On the one hand, I strongly believe that each generation of activists gets to define their own terms. Every couple of decades our vocabulary shifts, and that's a good thing! That's people coming into their own as the driving force of the movement and that's how movements actually last longer than a single generation. So that's why the queer & trans vocabulary I learned in the waning days of second-wave feminism is dated at best, and a lot of it's even offensive -- and so are the words I learned to replace them. Feature, not bug.
On the other hand, history *does* matter and I dunno how to feel when I encounter (frex) "queer's a slur, don't use it." (cont'd)
@sev queer was hard fought and i agree, but all the fighting was lost in that sorta lost generation around 2000 when the internet started being a place of community
@sev and its interesitng how much of that is still being rebuilt, because there was community but most resources were still local or word of mouth. not that I'm that old, just... have been seeing a lot of people talking about specifically that.
@Nire Yeah. And the local communities were broken. Because the people who would have otherwise been my elders were all busy dying or nursing the dying and so people my age have no fucking idea how to mentor. Or, I guess, even why -- we had to figure it all out as we went along, so why shouldn't you? Such a disservice me & mine have done to the world.
@sev but also those still left from before, to the others. its... complicated as hell
@sev and now theres sort of another happening! where all the old resources were dying and didnt get scraped by archive because they're on tumblr/etc or didnt get enough readers
@sev along with newer people doing the opposite, where because people use the wrong words they dont listen <_< which they're free to do, but the reinventing square wheels thing is like, something thats been happening every two years >_>
@sev yeah as a lot of our bookmarks started dying you noticed a lot of 'ameture archivist' popping up in twitter bios :P
@starkatt sad tho, so brace i guess.
@sev the segment of folk who've perennially bristled at queer folks using the word 'queer' to describe themselves (or to encapsulate a community which rejects cisnormativity & heteronormativity) have been older cis gay men, disproportionately white, and generally who bore witness to the peak of AIDS in the 1980s & early 1990s. in select locales, this group of gay men advanced a conservation of homonormativity in cis (white) gay districts in major cities going back to, well, the 1970s. not coincidentally, they've long been one of the two segments of the queer community which have never dealt well w/ the existence of folks like queer trans women & enby folk
@sev and i can remember using the word 'queer' and 'genderqueer' to describe myself around 1998 or 1999 and running into local cis white gay men, then in their forties, who'd get terribly bent out of shape at how i described myself. some would go on to say even nastier stuff (the big one being "you chose to trans because it's more acceptable than being seen as a gay man"). i had a name for this demographic, and it was both accurate and not very nice. -_-
@sev it's a continuum. i've seen a lot in the last 25yrs. remnants of this stuff still lingers, but they're no longer running things the way they were as recently as a half dozen to ten years ago
@sev that would be the other segment i didn't mention earlier, yeah, and cisterfs are also disproportionately white and invested in conservation, scarcity, purity, and control
...we worked hard to reclaim 'queer' and I'm not really willing to give it back up. I don't need you to use it. But it's still my word for me.
On the gripping hand, I'm pleased (even though I'm sometimes confused) that 'gay' has lost the connotations it had when I was a baby queer. See, back then, 'gay' was the word assimilationists used -- it signified you weren't one of *those* "scary homos". You weren't "queer as in fuck you". So I hear people nowadays self-id as 'gay' and my first thought is, wait, I didn't think you were that conservative? And then I figuratively slap myself and try to catch up with the times.