"straight", as compared to faggots, queers, and the rest of us

[BillyWalrus]

"Queer" is a self-identity which occupies almost the whole spectrum.

We (talking about queer people) use the term because the poles are "gay" and "straight," and everything that isn't straight can be talked about with the word "queer" and not needing 500 different terms which specific people might identify with. Queer is meant to be inclusive,

Bigots use it that way too, except that they use it to exclude rather than include. "Queer" isn't an endpoint on a spectrum with a murky undefined space in between the poles. It's anything that a bigot perceives as weird or not-normal and wants to fling a slur at, and again, it's a catch-all. They can use it for gay people, bi people, trans people, gender non-conforming people, asexual people, trans-romantic hetero-sexual people, MSM people, literally any GSRM person. And they'll do it no matter how the person they're calling queer identifies.

So we agree - sexual-orientation, gender and romantic-orientation identity is a spectrum, or, more accurately, a whole bunch of different spectra. "Queer" is inclusive of all parts of all of those different spectra other than the bog-standard cisgender heterosexual heteroromantic gender-conforming person. Queer includes some of the endpoints, but queer is not an endpoint of anything. I think queer IS the spectrum/spectra.

But I think the point you're making is that people don't have to identify as queer (or anything else) if they don't want to. I agree. Let's let people self-identify. I identify as queer but I am not gay, which is where you would put me if you thought queer was the other endpoint of the sexual-orientation spectrum.

Well said.

 

[Britva415]

I will say this: MSM isn't an identity.

Well, it could be/might be an identity. I'm not saying nobody does or nobody could identify as MSM. One could if one wants to.

My point is, MSM is a statement of fact. "Men who have sex with men." If you're a man who has sex with a man or with men, you're MSM.

If you're the only one who knows, that's fine.

Like... I guess it's a label? But it's an unambiguous one. It's more like saying you have arms and legs, rather than telling you you have to identify as a tetrapod.

 

[stickygirl]

Queer is the name on my shield

 

[Chefbgrif]

This is about words. I'm posting it here instead of over in one of the main forums because this is where I've seen the most chatter (and nagging) about the word “straight.”

We all know that traditionally, “straight” (an identity) meant “heterosexual”, and was used as a distinction from from “gay” or “queer” (both identities). Things got complicated when men who identified as “straight” started openly talking about sucking cock or being ass-fucked (note: both of these are activities, not identities.)

So the self-identified purists started to get shirty— “you can't call yourself straight if you do homosexual things!" “You're not being honest!" Etcetera.

These assertions could be challenged in several ways, but the most important is that the “purists” are confusing identity with activity. Nobody can challenge another person's identity; that's equivalent to you telling me what I feel. Your identity is how you perceive yourself, not how anyone else does. But I think this is an age-old problem: I think people have always thought “You are what you do.” In fact, I think “identity” is a fairly new concept, an important step in our cultural evolution.

I think “straight” men sucking cock is an age-old occurrence, as well. The only thing that's changed is the freedom to talk about it. And I'm not here to philosophize, I'm here to propose a solution to the purists’ problem (because in the end, it is their problem, not ours):

What I know is this: language is not rigid and static. Language is a living breathing thing that is constantly growing and evolving. This is not “my opinion”, this is reality. Ask any lexicographer; they'll tell you the same thing. if it weren't true, we'd still be using Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language.
What I believe is this: we are watching the term “straight” (which of course is very new in this usage anyway) be redefined before our very eyes. It no longer means “engaging in exclusively heterosexual activities” (if indeed it ever did). It now means “heteronormative in appearance, and hetero-romantic”— and has no bearing on any specific activities.

If we could accept this new definition, we could move on from some endless and circular discussions.

Your thoughts?

Well stated and worthy of acceptance, but will the nay sayers acquiesce? It was a worthy treatise the Henry Higgins would have applauded.

 

[ck_san]

I will say this: MSM isn't an identity.

My point is, MSM is a statement of fact. "Men who have sex with men." If you're a man who has sex with a man or with men, you're MSM.

It's both an action and an self described and socially prescribed identity.

MSM does not make one gay because then you could be "made gay" by sexual assault. Which is why we don't identify as socially determined identity though that still happens regardless. Which is why the concept of gay MSM is made up of three parts.

Gay identity is largely self described, based on attraction. Which is how someone can be gay but never engaged in MSM activities.

There is a seperate identity to it based on cultural values as an American gay is going to be different then Indian gay.

This is why some people change their identity over time as their attraction changes for whatever reason (though it might be uncommon). Some people have never seen the same sex in that light and then realize that they are more fluid in attraction than expected etc.

 

[liqueur]

sexual-orientation, gender and romantic-orientation identity is a spectrum, or, more accurately, a whole bunch of different spectra.

Well said!

"Queer" is inclusive of all parts of all of those different spectra other than the bog-standard cisgender heterosexual heteroromantic gender-conforming person. Queer includes some of the endpoints, but queer is not an endpoint of anything. I think queer IS the spectrum/spectra.

This is exactly how I use the term, and how most non-cis people i know do, also.

 

[liqueur]

I will say this: MSM isn't an identity.

I never even heard of MSM before. Sounds a little too much like MSG for my tastes. But absolutely— not an identity.

 

[liqueur]

I never even heard of MSM before. Sounds a little too much like MSG for my tastes. But absolutely— not an identity.

I might even venture further, and say that sexual preference of any sort is not an identity. It's an expression of your.... preference. Preference in others, in who you interact with sexually. But you cannot identify yourself in terms of others. To attempt to do so leads to emptiness, and eventual emotional disaster.

Identity is who you are, and you and you alone can determine that.

 

[Britva415]

I might even venture further, and say that sexual preference of any sort is not an identity

Well, now you’re getting into proscribing how other people identify. Are you speaking for yourself?

 

[stickygirl]

Well, now you’re getting into proscribing how other people identify. Are you speaking for yourself?

Using only your sexual alignment to describe your identity only provides a part identity.

If I were having a group discussion about sport and explained I was a county level tennis player, it would be relevant to the discussion and other people could use it to identify me "Well, I know we have one very good tennis player here - please stand up and lets see you!"

Same with sexuality? Same with those letters LGBTQIA - they don't tell us about your political leaning, or if you like tennis, if you're a vegetarian. Nevertheless the partial identity can become relevant. It depends, right?

 

[Terrylipstick]

I read “hetero-normative” in a comment. So yeah, hetero normative, but in bed (or on the couch, floor, or ABS booth) gay as fuck.

 

[liqueur]

I might even venture further, and say that sexual preference of any sort is not an identity. It's an expression of your.... preference.

Well, now you’re getting into proscribing how other people identify.

Point taken. I don't think I was proscribing, but I was quibbling with the definition of ‘identity.’ I see it (saw it, until you challenged me) as a question of who you are— intrinsically, in your own mind— as opposed to what you do—which is how others might label you.

Example: I spent a large part of my working life as an electrician. To everyone around me, I was seen as “sparky the electrician.” In my own mind, I knew I was a poet. In my own mind it didn't matter that I had to do this stuff with wires to feed my family and keep a roof over my head. It didn't even matter that for some strange reason I was exceptionally good at electrical work. Nor did it matter that I had no formal education, nor that I was working 55 hours a week and trying to be a dad on the weekends, and had no time to write. What mattered was that I identified in my own mind as a poet.

All that said, this is a hair-splitting place I should not have gone. Because now I do poetry— but I also identify as a poet. My doing and my being have coalesced. So who am I to say that someone who does cocksucking (for instance) cannot also see cocksucking as an essential aspect of who they are? You're right—it's not my place.

Using only your sexual alignment to describe your identity only provides a part identity.... Same with those letters LGBTQIA - they don't tell us about your political leaning, or if you like tennis, if you're a vegetarian. Nevertheless the partial identity can become relevant. It depends, right?

So this is so very on-point. We have a public identity, which is how others see and relate to us, and is based primarily on what we do—all the many aspects of our doing— and we have an internal identity, which is based on how we ourselves believe in ourselves. And just because I believe in myself as a poet and writer doesn't mean I can't also identify as a dad, or a queer— or an erstwhile electrician, for that matter.

Thank you both for helping me think this through.

 

[stickygirl]

*sigh* yeah ‘identity’ has become quite a triggering word for naysayers ( obv not you, lovely man ) so using it can feel like a hot coal .
It doesn’t come naturally to us to separate sparky from poet, because we’re pushed to make snap judgements and make assumptions too.
Thats the joy of getting to know someone…

 

[none2_none2]

"Queer" is a self-identity which occupies almost the whole spectrum.

We (talking about queer people) use the term because the poles are "gay" and "straight," and everything that isn't straight can be talked about with the word "queer" and not needing 500 different terms which specific people might identify with. Queer is meant to be inclusive,

Bigots use it that way too, except that they use it to exclude rather than include. "Queer" isn't an endpoint on a spectrum with a murky undefined space in between the poles. It's anything that a bigot perceives as weird or not-normal and wants to fling a slur at, and again, it's a catch-all. They can use it for gay people, bi people, trans people, gender non-conforming people, asexual people, trans-romantic hetero-sexual people, MSM people, literally any GSRM person. And they'll do it no matter how the person they're calling queer identifies.

So we agree - sexual-orientation, gender and romantic-orientation identity is a spectrum, or, more accurately, a whole bunch of different spectra. "Queer" is inclusive of all parts of all of those different spectra other than the bog-standard cisgender heterosexual heteroromantic gender-conforming person. Queer includes some of the endpoints, but queer is not an endpoint of anything. I think queer IS the spectrum/spectra.

But I think the point you're making is that people don't have to identify as queer (or anything else) if they don't want to. I agree. Let's let people self-identify. I identify as queer but I am not gay, which is where you would put me if you thought queer was the other endpoint of the sexual-orientation spectrum.

If someone desires to call themselves that word all power to them, just like someone who wants to use the word, so be it. Just so you know, it has a very long history for being a slur for some of us.

• Origin: Entered English around 1513, possibly from German quer (oblique) or Latin torquere (to twist), meaning unusual, odd, or peculiar.
• Early Use: Found in Scottish poetry and used to describe i strange, suspicious, or slightly unwell ("queer street").
• Slur Emerges: By the late 1800s, it was used as a derogatory term for homosexuals, notably by the Marquess of Queensbury in 1894.

Even excluding the last 130 years, I don't see odd, peculiar, suspicious, or unwell as positive synonyms for some "inclusive" term.

The very fact that some groups chose to supposedly "reclaim" a derogatory term for homosexuals to being inclusive of so many just shows just how much some want to exclude those of us who had that term used against us. They could have come up with some inclusive term without the baggage of a bigoted historical past -- they chose not to.

I would add that it is also not used consistently used. Some writings shorten down the LDBT* alphabet soup down to the alphabet minus trans so that they write "queer and trans", others use it for all including trans so that they just write "queer". As far as I am concerned, when I see someone use queer for anything but their own self-identity, they have tuned me out.

Speaking of self-identity (or for that matter labels in general), all they can do is try to convey shortcuts to really getting to know another human being. To give an analogy, I think of math where there are summations that take discreet readings of an area under a curve. However, they only approximate the area under the curve, too get the actual area, you have to use derivatives. Labels are like summations, they approximate AT BEST.

Likewise the use of language is to communicate with others, lots of times the use of self-identity is to make the user feel good about themselves -- not to do a better job of communicating who they are or what they wish to convey to the listener/reader.

As I pointed out in a fairly recent comment, I have been getting on other websites, and discovered people for lack of a better term have some kind of genital-dysphoria -- NOT gender-dysphoria. These are typically AMAB (assigned male at birth) (but not limited to AMAB) that for the most part want to continue to present as male, be socialized as male, but have some kind of genital modification:

1) Nullification: Removal of penis, testicles (including scrotum) to have a completely smooth look (like a Ken Doll), yet most then want to be on some regiment of medications to keep their testostrone levels normal.

2) Penectomy: Removal of the penis (partial or total)

3) Orchiectomy: Removal of the testicles

4) Cis-gender vaginoplasty: (either zero depth in which case it should probably be referred to as vulvoplasty) or a regular vagina that is penetrable. For some reason most have their testicles removed, though some preserve them in the scrotal skin which is used for the vulva.

Note, there are all sorts of variations on these things, so I won't claim to know every variation. An example of other things include splitting the penis and/or scrotum into two distinctive halves.

Now there may be some overlap with trans in regards to those that consider themselves non-binary, but not all are non-binary. However, some still self-identify as trans even if they want to keep their cis-identity. One trans man pointed out that some of this isn't right -- as gender-dysphoria is NOT just about genitals, but gender identity. I don't think the trans man was being narrow-minded, but simply pointing out that they are not dealing with the same issues.

Now this isn't a huge number of people, but it gets me to thinking that as a society we have gone overboard to where the label/identity becomes the most important thing, and not the human being. Each of the now over 8 billion people is unique, and there will never be a perfect labeling/identity system to cover all basis. It is better to simply get to know someone past labels, which takes much more time than labels, but it is worth the effort.

 

[stickygirl]

You make some good points @none2_none2 and I think you're right to point out that queer in the language is used inconsistently. Maybe discrimination and use of words like 'queer' grew from a societal shift, the Victorian age, where people became judgemental and then superficially prudent?

From a slangy pov, we need look not further than GenXs using 'bad' to mean good or 'sick' for excellent; 'cool' has been recycled from the 1960s.. Language has always been a tribal totem that is intended to create boundaries and division. I've found that to ignore or and not provide the response they might seek, is a nice passive way to counter weaponised language. Shrugging in disinterest is such a satisfying way to react - it's the same when dealing with angry toddlers...

As for the extreme body modifications - I think there has been a tiny number of people who have found willing surgeons to make them. It even has a name - Body Integrity Dysphoria, and it has been shown to be successful in reducing the individual's extreme stress. I'd be the last person to judge or else be accused of pots and kettles.

 

[Britva415]

I don't see odd, peculiar, suspicious, or unwell as positive synonyms for some "inclusive" term.

It's inclusive when we take it back and make it mean what we want it to mean. I can't tell if you're uninformed that we've done that, or you just believe that it shouldn't have happened.

 

[liqueur]

The very fact that some groups chose to supposedly "reclaim" a derogatory term for homosexuals to being inclusive of so many just shows just how much some want to exclude those of us who had that term used against us. They could have come up with some inclusive term without the baggage of a bigoted historical past

I think you've misconstrudelled the facts. Maybe you don't understand the power of reclaiming a term. It is exactly those of us who have experienced having the term weoponized against us who have deliberately chosen to seize hold of that word and make it our own.

It's not recent. It's been with us at least as long as there have been gay Pride parades.

We're Queer! We're Here!

 

[none2_none2]

It's inclusive when we take it back and make it mean what we want it to mean. I can't tell if you're uninformed that we've done that, or you just believe that it shouldn't have happened.

Who is "we"? Was there some convention where all agreed to this? Is there some subset of anointed leaders and the sheeple simply follow the anointed ones?

I think you've misconstrudelled the facts. Maybe you don't understand the power of reclaiming a term. It is exactly those of us who have experienced having the term weoponized against us who have deliberately chosen to seize hold of that word and make it our own.

It's not recent. It's been with us at least as long as there have been gay Pride parades.

We're Queer! We're Here!

The overall negative connotations of the word have been around for centuries, and the specific negative towards homosexuals has been around at least since 1894. That negative term has been used BEFORE parades, and still is to this day.

There is nothing for me to "understand" as that is like is like a Christian telling a non-Christian that they don't understand the power of accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

To me there is no power in reclaiming trash talk. It is simply not in my belief system. Why would I want to revisit past negative terms at all? Euthanize them, and go on with new terms.

What both of you seem to be doing is beyond self-labeling yourselves with this negative term, and making it sound like it is widely accepted -- everybody is using it. No they are not all using it. In my own case, I just don't focus on labels period -- trashy terms like this or even more positive terms.

Like Martina Navratilova once said: I didn't set out to be the best Lesbian tennis player; I simply wanted to be the best tennis player.

 

[stickygirl]

How words are used and understood can be a varied as our cultures, our education, our age. I think it can be a fruitless argument to try to agree on semantics. We can have different backgrounds but still be moving in roughly the same direction.

 

[Britva415]

Who is "we"? Was there some convention where all agreed to this? Is there some subset of anointed leaders and the sheeple simply follow the anointed ones?

I will say this: As far as who defines what/who counts as "queer," guess who started it, before "take back the word" became a phenomenon.

I get your point, but I also feel like you're playing dumb. Don't pretend it's not a thing, whether you personally care for it or not.

I also don't know whether you're straight or not. That matters, because straight people don't have a stake in this.

What both of you seem to be doing is beyond self-labeling yourselves with this negative term, and making it sound like it is widely accepted

You know what? It is. It just is. Don't play dumb.

-- everybody is using it.

That's not what anyone said. You're making a strawman.

Just because I said "we" DOES NOT MEAN it includes "you."

 

[Britva415]

In my own case, I just don't focus on labels period

rEaLlY?

Maybe you don't call what you're doing "focusing on a label" but hell if I can tell the difference.

Especially when it's not even your label in the first place.

You're fine to say "this is what it means to me," but your posts come off like "this is what it means."

 

[none2_none2]

rEaLlY?

Maybe you don't call what you're doing "focusing on a label" but hell if I can tell the difference.

Especially when it's not even your label in the first place.

You're fine to say "this is what it means to me," but your posts come off like "this is what it means."

!!!

Look who is calling the kettle black! Not once did YOU say this is what it means to "me". Rather, YOU come off as "this is what it means."


As to bring widely accepted:
"You know what? It is. It just is. Don't play dumb."

Where's the survey that states such wide acceptance?

"Just because I said "we" DOES NOT MEAN it includes "you.""
Of course not, people using trash terms normally are not very inclusive. You just proved it.

 

[Britva415]

"Just because I said "we" DOES NOT MEAN it includes "you.""
Of course not, people using trash terms normally are not very inclusive. You just proved it.

I can see you like word games.

Have it both ways: Bitch when you think someone is projecting onto you, bitch when they make clear that they aren't. GoTcHa!

You win. Enjoy your prize.

 

[liqueur]

Whew!

 

[DomFckr]

I am heteronormative in appearance and definitely hetero-romantic but straight? Nope.

I have come to realize that my sexual identity might be described as "feminine". With my trans girlfriend I am only interested in submitting to her sexually and allowing her the use of my holes for insemination. I just want to be fucked.

She, on the other hand, is only interested in the male role sexually even though she is super feminine in appearance and only romantically attracted to men. Sexually, she just wants to fuck.

Maybe we are a couple of unique outliers?

No your Not as I have always been bisexual and more on Dominant side until i retired in the Philippines and met a Goregous Beauty contestant with a nice 8" plus cock that was so good she would make me worship her and fulfilled so many fantasies. I would worship her as she would invite one or two of her Sexy Ladyboy friends over to watch and she liked making them jealous as they would along with her make lewd naughty words and things to say as i could see they were turned on and then she would blindfold me and let them use me as most had never been with a white man let alone gotten to top them as some had been used as escorts and hookers so they got to take their aggressions out on me which i loved being used like that. And sometimes she would make love or even let me 69 or top her but almost always the dynamic was for her to be the Goddess is the street and the Mistress in the bedroom. Sadly she fell for another foreigner that didn't work out and then she became an escort herself. But i see several guys who now just want a Super Sexy Ladyboy as the Best of Both worlds and my current one feeds me 3-4 x times a day or she also whores me out as this way she knows i won't stray if my balls are empty and i am having the Adventure oof a Lifetime. Screw what everybody else thinks.. Enjoy what time you have on the planet and there is no right or wrong do what you like.