queeR

When I was a kid, queer was what you were if you wore white socks.  And the recess game of Smear the Queer had nothing to do with sexuality or gender identity.  Maybe that was just the insular environment of a Christian elementary school in Baltimore, but there it is.  Or was.  

Later I learned that Queer also meant homosexual, and it was a word that was meant to hurt people, not to identify them.  So it was a word I never used unless I was alluding to the work by William S. Burroughs.  And it's still a little dissettling for me to hear people refer to others or even themselves as Queer.  But I've got no dog in that fight, so what the hell.  Call yourself whatever you want to call yourself.

The ante got upped for me the other day, however, when I was talking to a woman who identifies herself as Queer, and in the midst of our conversation she referred to herself as "someone who was obviously visually Queer."  That phrase meant nothing to me.  I also didn't want to accidentally stray onto any thin ice, so I didn't ask her about it.  The next day I was talking to another woman who identifies herself as Queer, though, and since I knew her well I told her about that conversation and noted that I didn't know what Queer Woman One meant by that comment.  Queer Woman Two said that that meant that Queer Woman One had a shaved head and wore a certain type of clothing.

My mind was officially blown.  I am going to hazard a guess that if I suggested that I could tell if someone was Queer or not by looking at them that I would be labeled as judgmental or narrow-minded     . . . a label that I would think apropos in such a case.  I suggested to Queer Woman Number Two that that seemed to me like an inverted stereotype . . . by which I meant a person changing their behavior to fit someone else's preconceived notion of their identity.  That got me accused of being a person of the privileged class (meaning race, gender identity and preference, and education, since I certainly miss that mark in terms of economic worth).  Which I didn't think was a fair assessment.

I wish there were more people I could talk to about this, though, as it really bothers me.  My perspective is that to suggest that you can identify any aspect of someone's identity by looking at them is narrow-minded and hateful.  But just in case I'm wrong, here is a cheat sheet for future reference:

QUEER

NOT QUEER