Readers Write: Revisiting Queer 101

AlterNet. Posted March 10, 2007.

Last week we published Cameron Scott's Queer 101: A Guide for Heteros, and it drew quite a response from many of our readers.

Some people felt the article did not include the full spectrum of queer people -- and took issue with the author for not addressing bisexual people or drag queens.

Others felt the use of the terms themselves was limiting in trying to understand the diversity of the queer community.

"Who gets to decide what term means what, what terms are affectionate and what terms are offensive anyway? Is there a president of gender terms that I'm not aware of?" wrote one reader. "I think this article and the obsession with terms and labels is pretty damaging. I know it's only human to want to put a name to things, but the sad fact is you can't always do it."

Another reader, who identified himself as a gay man, said he had a difficult time relating to the article: "It's like some kind of game show lightning round for homosexual terminology that doesn't do a very good job of explaining or understanding any of them!" he wrote.

But for others, the piece was an opportunity to see the larger picture: "The point of anything our community and our allies write about us is this: We should have the same rights and responsibilities as all other citizens, whether or not we conform to anyone's notion of correct behavior (including those in our own herd), as long as we are not hurting anyone else (Jerry Falwell's delicate feelings notwithstanding)."

Other readers discussed the characterization of trans people and posed some of their own questions:

What I find particularly fascinating about the transgender movement are the endless questions about what it means to be a woman or a man or somewhere in between that are rarely fully answered. While there seems to be a focus on genitalia, hormonal changes (induced by ingesting synthetic hormones) and outward appearances, I think it will be more interesting to focus on the brain. After all, your brain will always be pre-op, no?

Many people found the piece difficult -- probably for a number of reasons that aren't surprising -- after all, thinking about gender identity and how we all fit (or don't) together, is not easy. One of the beauties of the queer community is getting to self-identify -- to call yourself, if you choose to use such terms, whatever you'd like. It is more difficult, however, to see someone else's version of what those words mean. And that's what this piece was intended to be -- one person's view -- not the official gay Webster's.

Since so many people responded to this article, we asked the author to provide some more information on how he approached this piece, his larger intentions, and his reaction to the comments. Cameron Scott wrote:

The editors at AlterNet asked me to write a primer on queer culture because they felt that readers, however tolerant, didn't know much about the "gays and lesbians" often referred to, but rarely described, in the mainstream media.

It's hard to know things about people the media doesn't cover and hard to know what people know. Based on my life experiences battling stereotypes, however, my starting point was what I deduced average, relatively tolerant people see when they imagine "gays and lesbians."

My feeling is they think gay men are generally educated and urbane, but also effeminate and usually oversexed. They think lesbians are tomboyish hippies who describe their sexuality in terms of the emotional superiority of women. Or, they see Ellen, a harmless but spirited personality with short hair.

I set out to combat those stereotypes by describing some of the other cultural trends I see in San Francisco, the most densely GLBT-populated city in the country. The city gives a biased sample, but it also allows trends and differences to be more visible than they would be in cities with smaller GLBT communities.

I had just 1,200 words to do it. It seems everyone I described felt misrepresented or underrepresented, and everyone I didn't describe was pretty angry about it. Ironically, I set out to make more room for difference, and I repeatedly stated in the piece that I didn't pretend to give an exhaustive "list" of queer identities. In fact, I wrote, "taking exception to the rule is a -- or the -- fundamental aspect of queer culture."

Some who were mentioned believed they were excluded, and those who were, excluded because I could only deal with larger trends, felt their exclusion suggested hostility. It's possible that the lighthearted tone of the piece was misinterpreted as animus, but I also wonder if the queers reading the article weren't predisposed, after so much exposure to hostile depictions of them, to see hate in my article when there was none.

For example, there were some gay men who felt that I furthered a stereotype of promiscuity, when I can find no reference to that in my article at all. (If I were to say something about it, I would raise my glass to monogamous relationships and plentiful sex alike.)

The most disturbing questions the comments raised for me were these: First, on a personal note, why is it that dykes who are engaged with the gender binary have no beef with those who aren't and yet those who aren't can't extend us the same tolerance in return? Second, and more importantly, if even an article written by a member of the GLBT community that sets out to describe all communities positively generates such angry comments, should the media then not write about GLBT people at all?

              

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