I’ve skipped over the paragraphs about drag because I don’t like drag.

Harder still is the collective reckoning with how seemingly gender-free terminology is in fact gendered.

Well duh. Language is gendered.

Training yourself not to throw “dude” or “hey, guys” around too loosely in mixed company isn’t easy, but it’s good to see people making the effort.

That’s not good at all. It’s neutral. If you want to stop doing that, fine. But if you want to keep doing that, that’s also fine. I’ll say "dude", "guys" or lads" if I want. What’s bad, however, is people being forced to walk on eggshells around each other so as not to offend some hypersensitive gender freaks.

What were once near-universally called “gay bars” are increasingly referred to as “queer bars,”

Yeah, let’s replace the word "gay" with a homophobic slur.

“Gay” was never going to cover it

It covers it for gay men and spaces that are made for us.

and, in retrospect, feels almost stunning in the way it erases lesbians or femme-identified people from the scene.

Lesbians can have their own spaces. They should be allowed to have their own spaces. And what the fuck does the author mean by "femme-identified people"? Effeminate gay men? They were already covered by the word "gay". Trans identified men? Not my problem.

Even pre-pandemic, there were only 15 true lesbian bars left in America

That’s because TRAs kept colonising lesbian bars and fucking them up beyond recognition. If TRAs and gender freaks left lesbians alone, there wouldn’t be just 15 lesbian bars left in a country of 330 million people.

and their clientele should be welcomed if the remaining spaces are to avoid closure, too.

No. Let their clientele set up their own bars and spaces, and leave lesbians alone.

”Queer” itself has shifted a bit, too. Initially a slur, it was later reclaimed by activists — and it always had an academic and militant bent, as a badge of early HIV/AIDS die-ins and protests.

I liked the Q-word better when it was a slur. Because at least back when it was a slur, we weren’t being talked over by communists, neoliberals and spoilt brats.

Its implied rejection of middle-class, heteronormative values has since expanded to include a differentiation from mainstream gays and lesbians who lead lives that are otherwise relatively indistinguishable from straight America. But its brash energy is gone, worn off by "Queer Eye" and by its appearance in New York Times headlines.

Ironically, it’s usually members of the middle class and the upper classes who are destroying gay, lesbian and bisexual communities from the inside. Poisoning the wells of our communities and making us look bad. Making us look bad so that straight normies won’t want to support us.

English is a relatively nongendered language, at least compared to French and Italian.

That’s a big part of the problem. I wished English had gendered nouns like French and Spanish. Then the Anglosphere wouldn’t be in the mess we're in today.

Gay male culture has broadened a lot in the past few years, and not just because “masc 4 masc” energy now looks like internalized homophobia in a more liberated world.

No. In a more liberated world, nobody would give you grieve over your sexual orientation or your preferences. You would be allowed to have a type. But nowadays gay men who are masculine, and gay men who are only into masculine gay men, are shamed. We’re accused of having "internalised homophobia". Even though we acknowledge our sexuality? What is homophobic about a gay man wanting to be masculine or liking masculine men? Isn’t it homophobic to tell gay men that they have to be effeminate and only date effeminate men?

Peter-Astrid Kane (they/them) is the communications manager for San Francisco Pride and a former editor of SF Weekly.

Of COURSE he uses they them pronouns. Fuck people like him.