Queer Identity Questions
So in my post On the Fluidity of Sexuality; or My Coming Out Story I wrote about how I identify as queer rather than bisexual (even given the awkwardness of explaining this given that my partner is male, and since most people expect a “queer” woman to be, well, way different than me). And today I saw this super-exciting article called Why I Don’t Do Bi which I encourage everyone to read. It found it really eloquent and great at expressing why someone might identify as queer rather that G, L or B. (Maybe T, too, but I know less about that.) Of course, the article raises questions about how to balance advocacy for same-sex marriage, and GLBT rights, while at the same time trying to destabilize binary understandings of sexuality and gender and bring into question the man/woman model of gender and the homo/hetero/bi model of sexuality. Hard questions. Sorry I don’t have better answers just now, but I encourage you to read the article and if you want to learn more, take a glance at my work-in-progress bibliography on queer theology which also deals with queer theory and that sort of thing.
August 21, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Oh! I read that on feministing yesterday. Awesome, I thought.
August 22, 2007 at 10:05 am
The problem with the term “queer” to me is that it was used for so long as a epithet. It still sounds offensive to these ears. Around the right audience, I will use queer to identify myself. But I find that same audience was perfectly okay with the term bisexual.
*shrugs*
December 18, 2007 at 11:58 pm
I totally agree about using queer rather than bi, which I think has come to signify an epithet with nonverbal referencing of newspaper ads posted by “hot bi babes” who don’t have a politic to speak of but who are just curious about doing it with a “girl”…if their boyfriends can watch and maybe “play”, too. I think that when some gays and lesbians, for that matter some straight people think of wimmin who sleep with men, this is the image they subconsciously reference which allows them to disregard what a queer woman’s powerful and defiant anti-patriarchal, anti-heterocentrism stance can look like. I’ve often felt subtly “told” or lectured by dykes who assume that because I’m with a man, my brains have somehow drained out through my crotch with his “man juices”. :) When I try to call them on it, they back off and take refuge in a particular kind of liberalism sort of like: “Your okay and I’m okay….you’re just not as politically radical as I am…okay?” So, yeah. Thanks for this post.
December 19, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Thanks for your comment :) Glad to know folks are reading. All the best, Elizabeth