“Q”? What sort of bullshit is this? How am I supposed to identify with “Q”? What the fuck does “Q” even mean?

The author says that the “the cisgender heterosexuals who make up the vast majority of the U.S. population” feel excluded from the groups that gender and sexual minorities have formed. That’s the whole fucking point! We are an alliance of various people who are not cisgender and who are not heterosexual, and who have been and still are being marginalised because of that. We have banded together for strength in numbers, on the basis that the enemy of my enemy is my friend; we have a common foe and we have goals which overlap.

It’s also a bit much to ask us to feel sympathy for the dominant cis-straight majority who feel alienated because there are minority groups they aren’t part of. Poor little things. How hard it must feel for them to be excluded...

So, his solution is to use “Q”: to talk about “the Q population” and “Q equality”. Supposedly, “Q is simple and inclusive, and carries minimal baggage”.

The reason it has minimal baggage is because it has no meaning. Literally, it’s just a single letter with no meaning. Even if we load it with the context that it’s supposed “to encompass sexual minorities of all stripes”, that’s effectively meaningless. The only thing it means is “non-cisgender and/or non-heterosexual”. That’s such a rubbish vague category. It’s like defining insects as “non-mammal and/or non-bird”. How is that useful?

It’s ironic that his solution to “the concatenation of initials [which] implicitly blots out individuals” is to use a label which even further obliterates individuality. No longer are we gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender. No, now we are all undifferentiated parts of the Q Continuum (which is all I can think of as a Star Trek fan!).

And, the author keeps referring to “sexual minorities”, but is transgender even considered a sexual minority? I thought transgender people were gender diverse, not sexually diverse. How does “sexual minority” include a straight trans man or a straight trans woman?

When he says that “Q equality” means that “discrimination against sexual minorities—or for that matter sexual majorities—is not the American way” [emphasis mine], I can’t help but be reminded of those people who decided they weren’t “feminist” but “humanist”, because they wanted equal rights for all humans, not just women. In some cases, it was just naivete and idealism, but in other cases, it was a deliberate attempt to devalue women’s rights and shift the focus back to men’s rights.

I read this article and all I can think is that this man wants us to stop standing out, stop being different, and just shut up and blend in – and remember to include our enemies under our community umbrella. Fuck off. There ain’t no way I want homophobes to feel included in the LGBT community.

If we do need an inclusive term, I’ve heard an Australian politician say she uses “rainbow community” for us (she herself is a straight woman). She says that way she can’t be accused of forgetting a letter in the acronym. I’ve also seen LGBT community activist groups use “rainbow families” to refer to the various permutations of family and parenting that exist within the LGBT community. I believe the use of “rainbow” is good in that it refers to the community’s rainbow pride flag, and it inherently implies there are a variety of different “colours” in the community. We’re not all blended into a single bland colour, like when you spin a colour wheel and it turns white. We each have our own colour, and we each shine that light separately – but together, we are a rainbow.

I am a gay man. I am homosexual. I will not have my identity erased for anyone. I had to endure a lot of shit when I was younger for the sake of being gay, and I’m not going to let people get away with that any more. I’m not going to sugercoat my sexuality for the sake of some pissy homophobes who don’t want to know that I’m attracted to men. I will not be erased. I am not now, nor will I ever be, “Q” (or “queer”, for that matter!).

I’m gay. I’ll stay. Get used to it.

CW: slurs

I am a big fan of the term "queer."

I'm also an unlikely candidate for that, as I grew up in a time and place where it was wholly derogatory. I learned the word from my grandfather telling me I'd turn into one if I kept riding the "girl" bike I'd borrowed from my cousin. I think I was probably 6 or 7 at the time. I didn't know what it (or it's f-word brother) meant at the time, but it was clear from his tone they were bad. Worse than bad. Abhorrent. Over the coming years, absent the internet and any sort of real life or media representation, I learned from teachers, friends, and family that "queer," "fag," and "gay" were all interchangeable and all meant "the lowest of the low." They were the words that vandalized my childhood.

It wasn't until much later that I found out there was a rainbow world beyond my monotone upbringing. In this world, those words were something else entirely. "Gay" was good. "Queer" was radical. Assertive. "Fag" was a battlescar. Not something to be worn with pride, but not something to be hidden either. Something whose power could be harnessed and utilized--thrown back in the faces of those who used it for hate. Yes, I'm a fag. That's my word now. Not yours anymore, and I will hurt myself with it long before I'll let you use it to hurt me again.

This shift in language and identity was revolutionary for me. I tried on the different labels and found that "gay" fit the best. "Queer," previously too derogatory, was now too academic. It had "theory." It felt like the kind of thing people debated in graduate courses but that never reached the real world. Too lofty. Pretentious. And "fag" still had too much punch. Too much hurt behind its empowerment. Making it mine felt not like lifting a weight from my shoulders but pretending I meant for it to be there in the first place. I could make it work for a moment as long as I lied to myself about how it was slowly suffocating me.

So I threw my lot in with "gay" and proceeded to wear my "gay" coat around. For years. Inside out, so everyone could see the label. Gay gay gay gay gay. It felt so important, and in many ways it was. I spent my entire childhood having people implicitly affirm how significant it was. Their hate gave it so much power, so much strength. It had to be important, right? Because if it wasn't, they wouldn't care so much, right? It only made sense to make it the focal point of my person. What could be more important than the very thing I spent my entire life hiding? What could be more important than being the worst thing in the world? The lowest of the low? There wasn't any me beyond that, because "gay" was my terminal. My train stopped and stayed there, and I disembarked, thinking the home that everybody else had made for me was where I had to live.

It wasn't until much later, when I'd moved far away from where I grew up, that I met people who preferred "queer" to "gay." And at first it felt foreign to me. Forced. Unnatural. Who identifies as "queer" anyway? It was so nonspecific as to be meaningless. It was an affront to my razor sharp "gay" identity, forged in the fires for years.

I talked to someone about it. She grew up where I grew up and faced the same hate that I did. She had heard all the same words I'd had, in the same ways I had, but she had to jump through a lot more hoops to become who she was. I simply put on "gay" as a coat, but she had to climb the mountain of "trans." It exhausted me listening to her story. I grew up thinking that I had it rougher than anyone, that my story was the most difficult. She gave me a much needed sense of perspective. I would not wish my experiences on anyone, but I was lucky compared to her.

And she explained to me why she identified as "queer" rather than "trans," and her response caused another dramatic shift in my nomenclature.

"Queer" gave her privacy.

I didn't understand, but she laid it out for me. As any queer individual knows, coming out is not a one-time thing. We have to do it again, over and over, as we meet new people. Get a new job? You have to decide when to drop the news and who to share it with. Meet someone at a bar? You have to decide whether to share your "information." It's not an academic exercise. There can be real-world consequences should you make the wrong decision. This I was well aware of: after coming out at my first job, someone attempted to get me fired.

For the woman that I spoke with, "queer" was her identity of choice because it linked her with a community she identified with but didn't reveal her trans status. It's not that she was ashamed of being trans--it's that she felt that wasn't the way she wanted to present herself to the world. She wanted people to see her as a woman, not as a woman who had a hell of a mountain she'd had to climb. Nevertheless, she didn't want to lose her connection to that part of her story either. She didn't want to shut out others who had similar paths.

The moment she pointed this out, it was like the clouds parted for me. "Queer" allowed us to identify ourselves as part of a community without having to be specific about our place within that community. We were all colors in the same spectrum, but we didn't have to broadcast our individual color to everyone. Furthermore, "queer" helped protect the more fragile members of the community. I was confident wearing any label, even the hurtful ones, but that was a product of time. For those grappling with their identities or just starting to come out, "queer" gave them a safe space where they didn't have to commit to anything more. For those whose identities could beget significant hate or threats, "queer" allowed them safety.

Like trying on the word "gay" for the first time, trying on "queer" after this conversation felt transformative too. But what if people think I'm bi or trans? I remember thinking. The correct response was simply so what if they do? I don't fear identifying as queer because I don't fear associations with those also attached to it. I stand by them. Proudly.

In that particular community I met many different people who identified as "queer," and to this day I could not tell you which more specific label they would wear. Were they bi? Trans? Bi and trans? I genuinely don't know, nor do I care to. Why should, say, an intersex person have to reveal that part of themselves if they don't want to? There was safety and community in "queer." Many people would also choose a more specific identifier, as I myself did. I was "queer" initially but "gay" if I needed to get more specific (to, say, identify my compatibility with potential romantic partners). Nevertheless, "queer" was nice armor that made it so that people didn't have to reveal that if they didn't want to. It gave us our privacy back. It allowed us ambiguity. Mystery. Uncertainty.

My like for it was further cemented by two other individuals. One was an individual who was thoroughly heterosexual but was strongly involved in the kink community. His story of self-discovery was similar to my own. Confusion. Isolation. The feeling that he was abnormal and broken. Long-term depression. Eventual coming out and self-acceptance. He identified as "queer" because of this, and who was I to deny him that label? His story was my own--not in terms of outcome but in terms of contour. For me to tell him he couldn't have that label because he was "straight" felt deeply wrong in light of his story. Another individual I talked to was also, strictly speaking, straight. However, he was also on the autism spectrum. His romantic awakening and self-awareness followed a very different trajectory. In many ways he was still figuring it out. In many ways, his self-discovery was more challenging than mine. Who am I to say that he cannot call that "queer?" Queer simply means "different," and we use it to refer to matters of gender, sexual, and romantic identity. His autism shaped his identity across all of those axes, and I would be hard pressed to call his experiences common.

I see "queer" as the great leveler. It gives us privacy. It puts us all under one roof. It scales well to new identities. Most importantly, it allows for self-determination. Only you know your feelings and experiences, so only you should determine whether it defines you. People cannot challenge your queer identity, because it's yours alone. But, far from being alone, there are many others like you. I remember jokes when I was younger about how gays and lesbians shouldn't get along because they couldn't be more different: one group is men who like men and one is women who like women. If you draw a venn diagram of identities and interests, there is no overlap!

This is how "LGBT" feels to me. We lump together separate identities because... why exactly? Well, because they're different from the norm. That's queer. And that's no longer a hate word for me. Far from it, actually. It's something that brings me great comfort. I spent my queer childhood feeling like I was all alone in the world, but I've spent my queer adulthood knowing that I am unequivocally not.