TurboPunz wrote:
Kamak wrote:
some people use Queer for fetishes of straight people or for things like upstanding members of society (I don't see this happen as much in a community setting but???).
I have bodaciously never once heard this, generally hetero cis people trying to put themselves into the acronym for non-hetero noncis people is met with nothing but scorn and phrases that have been repeated so much out of necessity that they've become a script.
By the by, I much prefer the acronym GSRM for Gender, Sexual, and Romantic Minorities. It includes everyone no matter their identity, plus it leaves no room for cishets (to use a term I hate a lot but flows well in a conversation) to butt in.
Unless of course they try equating sexual kinks to an orientation in which case you can catch them in that line of thinking and ask why they think our identities are equal to what gets their rocks off.
(i have a lot of Angry Queer Feelings that i can't express most other places so i might come across as kind of hotheaded)
The main places I hear this is when people are arguing over "how queer is queer" and the occasional really offputting "I saw a cis guy come to an LGBT meeting saying he was queer but he just had a fetish", which often feel like boogeyman stories, but then again a lot of experiences are semi-ubiquitous and prone to hitting the same tropes. I don't really know how I feel about people using Queer to label themselves for things that might be a bit of a stretch or what does and doesn't belong in Queer. It's kinda not my personal battle to fight and I honestly just kind of shrug at the discussion because it means different things to different people.
I do kinda dislike the general inclination to outright shunt discussion of Ally being a part of the acronym. While I understand that cishets (which I also agree is kind of an annoying and inflammatory term) "don't need to be a part of the arconyms to be a part of the group, and forcing it into the acronym takes the focus off of the people the group is supposed to focus on for backpats", in my area, it seems that not having A in the name is grounds for being rude and exclusionary for people coming for information and how they can help. I get it, cishet individuals
can be draining, idealistic, ignorant, and/or rude, but I feel that when Allies are shunted off it makes things harder to progress. The LGBT community has enough infighting as it is to where adding cishets who at least want to contribute won't make things inherently worse, and my experiences with the local LGBT communities when I identified as an Ally and later Questioning in the past still has left me not wanting anything to do with those specific branches and groups, and I can only imagine how other potential allies might have felt dealing with this sort of roadblock.
In a perfect world, for me, Ally WOULDN'T be part of the acronym, but people would still be welcoming to allies and at least try to be helpful to those willing to take that first step.