Queer as a Three Dollar Bill

Queer is a funny word --- or should I say a “queer” word. The first time I made mention of “The Queer Community” in front of an intern I was supervising, her chin about hit the floor and she corrected me to LGBTQ as politely as she could. I got a very different reaction when I causally mentioned to a group of teenage patients that queer was a slur. I think I blew their young minds. They couldn’t imagine the word having any derogatory connotations. Language is fickle and fluid. “Queer” is my word and I love it and embrace it with joy. I am old enough to remember when the word was a filthy slur. It’s a slur that I have had hurled my way long before I came out. Next to the F- slur, queer is probably the one I’ve heard the most. I am also old enough to remember marches in the street where the then GLB chanted “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” I was told “those people” were dangerous deviants who violated God’s laws and threatened to destroy society by corroding its moral virtue.   I also “knew” that the AIDS epidemic was God’s curse sent to wipe out those vile sinners. Finally, I secretly feared that I was one of them. Why else was I sneaking around wearing my mom’s clothes? Childhood was confusing.

Growing up, I wondered so much at the fact the black folks used the N-word with each other. Why was it ok for them but definitely not ok for me? It took me a great deal of life, and to be honest the loss/abdication of a lot of privilege, to realize the power of reclaiming a word as ones’ own. Slurs are words weaponized by society. The intent of a slur is to put someone in their place and to let them know that they are inferior to the speaker of the slur. Reclaiming the word – stealing it from the oppressor and taking it as your own – robs it of its power.

Early in my transition before I was full time femme, I would boy mode all day at work and then come home and change into a dress.  I still had my full bushy Sikh beard. One day my daughter #2 – the one who is the most uneasy about my transition – begged me to take her to the gas station down the street. She desperately wanted me to change before taking her. I refused, I told her that this is what I was wearing and I am not changing. She can decide to go get snacks with me in a dress or she could stay home and not be seen with me. The choice was hers. Reluctantly she agreed to the outing with me in a dress. On our way home someone drove by hanging outside the car window (was this the passenger side of his best friend’s ride – perhaps) yelling “queer” at me. This white man – felt the entitlement and need to shout slurs at me as I was walking with 3 small girls. I suppose I was supposed to feel angry or belittled, perhaps ashamed? I felt none of that. My reaction was to shrug and think well thanks captain obvious, you’re probably a scrub. Although, I fear this likely had an impact on my daughter who still refuses to be seen with me at school functions. That’s the tricky thing about oppression, no matter how good we get at coping with it there is always collateral damage. It’s not lost on me that this is one of the primary reasons people told me to wait to transition until my kids are grown.

The power of reclaiming a word is that it becomes an adjective with no more weight than saying my hair is black … or perhaps … you’re wearing a turban – oh my. It is silly to me how much people try to avoid calling my favorite headgear a turban. I mean there is nothing wrong about it. I have a turban on my head-this statement is descriptive and factual and if it weren’t it wouldn’t be particularly offensive if you called it that. The statement that I am queer is the same. Yep, that’s me – queer as a three-dollar bill and wouldn’t have it any other way.   Trans is another one like this. I find it funny how people try to avoid calling me trans. They often say “people who use pronouns” – which makes them sound ridiculous because everyone uses pronouns. Just call a “he” a “she” or a “she” a “he” and see how fast cis people start caring about pronouns. I am trans, period, end of story, that is it. It’s no a slur and neither is cis. I am still puzzled at the fact that cis people feel “cis” is a slur. People tell on themselves all the time. You are the one uncomfortable with the word “trans” not me. People don’t want to call me trans because to them being trans is bad.

Gay men are particularly effective at reclaiming words – they call each other bitch, faggot, homo, queen and girl. This is a way of proudly claiming that which others have used to deride and shame them. Gay men call each other bitch or homo as a celebration, as a way of acknowledging that these men have redefined masculinity and celebrate the things they were bullied for. This is so effective that bitch has become a term of endearment amongst most queer folks. It’s the Namaste of queers – The deviant freak in me bows to the deviant freak in you. Hello sibling, I love you – bitch. Code switching and sensitivity to context are vital when utilizing reclaimed words. One of my non-binary friends learned this lesson the hard way when they called their straight girlfriend “bitch” in front of her cis-het brothers. Let’s just say something was lost in transition and it did not go well for my beautifully effeminate AMAB friend.

One of the beautiful things about “queer” is that it is an amorphous term without clear boundaries or definitions. Gender is such a part of how sexuality gets defined. How then does someone who is non-binary define their sexuality? What is the opposite sex of non-binary or for that matter what is the same sex? A lot of times I feel anxiety around having to define myself, I fear trading one restrictive set of rules for another, so Queer is a comfortable non-committal label. 

Queer is more than that, though. It can be a verb – to queer an event or to queer a way of thought. One might say Julia Serano queers feminism by adding her trans perspective and voice to the conversation. Generally, to queer something means to deconstruct it and reimagine it in a way that is more inclusive and equitable; a way that works for you. Queer people are people who do not fit into the rules and roles outlined by main stream American society. Many of us have likely spent a fair amount of our lives trying to destroy ourselves so we would fit into the expected rules. Ultimately, we felt like we had no other choice but to take a long hard look at the rules and reject them. Who says men can’t love men, why must someone be the sex they were assigned at birth, etc?

Because of this, “queer” holds an inherently political meaning as well. Queer people are progressive people, Communists, Socialist, Anarchists. One of my favorite queer jokes goes like this “I don’t understand straight relationships. Which one is the Marxist and which one is the Anarchist.” If you stop and think about it there are many layers to that joke worth laughing about --- it is a very queer joke and I love it! Queer people are subversive by nature. They reject any of societies rules and expectations; this moves beyond gender and sexual norms. Many queer people are polyamorous and their queer social life often revolves around polycules, that is to say a specific group of people bound together by their polyamorous relationships. This is one way queers make chosen families.

Queer people are dedicated to ending oppression of all kind. The queer ethos is best embodied by my favorite queer space in town Under the Umbrella a self-proclaimed “little queer bookstore.” (https://www.undertheumbrellabookstore.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwx5qoBhDyARIsAPbMagCtCdbrHBYmSAWK52GpG7YA3nSGtND_Ya30wTBHk__wZQtKcR6b2PkaAnKSEALw_wcB). They are located across the street from the old location of the homeless shelter, a neighborhood still frequented by many of the unhoused. Outside of the bookstore is a water cooler, box of snacks, and shelf with donated clothing. The bathroom is open to the public, no matter how messy. I have watched the owner of the establishment hustle to clean up after a non-paying unhoused person destroyed the bathroom.  They still require all patrons to where masks. There is are signs on the outside that say “queer joy is a radical act of self-preservation” and a chalkboard sign that says “all are welcome – fight amazon, shop local” and at the bottom ACAB (for the uninitiated this is an anti-cop slogan that stands for All Cops Are Bastards). Inside they sell classic zines from small publishers, self-published materials, and a wide range of queer oriented books. Topics range from queer history to queer sexuality and young adult graphic novels. There are books titled “how to start a protest” and “how not to be arrested at a protest.” The people at the events are the most diverse cadre of individuals that includes people of all ages, abilities and races. It is not uncommon to see a store sponsored ASL interpreter at events. Folks using assistance devices to walk and a wide range of neurodivergent people dipping their toes into the social pool. For the outsiders this is a very safe space, not so much for the conservatives. Another sign on the door reads “NO TERFS” (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists).

                                                      

This brings up an interesting point- not all LGBT folk are queer and not all queers are necessarily LGBT. Yes, I dropped the Q on purpose because that usually means Queer or sometimes Questioning. Caitlyn Jenner is a prime example. She is trans and that certainly makes her LGBT but she supports right wing policies that hurt the community and publicly ridicules other trans people – significantly gatekeeping transness to the privileged few who have access and financing for confirmation surgeries. Most in the trans community would call her Truscum or Transmedicalist, terms reserved for fanatical individuals who exhibit some of the most pernicious forms of transphobia and believe that one must have dysphoria and seek medical procedures or to be trans. These stances make Caitlyn decidedly not queer despite her trans status.  I, on the other hand, have known a small handful of cis-het allies who are well read and ready to toss a Molotov cocktail at the first provocation. These folks embody the queer spirit and are indeed queer despite not necessarily being LGBT, although they typically come from a strongly adjacent community such as polyamory, kink, or furries or they tend to be cis-het partners of queer people.

Queerness has been an essential part of my own personal journey. I’ve mentioned here before that my parents and I considered transition in my young teens. One of the things that held me back was the idea that the only way to be trans was to live stealth. Would I ever be passable enough for this? I would still know I wasn’t a “real woman” and would I be living a lie? At the age of 13 those questions felt impossible as did pleasing my God and being trans. The world has changed and queers are common as a are non-binary folx. Under this paradigm, I could be openly trans and also fail to pass. I would simply be queer. I did not have to conform to the cis-het standards; there was another community ready and willing to receive me exactly the way I am/was. Now I don’t want to be glib here, the loss of relationships is one of the most painful parts of transition for most people. The point I am making is that there IS a community. Growing up I never saw that, never knew it was an option. In my mind, I would have to be the lone weirdo in a cis-het community, fearing detection and rejection. Now there is a community and I need not pass or follow any rule book on gender. That is significant and important. This is a conversation for another time but I will mention as an aside that this fact of community is why representation is so vital and why certain people are working so hard to push us queers back into the closet and take our books out of libraries.   

Queer is my word and it is how I identify myself and my clan/family. Never-the-less, it is not a universal word and there are those who have been hurt by it and those who would use it to hurt me and my family. I feel like the two sides of this issue are best represented not by me but by women who I respect and look to as “Aunties” who have guided my own transition and inspired me. First, Jennifer Finney Boylan, a literature professor from Maine and trans advocate who has been on the Opera Winfrey Show and was the first openly trans author to have a book on the New York Times Bestseller list. If you are wondering it was her memoir “She’s Not There: A life in two genders.” Jenny represents the “straight” (perhaps square is a better word) end of the spectrum, as she lives a fairly normal life and has chosen to remain married even after her wife lost sexual interest after her transition. The other side of the issue is advocated for by Kate Bornstein whose memoir “Queer and Present Danger” details their radical life, including their tenure as L. Ron Hubbard’s first mate on his scientology yacht, their time as a full time BDSM slave to a lesbian couple in San Francisco, and their time as the first open advocate for non-binary folks before we called them non-binary. Kate is often quoted as saying “I don’t call myself a woman and I know I am not a man.”  Kate was a long-term partner to Leslie Feinberg, author of the seminal lesbian book “Stone Cold Butch Blues” and was with him through his gender transition. They are also diagnosed with a slew of mental health conditions including PTSD and Borderline Personality Disorder and are a vocal advocate for mental health of “teens, freaks and other outlaws.” Kate is as queer as they come. For me, these people represent polar opposites on a spectrum of how to live and advocate. This is a clip of the two debating the use of the word “tranny.” I will offer a content warning that there is a fairly detailed discussion of physical and sexual assault.  Also, this is not the full conversation so if you are interested the full conversation the show is on Hulu

https://youtu.be/0i9k-V51QfY?si=BX22AN5ur3-tVx1p

One final point to be made here that I feel is highlighted by the discussion above. Use of this term often relates to the politics of respectability. There is at this moment a lively debate around the politics of respectability. I will do my best to be somewhat impartial but as a queer I clearly have a horse in this race and favor one side. The respectability side of the issue argues that in order to gain our rights and the acknowledgment and respect of our neighbors, we must first be respectable. Ultimately, these folks want the only once of deviance from the norm to be ones’ sexuality or gender. In this way, we will be seen as normal people who are only a little different. Ibram X. Kendi, famed anti-racist, refers to this strategy as Uplift Suasion. The idea that racism (or any other form of systemic oppression) can be eased/fixed if those in power (white folk) see what hard working upstanding citizens the oppressed are. Kendi also notes that this idea is a subtle form of racism (or homophobia). In his mind, the oppressed aught to be met how they are without having to change themselves. We’re here were queer get used to it! The idea is that our defiance and resistance of norms is our act of revolution. We will get the respect we deserve by demanding it. For those who have the courage to live outside of the system, “queer” embodies our spirit. I don’t need to worry about passing or living stealth because I am queer, I can be who I am period end of story. Thus, queer is my word and it may be asking a lot of my fellow LGBTQ folk or my cis friends. I invite you to ask a lot of me back - together we can be the revolution.