, though.

[kaberett]

*nods*

I'm so, so endeared by beautiful, beautiful convergences/coincidences like that - and I have rather more patience for it when it's done explicitly in the sense of pride! But then I get twitchy about e.g. London Pride being referred to as "Gay Pride" or similar.

I write a little more about my specific issues below, though I'm sure they've all occurred to you already!

Re: please ignore if I'm being insensitive

[pipisafoat]

me too gay vs queer
also that faggot is a big insult among the college kids these days. something can be so faggy. usually clothes.

i'm pretty glad to be out of the college scene. not that i was ever particularly in it? but being less exposed to it.

[liv]

I can't believe that faggot has come back into currency, I thought we'd basically got rid of that. Gah, humans can be awful sometimes.

Re: please ignore if I'm being insensitive

[kaberett]

& as ever, thank you so much for treating me with so much respect and so much willingness to listen; most of the time (but perhaps especially today, see post about gabapentin, eurgh) I really don't feel like I deserve it. Thank you.

[liv]

Boooo crappy side-effects, I'm really sorry that medication you need is making you feel undeserving. I do really appreciate that you come back to my comments when you're feeling more up to giving a full response, thank you so much for that.

I would very much hope that I would treat anyone talking about difficult topics like this with respect and I would be willing to listen, I'd be a horrible person otherwise. You in particular, though, you who are so thoughtful and such a great activist about all kinds of GSM and other social justice issues, it's far more than that bare minimum of respect. I seriously admire you and want to emulate you in the ways you navigate the world and talk so sensitively about language and identity. I am extremely glad that my engaging very seriously with your posts about these topics is coming across as respectful; I know some people find me argumentative in a way they perceive as aggressive or invalidating.

[kaberett]

speechless appreciation ♥

-- no, wait, except for this: I look up to and admire you, too. And - I think, knowing what I know about you, and how carefully you phrase things, that I would find it very difficult to find you aggressive or invalidating. I really, really appreciate that you challenge me to think more, and to think deeper.

[kaberett]

-- &, of course, it is precisely because you challenge me that I am so keen to give what you say more thought when I have enough coherence to do so, because it invariably makes me a better person regardless of my conclusions.

[liv]

Thank you so much! I am incredibly touched by all your responses to me in this thread.

And it's really good that we're on the same wavelength when it comes to having this kind of discussion. I was surprisingly thrown by this discussion a few months back. I don't even know brainwane personally, she's a big name in getting women involved in Open Source stuff, but somehow... even when the whole discussion arises from my acknowledging that my communication preferences aren't universal, she's pretty much coming back to me and saying that what I feel to be my culture simply doesn't exist and I'm just an awful person for trying to make connections with people by engaging critically with their ideas.

[kaberett]

Mmm, so my big take-home from that conversation is that arguing is - not necessarily disrespectful, and a term that covers a multitude of sins. Like, I don't think we've just had an argument; I don't think I was arguing with footpad; we may have been disagreeing, or at least not actually agreeing - but we were doing so in good faith, with willingness to listen and to try to understand. I suspect that "arguing" has here been interpreted to mean the combative & aggressive style that footpad describes using - the "there is one truth and WE SHALL SET IT FREE" mode, rather than "okay, awesome, how can we make this better", or "okay, I think I am not understanding: here is my awareness of the situation; how does it differ from yours?" sort of thing.

And - in that conversation? It looks to me as though you were the one engaging in good faith throughout. :-/ So. Yes.

Apologies

[brainwane]

I just came across this discussion and realized I'd badly misworded my last comment in that thread. I'm sorry. I meant to try to convey that I would have a hard time listening & communicating productively when interacting with the strategies described. And I see why it seemed like I wasn't asking these questions in good faith. I was, but I was not conveying that well. I'm sorry. I've also posted a followup apology in the thread referenced.

Apologies

[brainwane]

In case you haven't already gotten a notification -- I'm sorry.

Re: please ignore if I'm being insensitive

[kaberett]

I agree that GSM is problematic in terms of acceptance (see my conversation with pip below! - pip being the person who runs the AWESOME non-binary/genderqueer FONSFAQ).

And yes, very much, about experiencing oppression as -- again, I think the comment I linked to below expresses things slightly more clearly, in slightly more depth, as to quite why this makes my heart hurt, although I do of course recognise the cultural dichotomy.

Basically, I think "gay" as shorthand probably harms me personally more than it helps me, even conceptually - but, again, as I've been talking about with footpad (as I am working on, over and over, at the moment), I'm aware that diversity and plurality of experience requires diversity and plurality of language, and just because something hurts me doesn't mean it's not valuable to other people - and doesn't preclude me recognising and respecting that value.

(-- I have just worked this out: I suspect some of my heart-ache is over the fact that that's an article in HuffPo, which I tend to think of as at least trying to be aware of, sensitive to, these things - which is why I'm more distressed by it than I would be on e.g. the BBC, where it would just piss me off!)

I think we have talked below about use of reclaimed terms?

Yes, all of this

[liv]

I agree very much!

Acceptance of new terms is always going to take time, and it may be that GSM isn't the one that rises to the top eventually. I'll gloss jargon if it seems useful to my audience, in preference to continuing to use outdated and offensive terms.

Your discussion with footpad is absolutely amazing, and your ability to engage on that sort of level is one of the things I really admire about you. We need diverse language, yes, but we also need inclusive umbrella terms, and sometimes we need not to pigeonhole people. It's never going to be easy and I think it's magnificent that you keep trying and at the same time you're so compassionate with people who haven't put in quite as much work as you have.

Re: Yes, all of this

[kaberett]

I should maybe not give the impression that I'm willing to give such thoughtful responses to everyone I have that kind of conversation with ;) -- footpad is someone I am very, very fond of (hello wolf, in the somewhat unlikely event that you read this!) - all else aside, he met me off a train in Zuerich Hbf at 10pm when I arrived in Switzerland for two months, and helped me find where I was supposed to be living; and a few weeks after that, the second time we met, he did every single one of the right things shortly after I'd been sexually assaulted, and is a major reason I'm less fucked up by it than I very easily otherwise could have been. And, wow, that was just under five years ago, and we'd known each other online for a while before that and - he thinks when he is challenged and he does engage critically and I trust him to always, always engage with me in good faith on this kind of thing. So. Yes. He gets all the time in the world; other people frequently get shorter shrift ;)

General mutual approbation!

[hairyears]

Now there's a phrase for me to think about:

…it erases me down to "gay".

I self-identify as straight, and would choose not to call others 'queer', as I remember being called that, and I clearly remember it being pejorative.

Others can, of course, call themselves whatever they damn' well like: it's their right, and their privilege. And, like all privileges, best exercised with a little self-awareness and a lot of thought about those less privileged.

Meanwhile… Erased down to "gay". Yeah, that. Worse things happen, but that's a thing that's nonetheless worth noticing, and calling out, and pushing-back against.

There's work to do on awareness and erasure in the straight and not-so-straight community; and, I think, among a small but influential community who see mainstream acceptance and suburban respectability as privileges that they must 'defend' by erasing - or even undermining and attacking - others who are not so very different to themselves. And that's a very queer thing indeed, in several pejorative interpretations of the word.

[kaberett]

Yes. All of these things. Thank you.

-- and, yes, it's very important to me that, especially, the trans parts of my identity aren't rolled into sexuality, in part because of how harmful it's been - how prejudicial to accessing medical care it's been, for so long, and how prejudicial it still is, in my direct personal experience.

I... cope better with having my sexuality rolled into "gay", which can at least be understood as non-normative, but it still makes me grit my teeth: because then people will ask me how I can be gay and date men, or feed further into bi-/pansexuals or otherwise queer people just need to ~make up their minds~; and so on, and so forth. Again, this all feeds into my Theme Of The Moment of carving out larger, less exclusive spaces, that we can all occupy.

[liv]

This is crucial, and I think it relates to the very difficult discussion on Genderfork referenced elsewhere. My impression from the outside is that there's a nearly unfixable debate about trans inclusion, not just in language but in, well, reality as well. Because trans* folk have for so long been marginalized within activist spaces as well as mainstream society that unless people explicitly say "including trans* people" then it's the default assumption that they are hostile. At the same time, if you have to keep drawing attention to the fact that you're including trans* people, you're making a trans a very deeply marked and non-normative category, and that itself contributes to exclusion. Like there was a row in the early days of DW because they didn't explicitly include gender identity (as opposed to just gender) in their diversity statement, so some trans activists concluded that DW is a transphobic culture, even though at the time DW had more trans than cis people listed on the staff page.

I am very disinclined to go around saying "women including trans women" or even "people including trans people" all the time! But if I don't, if I just say "women" or just make a generalization about people in general, especially if I'm talking about anything vaguely feminist or related to gender, I may well come across as transphobic.

I've even seen binary trans people objecting to the term "GSM" because they feel that they're just women (or men, as the case may be), which is not a particularly minority gender identity. Trans identity rolled into sexuality absolutely, I can easily see how that's harmful. Equally, there have always been trans people in the GSM activism scene, and it's not acceptable for GSM communities and activism to be for non-straight cis people only. But saying "LGBT" or "GSM including trans*" comes right back round to the problem that it conflates gender identity with sexuality.

[pipisafoat]

what is gsm

nothing on the erasure front but damn i hate how not being loved is an option for something so, so, so ultimately trivial. by which i mean, it's not hurting anybody. and it's not a choice. and stuff.

(sorry pain and things. words are somewhat whatever but i still lazy engage.)

[kaberett]

gender & sexual minorities

avoids the endless unmemorisable acronym/privileging some groups over others argument

also makes you sound like a mobile phone

sorry shd remember that hover is not actually accessible

(engaging fine and good i am currently kinda epic brainfail and people is superhelpful <333)

[pipisafoat]

i was like "are you a link? click click click? well i don't mind asking questions." hadn't heard that before. to me gsm is a fictional magazine whoops too much tv. hover, (and then i lost the thought)

(i have two half-migraines secondary to ovaries. or whatever. despite scanning "entirely normal" (my ovaries are beautiful, they tell me; whatever that is supposed to make me feel. do people have feelings about their ovaries related to the word beautiful? seems weird for something not visible from the surface)
um, despite all that, my doc was like "let's take a week off between meds" (for valid reasons that i do agree with even though i am grumpy as hell about it just now) and hello reproductive system this is not necessary i knew you were still there. stop co-opting half my body to remind me. not cool.
(complain complain sorry again) (maybe if i complain about me you, um, idk logic falls apart. your brain will unfail if i complain! well, if it works, i take all the credit.)

[kaberett]

well you got an only-slightly-wobbly smile out of me so that's you winning the prize for today

questions always okay ♥

stupid fucking ovaries

complains alwys okay to ♥