Hearing younger gay and bisexual people refer to themselves as ‘queer’ or throw the word around so casually will probably always leave a bad taste in my mouth, but I understand the idea behind reclaiming slurs. I don’t like it and I don’t agree with it, and I don’t ever want to be referred to as “queer”, but if some gay people find it empowering, then so be it. What makes me feverishly angry though is hearing fucking straight people using that word without the slightest hesitation. Especially when these are the same straight people who used to hurl that word at me and my gay friends at every chance they got, who enunciated each letter with the kind of aggressive toxicity that makes you naturally freeze up with fear, who would spit that word into the air while they threw bottles at us, beat us, groped us, threatened us for simply existing. I will never accept that shit, and I think it’s a tragedy that straight people ever get to say that word, regardless of intent.

The other problem I have is that “queer” doesn’t mean what it used to. It used to only refer to gay and lesbian people; when you said “queer”, you know what it meant. Now it’s just nonsense. It means anything and everything, supposedly, and applies to people who aren’t gay, and to a host of sexualities invented by bored people on the internet who want to feel special. I don’t think LGB studies/theory should be called “Queer Theory” or whatever, either. Some women have reclaimed the word “bitch”, but we don’t call women’s studies “Bitch Studies”.