My class was doing a bit of oral reading. Going around the room each student would read a few paragraphs and then, rather than my choosing the next reader creating the occasional bit of opposition, and, knowing if we went in order seat by seat and row by row, students could gauge when their turn would come up and not have to pay attention until their turn got close, I would have the reader choose their successor. If the next kid was to get mad at having to read, they would have to go after their friend who most likely chose them for the intended awkwardness or a known enemy who set them up for potential ridicule.
We were reading a piece of literature by a Twentieth Century African American author in class one day. In the conversations recounted in the tale, the author chose to distinguish his characters one from the other by employing Local Color, much as Mark Twain did, so that, although they were all in Harlem at the time of the story, it was clear they were from various other places made so by their dialects.
As the students read, I was struck by something I was not expecting but was consistent in all my classes..
When a Black student read, if the character was using the word “Nigger” or some variation of it, such a shortening to “Nig”, that student would just read the word. When non-Black students came to the word, rather than say it, they would substitute “the N word” and continue on. After a while I explained to the class that if they are reading from a work of literature they are not personally using the term but merely reading what was written, but the non-Black students continued the “N-word” practice.
In one of those classes I had a number of football players to whom I extended no special treatment just because they were on a team, and who often refused to hand in assignments, take tests, and/or refused to read when chosen. They played well, so they were protected Jocks. Being as I was in a public dispute with the school district about the safety and well being of Gay students in the district, these kids, being the height of masculinity in their minds, took every occasion to disrupt class and usually defended their disruptions on the conflict between masculinity and their application of stereotypes to me and from things said by their coaches, one of whom had a record of such statements and had been foolish enough on a number of occasions to repeat these in emails. I assume he thought they disappeared after being read.
At one point their complaint, the one they thought would have me removed, which they registered with the office, was that I continually used the “N-word” in class and refused to stop when they demanded I stop. Needless to say, this was golden to the administration as, apparently, while I was fighting for Gay student equality, here I was freely using derogatory language and refusing to stop when it involved others. To them, the administrators had found what they considered the key to reveal my hypocrisy and have me removed and the advocacy ended.
At the predictable meeting, I received a lecture on hypocrisy and how my double standard of wanting nothing derogatory towards Gay kids while simultaneously using derogatory language towards other students. There was a constant reference to my using the “N-word” until I was able to ask, “Which one?”
We were covering the Harlem Renaissance and, as I did every year, I would read the essay by Langston Hughes, “When the Nego Was in Vogue”, to my classes as it was not in their text book and then randomly assign one of the people he mentions in it, like Eubie Black, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, to each student to look up and report on to the class. To facilitate this and avoid excuses for having no time or computer at home, I would take them to the “computer lab” in the library during one class to give them the time to do the research. The kids who got Josephine Baker and Bessie Smith would, in the majority, do further research as they saw that the days of their Great Grandparents were not as tame as they presented to the children.
The football players knew that by accusing a White man of using the derogatory “N-word” it would get him in trouble, but they had not anticipated that there would be a request for specificity that would reveal the word they objected to was Langston’s use of the word “Negro” which is not the “N-word” and that their claim that the “N-word” could not be said by White people fell flat when it was clear they had either thought they had found a way to get the mean teacher who held the athletes to the same standards as the non-athletes in trouble, had not paid attention to the introduction to the essay which would have made clear a Black man, Langston Hughes, had written it, or in their eagerness to remove the Gay man, the administration assumed they had the means and the kids knew they would automatically support them.
The Black Community has reclaimed the word “Nigger” but in reclaiming it they made it clear, and continue to, that the word used against them is theirs now and only they can say it. And they have reclaimed the word to the point that, although the Black Community can use it no one else can, and the term “N-word” became what anyone not Black must and does say.
This control of the reclaimed term had been so effective that it controlled the students in my classes each time we covered the Harlem Renaissance and actually having spelled out the word may have made some people uncomfortable.
Sadly, on those occasions when I have requested someone not call me “Queer”, but Gay, I have gotten lectures from both Gay and Straight people about my interfering with any progress in Gay rights and am obviously someone who refuses to be an ally, when I am not in the ally position. While I receive lectures on my need to be accepting of people’s preferred descriptors and the lack of respect exhibited by even accidentally using other than the “proper” term, my obvious and justifiable choice is routinely and vehemently ignored as if, as it was in the past, what was important to me is ignored while I am lectured on the requirement to do with others what they absolutely refuse if related to me.
I must use their chosen name and descriptor for me without choice or be seen as the enemy.
In the past we were called “Queer” because of the meaning of that word and the application of the word and all connected to it that could limit where Gay people could live, dine, bank, and work, and by “live” I also include whether or not we would get killed for who we are.
The meaning of the word as applied to us in the past and against which we fought, a word that was put on us, not one of our choosing, meant strange, odd, of a questionable nature or character, suspicious, shady, mentally unbalanced or deranged, and we were treated accordingly. We were forced into the shadows by those who saw us this way and when it was used in the media it was used in a negative insulting way. If we Queers came out of the shadows we could be killed.
We chose to fight for our humanity and our reality beyond the assigned word “Queer” and many died in the process as the road was not easy.
We chose the word Gay. It was not assigned. It did not come with the baggage that could be used against us. We worked hard so that people would know we are as human and normal as they are “not strange, odd, of a questionable nature or character, suspicious, shady, mentally unbalanced or deranged“.
Instead we went with Gay whose meanings include, lighthearted and carefree, cheerful, merry, bright, exuberant, as happy as a clam, coming from the old French word “gai” which meant those things, not quite what we were assigned to be.
Just as with “Nigger” now among Blacks and certainly in the past, that word, although objecting to its use by everybody is applied within the Black Comunity when it was the best description of a particular person among themselves from good to bad. When my family moved to the suburbs, although predominantly White, people came from other places and brought their ways with them. I was surprised the first time anyone used “Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe” and it was a tiger being caught by the toe. At six years old to me it was just a rhyme as useful as counting Mississippis under certain conditions. One day at school when a classmate caught a bunny by the toe, the Black kid in my class, Walter, pointed out it was not a bunny and in the process explained that what was caught by the toe was a “Negro too lazy to get a job” and was not applicable to all Blacks as not all Black people refused to work. Now if anyone feels compelled to argue this explanation, Walter was seven then and dead now.
It worked for me as we had Shanty and Lace Curtain Irish.
What used to be caught is not anymore. It is not allowed.
Elders in the Gay Community lived with, fought against, and triumphed over the word “Queer” being applied casually to all of us, its meaning, and the treatment that came with it. The youth who, for the most part, especially in states like Massachusetts with equality laws over thirty years old, have never had to live with the true use of the word as a destructive weapon, claim they have taken the word back, although we never had it to begin with, and are not taking control of the word as we seem to allow anyone to use it however they so choose.
If we really reclaimed the word and now own it, then we would be just as controlling of it as the Black Community with their word and who are more than willing to inform you that unless you are Black you cannot use the “N-word”.
Once again, I am being called “Queer” in the media because someone speaking for me has given permission to anyone to use it either actively by saying it is okay now, giving permission where it was not their place, or tacitly by not nipping the use in the bud, and, so far, I have seen no restrictions for its use. I have also seen no offers from those releasing the word what aid they will give to someone who suffers trauma from its now permissible use and any harm that might result in.
We never owned the word. It is not a case of reclaiming the word but accepting it. We never owned nor wanted it. We chose a word in 1969 that did not reduce us to a clinical term, “Homosexual”, or dismiss our true selves by the word “Queer” with all its baggage for a reason. Gay is OUR word, chosen not bestowed, and one society was to use according to us not them. The price of changing the public’s attitude was long and difficult. We were subjected to genocide in the 80s because AIDS was a convenient way to get rid of us as we were still Queer then after all.
If we are truly reclaiming a name, we should control who uses it. The only control I have seen is that exercised over those of us who do not want to be “Queer” again. I was even told that “Gay” only refers to the new enemy, the Cisgender, White, Gay Male, and not the other stripes of the new Pride Flag, which by its name, “progressive Flag”, implies no previous progress, which is very insulting to those Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Gender Identities in need of names elders who have brought the Community to this point and which now has removed them from the greater community.
People were misgendered in the past due to lack of information, the misgendering now is purposeful and useful.
Under Queer in the past we were ostracized from society based on generalizations and stereotypes. Now after fifty years of fighting, elders find themselves ostracized from the Community because we are, according to those who object to our not wanting to be called”Queer” and lecture us about obstructing progress now and most likely in the past as well, outsiders. It locked many elders out in the past, and many expressed the feeling that it is used for separation now because of the new use of the word from within and its similar use in general.
Many of the older Gays I spoke with are experiencing being put on an ice floe and sent into the Arctic Ocean now that their usefulness is over as determined by the young. They felt that after doing what they had done to make things better for the following generations, those who did not work but who benefited from that of others, happy with their freedoms, simply erased that with which they have no direct connection, the real past and not the myths.
An article I read about book banning spoke about the “Queer Community and the Gays”, so the media have learned much in recent years and feel free to separate Gay people from the Queer Community that has benefited from the work of the now excluded who fought for the community before labels replaced unity. We are once again being defined by others and not ourselves, and they are determining which letters of the Rainbow Alphabet stay or go.
The night of Stonewall there was a spontaneous explosion in the Gay Community among people from various segments of it. It was not Gay men usurping control of the movement from the beginning because of internal patriarchy, but a spontaneous explosion in a bar known to be frequented in the majority by Gay men, although it was not exclusively so as the bouncer was a mixed race, approaching middle age, Drag King Lesbian. It was at the time when the men were in the position to speak in society and be given more credence than would be given to a woman in those days which were not like today. It was a time when women couldn’t get credit cards in their own name. You had all these types of genders, gender identities, most still cloudy at the time with fluid names as much of gender was new, races, and ethnicities. You interacted with who was there whether you knew their gender or even their real name or who they were when not in the bar. You did not request a resume before speaking. You either hung with those you knew or flitted around the bar like it was your party, but the majority of your reality, other than what was seen in the bar was that of Bruce Wayne to Batman. He could not exist in either world if his true identity were known in both.
I spoke with a few men who, like myself, knew people by a certain name for years or a Drag Queen only in Drag and never out of it, who had no idea someone they had been friends with died because their obituary and even their friends referred to them by a name most people never heard. For a while after leaving Oklahoma, when an obituary was posted, I would get a text with the person’s Bar Name.
Now there are hissy fights over who threw a nonexistent brick so that one element of the Community can claim it was those like them and no one else who got it going thus denying and fighting for the denial of our acting as the ultimate unified Community that said in one voice that we were tired of our humanity being discounted, and acted as one. A Trans person threw a shot glass, a Drag Queen threw her heels, and some unknown White boy threw a brick, none of which figured into any eyewitness accounts of the events until years later when labels began to replaced Community.
Now people want a name and in so doing favoring, perhaps, one individual who stood out in a certain area at a certain time among all the people there that night who, although standouts and without friends in positions to mold the narrative, may not be as glitzy as needed to be noticed but who were actually there doing the work but are now ignored because in the day of influencers someone needs to be assigned credit and glitter counts heavily.
Once, again, against the wishes of many, we are being called “Queer” on television, in conversion, and anywhere the word can be used, even Gay settings where I get most lectures about my preferred descriptor, Gay, as I am told I have no choice other than “Queer” or be written off as something to do with patriarchy or some such, but not my reality,
I was asked recently if I was going to enter any artwork in a local Pride Month display at a local gallery and was going to until I got the official invite to enter the exhibit by “Queer identified”artists with “Free submissions for all self-identified Queer Artists”.
I do not identify that way. History has wrung that out of me.
I have also been informed a number of times that because I am Gay, I am not Queer anyway. This confuses me. I submitted nothing.
Who assumed it was acceptable to ignore history and thrust me into the past?
Instead of just entering a Pride Month exhibit, there was a qualifier and a question of qualifying depending on how strict the organizers were with labels. I did not feel I qualified as I, as a Gay man, am the problem.
Who determined my eligibility to participate? Did I have to accept the “Queer” designation to participate or have to explain myself to someone to get around that?. Was this a free or controlled entry? Would I be turned away if I identified as Gay not Queer?
Why could I not simply enter a Pride Month exhibit without labels? My identity as a Gay man is well known.
If we took back the word, we would be better custodians of it. WE would say who uses it, when, where, and how, and not remove from the community those who reject the word, the pain, and the deaths it brought.
We would spare the elders among us the lectures they get from allies who explain to them why it is important we let ourselves be called Queer again. We never let that happen. Letting it happen implies choice. We never had that choice. And we are often told that we just do not understand.
I, for one, did not work for the results I have achieved in the fight for rights to have its history and the people in it, including myself, Queer again with no control on the limits of its use. I had to comfort a total stranger who emotionally crashed during a discussion in a crowded bar of the use of the title Queer because he had recently gotten the lecture about refusing the label while he could not explain to his young lecturer that the word Queer had cost him the love of his youth.
If we truly own the word, we would be Queer among ourselves while to society as a whole, we are the “Q-word.”
The explanation of the taking back of the word falls flat when those who are “reclaiming” a word were not the ones against whom it was used to diminish humanity. They are claiming to be taking back a word that hurt previous generations, ignoring the hurt it caused because there is no actual threat to it.
For them.
A general feeling was that, if those who claim to be taking back a word that was used against them, a word that caused harm and reduced the quality of their lives, the most relevant term with which to label themselves now would be “Faggot” as its use is closer to the present day. But they know the hurt in that word and want to avoid self-triggering when they can reduce the discomfort by using a word that hurts others.
What bothered most of the people who spoke about the word was that they have real reasons to not want to be called Queer and they go way beyond preference and include ruined lives, beatings, and deaths.
While they hear all the reasons others demand their preferred term be honored, respected, and used, the same is not extended in return and the spoken trauma behind the word is often brushed aside, or the need to just move on is delivered with the reference overtly or covertly to the elders’ desire being what is now promoting problems and erasing solutions.
What the people I spoke with were confused by is that, while we had to deal with others labeling us and telling us what expectations we were to meet and live by accordingly and fought to end this are receiving it in old age because we are told what we must be called and our reasons to reject the name are usually dismissed by those making the one way demand of us.
We are told that, whether or not we agree with their reasons, we must use preferred pronouns and whatever labels we are told to use by the person with whom we are speaking only to have these very people explain to us why our rejection of the name Queer is unreasonable and obstructionist.
When the modern Rights movement began, it began as the Gay Liberation Front, a more direct title than the Mattachine Society, and in reflecting the changing attitudes toward known gender at the time became the Gay and Lesbian Liberation movement. Further understanding of gender later introduced Bisexual and Trandgender as these became more widely known. As it is historical in nature, when I refer to the broader Community, I reflect the history by using GLBT to which further letters have been added as knowledge grew. I have received in person lectures and electronic communications accusing me of ignoring all the other letters for some malicious reason because the critics, while demanding I use their terminology for their reasons, have yet to ask why I do that. I lived those additions of the letters. They are my history. They are the history of people I knew and fought alongside.
Now the word Gay has become negative by the choice of others again. It isn’t about them.
Another concern was that while, yes, there was a preponderance of Cisgender, Gay, White Males, on the front lines originally, many of those years were during the times that they would be listened to more readily than a non-male, and this position was used to get rights for all the letters. In the Buckle of the Bible Belt, although it was tough going, the rights for all students including the Trans ones were won by a Cisgender, Gay, White Male who knew he at least had that advantage in spite of all the other obstacles and used it for the greater good. He has now been told that as a Gay man his implied patriarchy in the rejection of the word Queer is one of the reasons why we got our rights so late and why the rest of the community feels abandoned by those they are pushing away. And he just does not understand, has not taken the time to understand, and just wants everything based on his identity.
When a person who identifies as Queer tells older Gay people something is not a Gay event but a Queer one, they need to know this hurts the people whose past made the event possible.
Remember.
The elders have seen much more than the present generation. They grew up with the people trying to remove rights, the ones we fought for, so they know the enemy. They knew them then and they know them now. Many are in positions, if not leading the march, of being the allies the youth will need both for advice and finances. The elders are useful to the young, but many I spoke to feel the rejection expressed in the bad mouthing, such as judging the gender knowledge of 1969 according to 2024 knowledge and holding the people responsible then for this lack of knowledge as the uninformed who ignore history do not seem to realize information increased over the last fifty years and the people with it, and the explanation that basically comes down to thanking the elders for what they did before sending them out to pasture, has them a little reluctant to care especially as they see rights taken away and many not seeming to care or cannot act as a community because people vie for credit not results and they got to dress up once a year and drink beer out of a can with a rainbow on it..
An openly Gay teacher was transferred to a school where it was known he would face negative treatment from his students who, in that, aided the principal in finding excuses to have him removed from the district. Long story short, before he could be removed he moved on, keeping his reputation intact. A few years later, some of those same students, and cooperating teachers, realized the man they had harassed actually had been telling them what they needed to know and, using his collected documents, got the principal of the school fired and the district put under investigation for educational negligence. They found they had to turn to the very person they had not only rejected but had contributed to the harassment of, only to find that he was the person they needed the most at the time they needed the help. What if he had simply claimed the documents he had and they needed just weren’t available?
What if the elders decide the lack of respect was so offensive the first time, they do not chance a repeat if their hard work pays off again. I was told by too many that they were retired Gays and could live the remaining years of their lives without the rights they lived most of their lives lacking as what’s to come are fewer years than the previous ones?
Before the recent trip I was asked by a friend if the elders were looking for non-stop credit and continual praise, so, I asked. I found that they do not want fawning praise, but they also do not want the erasure they are seeing. It seems the option is that to avoid giving elders all the praise, not their decision but again assigned them, we just won’t give them any rather than to look at history and decide according to the facts who gets what unless the erasure is based on an agenda. In order to prevent the Gay students from having a school clubs, districts often decide there will be no clubs on campus for anyone of any kind.
Yes, we are familiar with that approach too.
It all comes down to learning the real history as those who are old but still around see the stories changing and the real people erased. If a people does not know its true history it has to accept what it is told.
That’s where we are.
The other concern and the one that hurt many was that if you expect the elders to honor your requests for sensitivity and respect, honor their request for the same. Don’t have the elders recount the trauma behind the word. See it as the same related to yourself and show equal respect and sensitivity.
Don’t insult them with false history. They lived the truth.
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