Lesbian, Not Qu**r: On the Use of Slurs

The UBC Pride Collective recently held OUTweek, an event which caught more attention than usual due to the rainbow flag on campus that was burnt, and the outpouring of support for and solidarity with the UBC Pride Collective. I expect some might say this is not the time to criticize the Pride Collective in any capacity, but I don’t think the flag burning told LGBTQ people anything we didn’t already know. Was it upsetting? Of course. Am I surprised? No.

It is incredibly frustrating to face homophobia and erasure from cisgender straight people on one hand and then to be repeatedly and consistently referred to by a slur from the people who are ostensibly part of “my community”, like the UBC Pride Collective, who consistently uses the q-slur as an umbrella term. The Talon has a section called “Queer Issues.” The Bike Co-op has often held “Women and Queer Night” (whatever that means). Qu**r is regularly used in my classes as a synonym for LGBTQ people. I want to emphasize that I believe same-gender attracted and trans people have every right to call themselves qu**r if they want to. I just don’t want to be coercively labelled a slur that makes me feel sick to my stomach.

I don’t think The Talon, the Bike Co-op, or the people using qu**r in my classes are homophobic – in fact I think they are all probably trying very hard to be inclusive, as the SLC probably did during the sessionled by Alex Sangha which I attended (and wrote about), in which he talked about his work with LGBT South Asians. What I found interesting was that the one and only time when Sangha used the word qu**r was alongside the word f*gg*t in describing experiences with bullying at school. Despite this, his session was advertised by the SLC as being about his work with “queer South Asians” and the moderator for the session continually referred to his work with the “queer” community. I can’t presume to speak for Sangha on his view of the word qu**r, but I found the SLC’s subtle refusal to mirror his language usage both fascinating and profoundly disappointing.

Qu**r has been and continues to be used as a violent slur against same-gender attracted and trans people. Many people in these groups have reclaimed the slur and use it as a label to describe their sexuality and/or gender. But reclamation by some does not mean reclamation by all. For me, whenever the word qu**r is used as an umbrella term to describe all LGBTQ people, I feel physically repulsed. Terms like the “queer community” to refer to LGBTQ people is like referring to all women as the “bitch community.” Are there women who call themselves b*tches and say they’ve reclaimed the word? Yes. Does anyone think “bitch community” would be a good term to adopt for women? Probably only raging misogynists, or people who are terribly confused about what reclaiming a slur means.  

In my experience the word itself also tends to homogenize the spectrum of LGBTQ experiences. If we’re all qu**r, then it makes it more difficult to talk about specific issues like lesbophobia, biphobia, and transmisogyny, for example. Not to mention the fact that qu**r originates as a word to describe men’s sexuality. Therefore, using qu**r to describe women who love women reinforces an expectation that women adopt men’s language to describe ourselves and that we may only articulate our experiences through their words.

Qu**r also tends to be used to describe particular political ideologies, and I really resist attaching a specific political ideology to my attraction to women. Sometimes I just want to be a person. It feels exhausting to me to have to always keep my politics intertwined with my sexuality, so much so that the same word is used for both. The world is already tough enough on sapphic women, and I feel it is important for me to be able to relax back into the beauty of women loving women without constantly feeling a pressure to be political. It is my opinion that women loving women is one of the most beautiful things in the world, and I want to be able to just appreciate that and be grateful that I am a lesbian. I would never want it any other way.

• lesbian
• LGBTQ+