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On the issue of the ‘q slur’...

So, yesterday, I got into a rather stupid internet argument with someone who was peddling what seemed to me to be a rather insidious narrative about slur-reclamation. Someone in the ensuing notes raised a point which I thought was interesting, and worrying, and probably needed to be addressed in it’s own post. So here we go:

The word ‘queer’ itself seems to be especially touchy for many, so let me begin to address this by way of analogy.

Instead of talking about “queer”, let’s start by talking about “Jew” - a word which I believe is very similar in its usage in some significant ways.

Now, the word “Jew” has been used as a derogatory term for literally hundreds of years. It is used both as a noun (eg. “That guy ripped me off - what a dirty Jew”) and as a verb (eg. “That guy really Jew-ed me”). These usages are deeply, fundamentally, horrifically offensive, and should be used under no circumstances, ever. And yet, I myself have heard both, even as recently as this past year, even in an urban location with plenty of Jews, in a social situation where people should have known better. In short – the word “Jew”, as it is used by certain antisemites, is – quite unambiguously – a slur. Not a dead slur, not a former slur – and active, living slur that most Jews will at some point in their life encounter in a context where the term is being used to denigrate them and their religion. 

Now here’s the thing, though: I’m a Jew. I call myself a Jew. I prefer that all non-Jews call me a Jew – so do most Jews I know. “Jew” is the correct term for someone who is part of the religion of Judaism, the same way that “Muslim” is the correct term for someone who is part of the religion of Islam, and “Christian” is the correct term for someone who is part of the religion of Christianity. 

In fact, almost all of the terms that non-Jews use to avoid saying “Jew” (eg. “a member of the Jewish persuasion”, “a follower of the Jewish faith”, “coming from a Jewish family”, “identifying as part of the Jewish religion”, etc) are deeply offensive, because these terms imply to us that the speaker sees the term “Jew” (and by extension, what that term stands for) as a dirty word.

“BUT WAIT” – I hear you say – “didn’t you just say that Jew is used as a slur?!?”

Yes. Yes, I did. And also, it is fundamentally offensive not to call us that, because it is our name and our identity.

Let me back up a little bit, and bring you into the world of one of those 2000s PSAs about not using “that’s so gay”. Think of some word that is your identity – something which you consider to be a fundamental and intrinsic part of yourself. It could be “female” or “male”, or “Black” or “white”, “tall” or “short”, “Atheist” or “Mormon” or “Evangelical” – you name it.

Now imagine that people started using that term as a slur.

“What a female thing to do!” they might say. “That teacher doesn’t know anything, he’s so female!”

Or maybe, “Yikes, look at that idiot who’s driving like an atheist. It’s so embarrassing!”

Or perhaps, “Oh gross, that music is so Black, turn it off!”

Now, what would you say if the same groups of people who had been saying those things for years turned around and avoided using those words to describe anything other than an insult?

“Oh, so I see you’re a member of the female persuasion!”

“Is he… a follower of the atheist beliefs? Like does he identify as part of the community of atheist-aligned individuals?”

“So, as a Black-ish identified person yourself – excuse me, as a person who comes from a Black-ish family…”

Here’s the fundamental problem with treating all words that are used as slurs the same, without any regard for how they are used and how they developed – not all slurs are the same.

No one, and I mean no one (except maybe for a small handful of angsty teens who are deliberately making a point of being edgy) self-identifies as a kike. In contrast, essentially all Jews self-identify as Jews. And when non-Jews get weird about that identity on the grounds that “Jew is used as a slur”, despite the fact that it is the name that the Jewish community as a whole resoundingly identifies with, what they are basically saying is that they think that the slur usage is more important than the Jewish community self-identification usage. They are saying, in essence, “we think that your name should be a slur.” 

Now, at the top I said that the word “Jew” and the word “queer” had some significant similarities in terms of their usage, and I think that’s pretty apparent if you look at what people in those communities are saying about those terms. When American Jews were being actively threatened by neo-Nazis in the 70s, the slogan of choice was “For every Jew a .22!″. When the American Queer community was marching in the 90s in protest of systemic anti-queer violence, the slogan of choice was “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” Clearly, these are terms that are used by the communities themselves, in reference to themselves. Clearly, these terms are more than simply slurs.

But while there are useful similarities between how the terms “Jew” and “Queer” are used by bigots and by their own communities, I’d also like to point out that there is pretty substantial and important difference:

Unlike for “queer”, there is no organized group of Jewish antisemites who are using the catchphrase “Jew is a slur!” in order to selectively silence and disenfranchise Jews who are part of minority groups within Judaism. 

This is the real rub with the term queer – no one was campaigning about it being a slur until less than a decade ago. No one was saying that you needed to warn for the word queer when queer people were establishing the academic discipline of queer studies. No one was ‘think of the children”-ing the umbrella term when queer activists were literally marching for their lives. Go back to even 2010 and the term “q slur” would have been basically unparseable – if I saw someone tag something “q slur”, like most queer people I would have wracked my brains trying to figure out what slur even started with q, and if I learned that it was supposed to be “queer”, my default assumption would be that the post was made by a well-meaning but extremely clueless straight person.

I literally remember this shift – and I remember who started it. Exclusionists didn’t like the fact that queer was an umbrella term. Terfs (or radfems as they like to be called now) didn’t like that queer history included trans history; biphobes and aphobes didn’t like that the queer community was also a community to bisexuals and asexuals. And so what could they possibly say, to drive people away from the term that was protecting the sorts of queer people that they wanted to exclude?

Well, naturally, they turned to “queer is a slur.”

And here’s the thing – queer is a slur, just like Jew is a slur, and no one is denying that. And that fact makes “queer is a slur so don’t use it” a very convincing argument on the surface: 1) queer is still often used as a slur, and 2) you shouldn’t ever use slurs without carefully tagging and warning people about them (and better yet, you should never use them at all), and so therefore 3) you need to tag for “the q slur” and you need to warn people not to call the community “the queer community” or it’s members “queer people” or its study “queer studies” – because it’s a slur!

But the crucial step that’s missing here is exactly the same one above, for the word “Jew” – and that step is that not all slurs are the same. When a term is both used as a slur and used as a self-identity term, then favoring the slur meaning instead of the identity meaning is picking the side of the slur-users over the disadvantaged group! 

If you say or tag “q slur” you are sending the message, whether you realize it or not, that people who use “queer” as a slur are more right about its meaning than those who use it as their identity. Tagging for “queer” is one thing. People can filter for “queer” if it triggers them, just like people can filter for anything else. Not everyone has to personally use the term queer, or like the term queer. But there is no circumstance where the term “q slur” does not indicate that you think queer is more of a slur than of an accurate description of a community.

If I, as a Jew, ever came across a post where someone had warned for innocent, positive, non-antisemitic content relating to Judaism with the tag “J slur”, I would be incensed. So would any Jew. The act of tagging a post “J slur” is in and of itself antisemitic and offensive.

Queer people are allowed to feel the same about “q slur”. It is not a neutral warning term – it is an attack on our identity.

This is one of the most well written posts about the evolution of “queer” I have ever seen. Please take the time to read this. Yes it is long but it is more than worth the 5 minutes!

Unfriendly reminder that Testosterone is a Schedule III restricted substance in the US, meaning there is no legal or safe way to get it without a prescription.

If your only suggestion to the ongoing trans healthcare crisis here is to act like DIY HRT is some silver bullet against forced medical detransition, all I hear is that people like me don't matter enough to even be worth considering in your grand plan of trans resistance to government interference.

it's all "be gay do crime" until it comes to hrt, huh?

for every trans person who chooses to pursue diy t hrt, the minuscule risk of legal trouble from doing so (steroid possession for personal use in non-athletes is extremely common and rarely prosecuted in the usa, especially in comparison to basically any other "drug crime") is less daunting than being unable to transition. diy is not an ideal solution while t remains a controlled substance, but to act like it isn't at all viable or the way many of us survive is to be completely ignorant of our reality.

people who provide guidance on sourcing diy or who stockpile excess of legitimate prescriptions and quietly share with those in need are doing more for the community than you are by fearmongering.

This is a deeply unserious response but I need to reply to a few things:

It is not FEARMONGERING to point out that it's orders of magnitude safer for transfemmes to DIY their own HRT that's a FACT. DIY T exposes people to the risk of 3-5 years of jail time and the lifelong consequences of drug convictions, police brutality that is only magnified for trans PoC and multiply marginalized trans folks, and inconsistent supply with no way to guarantee you know what you're putting in your body because that's how black market drugs work.

Furthermore, saying 'oh well pretend you need a T script for your transmasc friend losing hormones' is not actually a solution at any scale. Conservative suggestions say that there are nearly a million tranamasc people in the United States. Even if we assume not all of them are on HRT, it's deeply unserious and unrealistic to act like that's a wide scale solution, especially with doctors under increasing scrutiny around trans affirming healthcare.

Lastly, if you have these transmasc DIY hrt groups, please fucking send them to me because I'm so fucking tired of being an afterthought in my own community.

Transmasc people face unique challenges in the trans community and it's important to talk about and uplift that, actually.

And calling that FEARMONGERING??? Fuck off with that.

The Bisexual flag is officially 25 years old today 🥳 💗💜💙 (December 5th, 2023)

*doom music starts to play* I actually kindof like scheduling these kinds of appointments now...

but seriously Fellas, don't forget to schedule a pap smear every couple of years just in case. If you still have a cervix you can still get cervical cancer. ilu

this has been a psa

If you’re a transfem that shits on transmascs fuck you. If you’re a transmasc that shits on transfems fuck you too. Do better.

Quick reminder that you don't need a solid sexuality! You can just be in love! Or not be in love! Or have a gender! Labels are a choice, not a requirement. All you need to do is be someone you like being! If labels help with that, great! But they are not required. You don't owe it to anyone, so don't feel pressured to choose labels if they aren't your thing!

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS ARE TRANS RIGHTS. ABORTION RIGHTS ARE TRANS RIGHTS. THESE ARE NOT SEPARATE ISSUES. PLEASE IM BEGGING CIS WOMEN TO THINK ABOUT TRANS PEOPLE FOR LONGER THAN FIVE SECONDS

also while this post is targeted towards exclusion of trans people from discussion around gynecological injustice, this is also true of forced sterilization of trans people with penises. no one should be forced to give up their right to reproduce in order to medically or legally transition.

What if I tell you i feel trans in both ways. Like I'm a trans man but also sometimes a girl but there's nothing cis about that.

Also sometimes I'm neither and also both and really I'm just me and I'm definitely trans and queer as fuck

The above is a video shared by smrchildsadness on Twitter, showing a person participating in a pride parade exchanging a pride flag with a person standing on his (am using his pronoun based on the TikToks/Tweets of what happened) doorway who had a Portuguese flag. There are sounds of cheers and crying and the two people hug each other as they exchange the flags. The man at the doorway then waved kisses to the crowd within the pride parade.

The Tweet says: "NO YOU DONT UNDERSTAND HE WAS WAVING THE PORTUGUESE FLAG BECAUSE HE DIDN'T HAVE A PRIDE FLAG AND THEY TRADED FLAGS AND HE'S SO EMOTIONAL TO GET HIS OWN PRIDE FLAG I'M EMOTIONALLY RUINED"

For context, apparently they were worried that maybe he's a nationalist because he was waving the Portuguese flag and some nationalists opposing the pride march were waving that flag. But upon interacting with him, it turns out he didn't have have a pride flag and he wanted to wave *a* flag in support of the pride march. So they had an exchange and now he has his own pride flag 😭🥹.

The image above is a Tweet by kunwara_ladkaa that says "I'm crying so much right now (Image taken by Manuel Fernando Araújo/Lusa)". The image shows the same man from the pride parade crying as he hugs his new pride flag.

The above image is a Tweet by dudz_zZzz that says "ainda não parei de pensar nele," which according to Google translate from Portuguese to English is "I still haven't stopped thinking about him." The image is a drawing of the person from the pride parade, crying as he hugs his new pride flag.

Posts were made on July 1, 2024.

Transfem to Transmasc solitary must exist as much as any trans solidarity must exist.

Protect my boys.

Trans masc to trans fem solidarity must exist as much as any trans solidarity must exist.

Protect my girls.

Parents Supporting Their LGBT Kids During Pride Month.

Fuck spreading hate like wildfire, spread this! Compassion, love and pride during pride month!!

Some poc parents showing their support because images like these are rarely shown and hard to find.

THIS IS IMPORTANT.

SPREAD THIS LIKE WILD FIRE.

we DO grow old and happy. btw.

And you find love and it stays with you.

Older women are so, so beautiful, and older trans women are no exception. Celebrate the beauty of our elders! Celebrate trans beauty!

^^^

I wanted to share some more of these, specifically trans women of color. The images I'm posting are from a project called To Survive On This Shore and it's an interview project. I am only posting a handful so it's so worth checking out!

This is Linda, 60

Alexis, 64

Helena, 63

Kendrah, 72 (!!)

Tasha, 65

It was deeply healing to me to discover this project. The site has selected photos and attached interviews and it's definitely worth your time. I didn't include any because the focus of this post imo is transfems but there are a lot of beautiful interviews with transmasc people too if you're interested! But that'll have to be another post 💖

no nonbinary person should ever feel obligated to say that they’re aligned with a binary gender. your gender does not have to be described in relation to binary genders, nor do you have to feel more closely connected to one of the two.

My biggest tip to ppl who are the beginning of their gender self-discovery is to let it marinate. You don't know which label fits you the most? Don't worry about that. It will come with time. You might change your labels multiple times, and it's completely normal.

Start with pronouns and words that feel comfortable to you. They should give you gender euphoria. If you feel uncomfortable with certain pronouns, etc, it might be a sign that you should drop them. You don't need to change your name at first. You don't need to do that at all!

Ask your friends or family that you know will support you to use different pronouns/names. Even if you can do that only online for safety reasons.

Don't rush things. There is no pressure. You don't have to prove anything to anyone.

Don't just learn queer history; let it be a transformational force. Give it as a gift to the people in your life. Tend to it as you would a garden, share it when you can, fertilize it, water it. Gather strength from it. It's not a finite resource; it is constantly growing, and there is always more you can gain from it.

Pushing forward the garden metaphor (because that soil is so rich) let yourself enjoy the biodiversity. Don't allow your knowledge to become a pristine, perfectly cut lawn; bring in native wildflowers and watch them bloom. You won't regret it.

"Being nonbinary dosen't inherently mean being trans"I will murder you with my bare fucking hands if you don't stop spreading misinfo like this.The white stripe on the trans flag is literally there to represent nonbinary people.'Transgender' dosen't mean just 'binary trans man or binary trans woman',it means 'not cis' fullstop.Y'all are one of the reason's transneutrals feel so alianted from their own community and i'm not gonna stand for it cause you consider yourself a trans people expert when you know nothing about us and propably get offended at neopronouns and 'weird' genders because,again,you know nothing about us

i know what this post is getting at, but some of it is poorly worded.

non-binary isn't inherently trans. it's not an inherently separate thing either. the truth is that some non-binary people don't identify as trans while others do.

neither "non-binary is inherently trans" nor "non-binary and trans are wholly separate categories" tell the whole truth. both erase people. either non-trans non-binary people are erased to validate trans non-binary people or trans non-binary people are erased out of gatekeeping. the truth is that it's complicated.

for a while i didn't identify as trans and i know quite a few other non-binary people who aren't trans. for me and many others, it's not necessarily about internalised transmisia or whatever, but rather just that the word didn't feel right. some people use other gender modalities like isogender or metagender or adgender. some don't label it. some non-binary people identify as cis. i don't think any of those are wrong (and i'm not saying that you do).

"non-binary is inherently trans" also creates a cis-trans binary which is just gender binary lite.

also, the white stripe in the trans flag stands for "people who are transitioning or people of neutral or undetermined gender", so make of that what you will. it technically doesn't represent my gender as a maverique (as well as not really representing androgynes, agender folk, xenogender folk etc.), but i use it anyway. whatever.

i'm saying all of this as a trans maverique who constantly feels alienated from both trans and non-binary communities btw, also because people keep treating "transneutral" as a catch-all for all non-binary people who aren't transmasc or transfem. meh.

i'm not mad at OP btw, just adding some much needed nuance. it too annoys me to be treated like a second-class trans because everything's focused on mascs and fems and men and women and hrt and surgery.

the truth of the matter is that every single non-binary person gets to decide whether trans is a label that they want to use or not, and everyone should be respected. non-trans non-binary people aren't our enemies. generalising statements simply don't work for such a diverse group.