For the very first time today, I found myself frustrated by the absense of the letter “Q” in an acronym. It doesn’t take much deduction to work out that I am referring to LGBT, in this case the pang caused when I saw a tweet about LGBT Labour.
I know it seems petty, and I always thought it was, but, while there is no intention to exclude anyone, the slip of the “queer” does reflect a general ignorance of the queer community in wider society. Dozens of times I’ve had to explain my own sexuality and gender identity to people. Most assume I’m gay on first meeting me, when I say that I’m not, they jump to bisexual, should I stress that I’m not bi either, they then assume I’m straight and that they’ve insulted me horribley. I used to let it slide and settle for bi, but I’m proud of my sexuality as pansexual, and am now more than willing to spend time explaining it to those out of the loop. I’m fairly certain even my most liberal thinking of friends have had this conversation with me in the past. So no, I don’t call myself lesbian, gay or bisexual, thus I fall outside of your title.
Then there comes “T”. I’m not trans, but nor is my gender identity straightforward. The term is genderqueer and it’s another one I’ve had to explain often, usually when someone sees me binding and packing for the first time.
While it’s true that a sadly large proportion of the straight community is hostile to the LGBTQ community in some form, be it the homophobic, biphobic or transphobic, and this is why groups like this are so important, there is also a worrying amount of negativity within the queer community. Many gay people are biphobic and a fairly sizeable chunk of non-straight people are transphobic, and the same goes for reactions to pansexuals, genderqueers, asexuals and so on. In the USA there are Queer-Straight Alliances to fight inequality, which sound to me an excellent idea and definitely something we should try over here. But the recognition of the “Q” would be a good start.
So many organisations go to and fro about including “queer” (sometimes designated as questioning, though queer seems to cover that better). I’ve never entirely understood what the issue was. Talking to a friend of mine (@McWilloughby on Twitter), he suggested that “part of the problem is that people not in the know are too used to “queer” being a derrogatory term for a gay person.” I suspect he’s probably right, it’s another case of terms being hijacked as insults, as “gay” has been too. But it’s about time it was reclaimed. The most welcoming community I have ever been a part of, the Post Secret Community LGBTQ boards, have only added the “Q” in the past month or so, having been active for years. Many student groups still don’t have it, and neither do those attached to most political organisations. Though there is no harmful intention, if we really want equality, we must be completely inclusive. Alliances are the ideal, but in the meantime, let us queers join in too please.
The title of this post comes from Andrea Gibson’s poem, Swingset, which fairly accurately explains me, as it goes. http://genderkid.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/swingset/
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