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 other places made clear by their dialects.  

As the students read, I was struck by something I was not expecting. 

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. 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 disappeared after being read.

Their final complaint, the one they thought would have me removed, was to report to the office that I continually used the “N-word” in class and refused to stop when demanded I do. Needless to say, this was golden to the administration as I was fighting for Gay student equality while here I was freely using derogatory language applied to others and refusing to stop. 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 advocacy was the double standard of wanting nothing derogatory directed 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 Negro Was in Vogue” to the class as it was not in their text book and then assigning 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, and would take them to the “computer lab” in the library 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 them 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 but 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 be supported.

The Black Community has reclaimed the word “Nigger” and in reclaiming it they made it clear, and continue to, that the word used against them is theirs now and only they can use it. They have reclaimed the word to the point that, although the Black Community can use it among itself, no one else can, and the term “N-word” became what anyone not Black must and does use.

This control of the reclaimed term has been so effective that it controlled the non-Black students in my classes each year we covered the Harlem Renaissance without anything being said about its usage and, I would expect, my actually having spelled out the word in this blog may have made some people uncomfortable.

A White person using the word would be reminded very quickly that a line has been crossed.

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 limited where Gay people could live, dine, bank, work, and by “live” I also include whether or not we would get killed for who we are.

The meaning of the word was applied to us in the past and it was a word against which we fought, a word that was put on us, not one of our choosing because it 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 used in the media the word was used in a very dehumanizing way. If we came out of the shadows they put us in, they were willing to kill us.

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, carefree, cheerful, merry, bright, exuberant, as happy as a clam, coming from the old French word “gai” which meant those things, and not quite what we were assigned to be.

Ours was a positive term for ourselves

Just as with “Nigger” now among Blacks and certainly in the past, although publicly objecting to it  was applied within the Black Community when it was the best description of a particular person in it. When my family moved to the suburbs, although predominantly White, people came from other places and brought their ways with them. The first time anyone used “Eeny. Meeny, Miny, Moe”, it was not a tiger or bunny  being caught by the toe. At four years old to me it was just a rhyme but 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 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.

Elders in the Gay Community lived with, fought against, and triumphed over the word “Queer”, its meaning, and the treatment that came with it. The youth who, for the most part especially in states like Massachusetts with equality laws, have never had to live under 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, while not taking control of the word as they 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 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, and, so far, I have seen no restrictions for its use. 

If we are truly claiming 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 have even been informed that “Gay” only refers to the new enemy, the White Gay Male, and not the other stripes of the new Pride Flag, which by its name, “progressive Flag”, implies no previous progress was made which is very insulting to those Gays who have brought the Community to this point but which now has removed me from the greater community. 

We never owned the word. It is not a case of reclaiming the word.  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 the one society was to use according to us not them anymore. 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 after all. 

Under Queer in the past, we were ostracized from society based on generalizations and stereotypes assigned to us. After fifty years of fighting, much of it successful, I am now ostracized from the Community because I am, according to those who object to my not wanting to be called”Queer”, obstructing progress now and most likely did in the past as well because of my choice not to be called “Queer” and my reasons for that dismissed as unimportant.

An article I read about book banning spoke about the “Queer Community and the Gays” and have heard that distinction made in conversation, so the media have learned much in recent years and feel free to separate Gay people from the Community. 

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 it was according to the societal attitudes at the time where 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. Queers were not, regardless of gender. You had all these types of genders, gender identities, and gender expressions, most still cloudy at the time with fluid names as much of gender was new, races, and sexual orientations. 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 denying that we had acted as the ultimate unified Community that said in one voice, regardless of any differences, that we were tired of our humanity being discounted,  and acted as one. 

The people at Stonewall were all the people inside the bar and on the street and they were just people. Those looking back are attempting to pick out people they identify with while they ignore that we were a unified community. What actually happened is dismissed because, in these days of influencers, someone needs to be the center of attention even by proxy.

Once, again, I am being called “Queer” against my wishes on television, in conversion, and anywhere the word can be used, even Gay settings where I get most of the lectures about my preferred descriptor, as I am told I have no choice other than that title 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. 

Someone assumed it was acceptable to ignore history and thrust me into the past, and as I have been told too many times that White Gay men are somehow obstructionists and not part of the Queer Community, I did not feel I qualified as I, a Gay man, am now the problem.

On those occasions when I have requested someone not call me “Queer”, I have gotten lectures from both the Gay and Straight Communities about my interfering with any progress with our rights and that I am obviously someone who refuses to be an ally.

To myself?

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 to not be called “Queer” 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 accept their choice of term and their reasons for it, but not they mine. That is how it was and is being re-introduced.

If we took back the word we never owned 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.

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, and myself, Queer again.

If we truly own the word, we would be Queer to ourselves while to society as a whole, we are the “Q-word.”

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