TOBIN: So, Kathy.
[THEME DRUMROLL IN]
TOBIN: Here at Nancy, we use the word “queer” a lot.
KATHY: Queer folks, queer politics, queer art. Everything is queer!
TOBIN: Yeah, people have been really embracing this word lately. But it can be really loaded for some folks.
KATHY: There are lots of people in the community who have painful memories around the word. But other folks feel very affirmed by it.
TOBIN: Mhm. So, our dear friend Helen Zaltzman does this awesome podcast called "The Allusionist," from Radiotopia. And every week she digs deep into language, y'know, the words we use and the history behind them.
KATHY: This week, we’re dropping an episode of her show, all about the complicated past and present of the word "queer."
TOBIN: And, bonus, Kathy and I make an appearance!
KATHY: Here’s Helen.
HELEN: This is about a word that currently means a lot of things to different people:
AMY SUEYOSHI: So, I see "queer" as an umbrella term, as a political call for revolution as well as unity across different groups of people.
JONATHAN VAN NESS: I think of it with definitely positive and, like, loving ... uh ... energy around it, like, I don’t think of it as an insult at all; I think growing up, I felt it would have been more of an insult. I think that it was in 2015 when we got marriage equality, and just, like, the way the media -- the -- especially the LGBTQ+ media, started to phrase "queer" as a more, like, umbrella, loving term that was, like, just something that we could all kind of be a part of. So I think I kind of, like, got the cue from reading, and media, to know that it was -- it was, like, a gorgeous, amazing word, not like one to be ... that like -- it's one that, like, we're taking the love back and it wasn't one to be offended by anymore.
KATIE MINGLE: I haven’t always loved the term for myself, because it feels like an umbrella term that, like, you can use if you’re gay and in a relationship with someone of the same sex, or you can use if you’re, like, a basically straight couple that, like, occasionally, like, has a threesome with somebody. That’s what "queer" has come to mean, is, like, anyone who’s thinking a little bit outside the norm.
AMY SUEYOSHI: I think it's rejecting things like patriarchy and heteronormativity, right? Mandates of morality. Uh, not just to be able to keep things gray or to be postmodern, post-category, right? But instead, rather, to call for a true revolution of the way we see the world, the way we categorize the world. Uh, so it's not just about LGBT rights per se but it's about creating a world that's, uh, more respectful of equity and -- and thinks about diversity as a plus and values different ideas as a side of radical change rather than fear.
KATIE HERZOG: I sort of hate it. It’s too broad.
TOBIN LOW: It's so useful. I mean, especially as there is this proliferation of identities that people can call themselves and identify with and really claim, it's a great way of just sort of acknowledging that it's all in the umbrella. It's just like a way of acknowledging the validity of all the things, which I think is great.
ERIC MARCUS: [LAUGHTER] This word has tortured me. [PAUSE] I'm Eric Marcus and I'm the creator and host of "The Making Gay History" podcast.
HELEN: The subtitle of Eric’s podcast is ‘Bringing the voices of queer history to life’; but even so, he struggles with the word ‘queer.’
ERIC MARCUS: Because, for me to say the word 'queer', having grown up in an era when the word was the same as calling someone a faggot, um, or a homo ... so I'm hardwired to experience the fight-or-flight response when I hear the word 'queer.' So for me to say the word ‘queer,' as I'm doing [LAUGHS UNCOMFORTABLY] now, sends all kinds of adrenaline through my system, and all I want to do is -- is fight or run.
TOBIN LOW: My name's Tobin.
KATHY TU: I'm Kathy.
TOBIN: We are the cohosts of “Nancy,” which is a podcast about all things LGBTQ.
KATHY: It's queer. It's a queer podcast.
HELEN: So what does the word 'queer' mean to you?
KATHY: To me, I've been using it interchangeably with LGBTQIA.
TOBIN: Yeah, I would say the same. I use it as a blanket term to refer to a very wide-ranging community [KATHY HUMS IN AGREEMENT] and to sort of make the point that I feel unified with those people. And when I say “those people”, I mean, like, across the community --
TOBIN: -- that it's not just, like, me as a gay person; that I feel connected to trans people, intersex, asexual, bisexual; that we're in a community and we should be taking care of each other.
HELEN: And do you self-identify as queer?
KATHY: I do, yeah. [TOBINS HUMS IN AGREEMENT] I call myself a queer woman.
TOBIN: I identify sexually as gay and maybe, like, politically as queer, if that makes sense.
HELEN: So the Venn diagram would be queer, and then gay would be a subset in the Venn diagram for you.
HELEN: But, for some people, this term is not very welcome.
KATHY: Yeah, well, it wasn't welcome for me when I was younger. I thought it was -- I really didn't like the word. I just honestly didn't use it very much in my life, so when I heard it I was like, "I think this is derogatory, so I'm going to see it that way." And so I just really avoided it.
TOBIN: It feels like one of those words that you grow up and it's on a list of words you know you're never supposed to say.
TOBIN: And maybe not everything on that list you know why it's on that list. [LAUGHS, KATHY AGREES] You just get the information of like, oh, I am never supposed to say this word.
ERIC MARCUS: I have to be a little more flexible and consider the fact that language is constantly evolving, and what may have been a pejorative at one time only has sting if I choose to allow it to be so. But, that said, for those of us who are older and grew up at a time when that word was hurled at us like a baseball bat, we do have a -- a hard-wiring in our brains that leaves us a little sensitive to using the word ourselves, or hearing it used in conversation, and feeling that it's benign. Well, I grew up in such a different time. And the anxieties that went along with being gay in 1976 are still buried deep in my brainstem. So I struggle with -- even as out as I am, and I don't know if you can be much more out than I am, given the work I do especially -- [HELEN LAUGHS] I still face issues around my internalized homophobia and my anxiety of how people will react to me if they know I'm gay. And I will take that to my grave with me.
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HELEN: ‘Queer’ has been in the English language for at least the past 500 years. For the first 400 or so of those years, it meant ‘strange’ or ‘oblique’ -- something out of the ordinary. And that meaning would be applied to people too, initially for reasons other than sexuality, but by the late 19th century, it was in use to imply that somebody was not behaving heterosexually. The first known written instance of ‘queer’ as a slur for gay men was in a letter from 1894 by John Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, complaining that, I quote, ‘snob queers’ had corrupted his sons. One of said sons, Francis, had been rumored to be having a relationship with the prime minister Lord Rosebery; his other son, Alfred, was famously the lover of Oscar Wilde, who was targeted by Queensberry until he was imprisoned in 1895 for gross indecency, which was then a legal term for sexual acts between men. Who knows how or why the Marquess of Queensberry opted for the word ‘queer’, or whether he even intended it specifically to mean homosexuals. Probably unbeknownst to him, the word was already being used thus -- but not as a slur.
AMY SUEYOSHI: The term 'queer' definitely was a flag of same-sex sexuality before 'queer' meant 'queer' as we understand it today.
HELEN: Amy Sueyoshi is the interim dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. As a historian, she specializes in race, gender, and sexuality, and her research has found that, as far back as the 1870s, people were describing themselves as queer to denote their sexuality.
AMY SUEYOSHI: This idea of sexual identity was not as solidified or firm as we think of it now. And so people would participate in same-sex activities and they're calling themselves also queer and thinking of their acts as queer. Uh, and it doesn't have the same kind of negative connotation that begins to take hold in the 1950s, right, when homophobes start yelling “Queer!” and things like that.
HELEN: Why did ‘queer’ gain that negative connotation, and why at that point in time?
AMY SUEYOSHI: There's a -- a number of key points that happened in the turn of the century -- 1890s to 1920s: sexology becomes, uh, more popular, whereas previously, even after works by Kinsey or Ellis were published, people didn't really read them. And so it's not until several years later that people start reading them, in conjunction with, uh, y'know, the rise of cities that have urban areas where lots of folks are congregating, combined with, um -- in San Francisco there's Presidios, right? Where military congregates -- large groups of men -- and they kind of engage in activity that is not conventional and not suspect. And so I think it's sort of the nexus of all these three things that historians talk about, sort of: the rise of -- of gay consciousness, or modern gay identity as we understand it. And as we see more of a modern gay identity coming to the fore, being more public, then the state says, "Hey, there's something going on; [LAUGHS] there's a trend. It looks like more people are queer. And they're forming community around it and we need to really keep an eye on this, if not shut it down, because it is -- goes what we think is the key to a democratic society, the heterosexual household." Uhh. And so it's in this context really that the rise, not only of awareness around gay sexuality and identity comes to the fore, but the state also begins to worry.
HELEN: And then what do they do with those fears?
AMY SUEYOSHI: So they start doing things like, umm ... creating anti-sodomy laws. They might have a clause in their books that says, uh, "crimes against nature," right? But it's not really defined. No one really knows what it is. But then it becomes increasingly defined as more, uh, police begin to arrest folks for same-sex sexual activity. In San Francisco there's an interesting case, uh, called the Baker Street Vice Ring: in the nineteen-teens, a group of pretty well-off white middle class men, if not richer, are arrested for a fellatio ring where they have all gathered on 2525 Baker Street, um, and they sang songs and read poetry on the first floor and then they gave blowjobs and had anal sex on the second floor. And it went all the way to the California State Supreme Court! There was one particular case where two men were convicted of fellatio. And the judge ruled that the term ‘fellatio’ was not in common understanding; that it wasn't in English; that in fact it was “a word as obscure as Chinese, or Japanese characters, or Mexican hieroglyphics” is what the judge says. [LAUGHS] And under the Constitution you can’t be convicted of a crime that is not easily understood or undefinable. And so all the fellows in the fellatio ring -- they were exonerated. And so that's kind of interesting to think that even in the nineteen-teens, fellatio is not clearly defined. My friends would argue that even today no one really knows what fellatio means, but, umm --
HELEN: I think some people have figured it out for themselves. [BOTH LAUGH]
AMY SUEYOSHI: -- but, uh, I -- I think that in that early period, it wasn't totally clear what same-sex sexuality was or what people did with each other, yeah?
HELEN: Amy pinpoints the First and Second World Wars as significant for same-gender sexuality, as those allowed large numbers of young men and women to congregate, and also towns with lots of service personnel flowing through tended to be more liberal.
AMY SUEYOSHI: There's this real burgeoning of gay and lesbian culture, right? And as we see gay and lesbian culture burgeoning in the military, people start to freak out. And so there's a public clampdown, uh, and then, y'know, it gets conflated into other things like the Cold War and how gayness somehow seems, like, equivalent to communism, right?
HELEN: Because communism was seen as subversive, and homosexuality was seen as subversive. Therefore communism and homosexuality were the same ... Didn’t need to make sense to be an excuse to fire gay and lesbian people from government jobs in the 1950s in the US and UK.
AMY SUEYOSHI: It gets, then, wrapped around xenophobic, homophobic kind of tirades and ‘queer’ definitely, then, began to be used as a sword to vilify, uh, people, for sure.
HELEN: And it was around this time that ‘gay’ became the predominant term that homosexual men would use to describe themselves, as ‘queer’ had become such a brickbat, and, broadly, queer as a slur was more directed at men.
[LOW DRUM COMES IN]
AMY SUEYOSHI: The gay men are more targeted because sort of what they do amongst each other is criminalized more explicitly in the law. It seems like the law is very concerned about the penis, like, what people do with the penis. But they're less concerned if there's no penis involved, um, at least in this early period of persecution. So I do think that queer folks were under severe state- as well as a sort of social attack. So social stigma as well as state repression; gay bars literally being invaded; people getting fired from their jobs, right? And in this moment, I think that radical gays and lesbians as well as trans folks, they rose up and they decided to form this queer umbrella.
TOBIN: More on that after the break.
KATHY: “Nancy” will be back in a minute.
KATHY: And we’re back, with an episode of "The Allusionist," about the word "queer."
TOBIN: Here’s Helen.
HELEN: It did take many years to open up that umbrella, or even to call it 'queer.' But a major move towards the word’s reclamation came in 1990. In March of that year, the activist group Queer Nation had formed, and at a Pride march in NYC that June, they handed out a leaflet called ‘Queers Read This’, in which they explained: “We've chosen to call ourselves queer. Using 'queer' is a way of reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the world.”
AMY SUEYOSHI: What's interesting is that, in the 1990s, uh, in the wake of HIV/AIDS, we see another rise of sort of queer as a way to reclaim the ways in which gay bodies are stigmatized and seen as diseased and so we take back queer to say, “Hey, we're queer, we're proud, y'know, we're deviant, we're proud. We don't want to be normal.”
HELEN: Queer Nation’s pamphlet also explains why they rejected the suggestion of using ‘gay’ as the blanket term for the movement: “Queer, unlike GAY, doesn’t mean MALE. And when spoken to other gays and lesbians it's a way of suggesting we close ranks, and forget (temporarily) our individual differences because we face a more insidious common enemy. Yeah, QUEER can be a rough word but it is also a sly and ironic weapon we can steal from the homophobe's hands and use against him.”
ERIC MARCUS: There was a school of thought -- there is a school of thought -- that by embracing a word that was used in a negative way, that you can rehabilitate the word and take the sting out of it and change it. Umm. I don't happen to subscribe to that school. Umm. It takes a lot of energy to -- to change that.
AMY SUEYOSHI: The one thing that's important to remember is that historically, uh, gay and lesbian activists actually reclaimed the word ‘queer,’ right? So it's a word that they're choosing for themselves. So if you're gay or lesbian and you want to be called 'gay' and 'lesbian,' then great! Call yourself 'gay' or 'lesbian,' you don't need to call yourself 'queer,' right? But it's important for gays and lesbians who dislike the word 'queer' that there's a reason why part of the gay and lesbian population called themselves 'queer.'
TOBIN LOW: With anyone who wants to reclaim a negative term, I think it's also about forcing people to recognise the negativity, that you never wanna, like, abandon and pretend this thing didn't happen, that it didn't have a really hurtful, negative connotation for a long time. So I -- Ithink reclaiming is also about forcing people to reckon with what has happened before, and maybe even forcing somebody who might think of it in a negative way, um -- or use it in a negative way rather -- to, uh ... I -- I guess it would be, like, if someone thinks of it as a negative thing they can throw at you, if you use it also, [KATHY AND TOBIN LAUGH] it's taking that power away; it's subverting the power structure of the word.
HELEN: ‘Queer’ has had this gradual, incremental development towards becoming this umbrella term, and it’s tricky to find the precise point at which it broadened to encompass gender, expressing trans and non-binary identities. This remains a contention for some, who don’t want sexual orientation and gender identity to be united under one term.
AMY SUEYOSHI: I love ‘queer’ because it does kind of blur sexual identity and gender identity. I -- I think that it's a privilege for folks to be able to separate sexuality and gender. Most of us live with it overlapping.
KATHY TU: I would also say that I know that some people don't like the word 'queer,' not because they have, um, a negative association with it, but because they really crave a very individualized, like, focused label. That makes them feel like they are seen, and, I mean, that's fine too, if that's why you don't want to use the word queer. I get that.
JONATHAN VAN NESS: Can you understand me? Like, can I understand you? Why can’t I be queer and a cis gay man? And I think we can claim both.
AMY SUEYOSHI: There's a way in which, uh, queer politics really defines this larger community where gay men and lesbians and other folks can come together and create this unified formidable force to change society. And in that way I've always found ‘queer’ to be, uh, productive, not just for obviously gays and lesbians, but other -- all folks who are in the queer community that that also don't fit those neat categories.
KATHY TU: One of the reasons I personally identify as queer is because, um, it's a shortcut in trying to tell people what my identity is. Um, because I would say I identify as a bisexual person but I don't date men, and immediately people are like, "Well, that's not -- that's not bi!" [LAUGHS] But the thing is, I don't -- I don't date men because I don't fall in love with them. And so the easiest thing for me is to say that I identify as a lesbian. But then they're like, “But are you, though?” [CHUCKLES]
TOBIN LOW: You have a lot of people defining you for you.
KATHY: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I identify as queer instead of having to explain the whole backstory, and maybe I don't really honestly crave a singular label like some people do -- which, like, it's totally okay if you do, okay if you don't.
HELEN: People who have no real business in your life --
HELEN: -- why are they so anxious to categorize you?
KATHY: Well, I think it might be because we host a podcast about queer life.
TOBIN: To be fair, we invite some of it.
KATHY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
TOBIN: Because we ...
KATHY: I'm like, "We're queer!" [LAUGHS] And then they're like, “Well, what kind?" And they really zeroed in on certain things like I've been asked so many times, like, what did I mean in our very first episode when I said, "I'm not completely gay," which was my attempt at explaining to my mom this very fuzzy middle ground that I actually live in.
HELEN: Not that you have a heterosexual knee? [KATHY AND TOBIN LAUGH]
TOBIN: For me, I have the most heteronormative feet, you know? They're just straight as can be, my feet. Nothing I can do about it.
[1980s MUSIC PLAYS]
HELEN: In the late 1980s, people started using initialisms to refer to identities that aren't heterosexual and cisgender. First there was LGB: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual. Or GLB: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual. Then expanding to LGBT: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans. LGBTQ: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer. LGBTQIA: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Asexual. LGBPTQQIAAGNC+: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Pansexual, Trans, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Allied, Gender Non-Conforming, Plus.
JONATHAN VAN NESS: It’s so long!
HELEN: Easier to have one syllable.
JONATHAN VAN NESS: Yeah! And it’s just, like, a way for us to come together. I think as, like, marginalised people, it’s important to be able to come together as a family. And so it's ... Like, let’s, like, try to be, like, more connected than separated.
HELEN: So now, to express spectrums of sexual orientations and gender without having to provide specific categories or an impractically long list of initials, many will just use the word ‘queer’ instead.
ERIC MARCUS: I think that the wonderful thing about this one word -- and I'm really pushing myself to say the wonderful things about this word —
HELEN: You’re really making a lot of progress today, Eric. [BOTH LAUGH] Hope it's cathartic!
ERIC MARCUS: Better than my therapy session! [HELEN CACKLES] Um, I think the wonderful thing about the word is it does not make distinctions between gender identity, sexual orientation. We are all so different, and as we continue to evolve in our understanding about sexuality and gender expression, the cumbersome salad of letters to identify the different variations on the human theme will become completely unwieldy. And just to add the plus sign at the end of a long list of letters is gonna leave somebody left out -- will leave people feeling slighted. So, yeah, by having one word that's inclusive, people feel included. By the same token, there are people who feel excluded by not being identified explicitly.
TOBIN: I -- I feel like a lot of people are very scared at this moment to just ask someone, like, "How do you identify?" or, like, "How -- What's -- What is your truth?" or whatever. [LAUGHS] And -- And I think that there's no shame or no fear in asking that question if you're coming from a place of respect, of like, “I want to respect you the way you want to be respected.” So I think if someone uses the word ‘queer’ for themselves and you feel weird about it --
TOBIN: -- it's not that big a deal to be like, "Is it cool if I also refer to you as 'queer'? Is that kosher? Like, how would you prefer I refer to you?" I think that there's [PAUSE] a lot of stigma around that conversation, and as long as you're being respectful about it, I think that's totally fine to ask.
ERIC MARCUS: I think, in that regard, it's terrific that -- that young people growing up do have the breadth of options in terms of their gender expression and their sexuality expression that I didn't have growing up. It was ... [LAUGHS] There weren't many choices at all. I think it also offers challenges, and I've watched the children of friends grow up and some have struggled mightily with -- with great confusion over themselves, um, and feeling that they needed to declare one way or another; and the word ‘queer’ does simply give them the option to make it a placeholder. So you could say, “I'm queer.” And then you can figure out along the way as you grow through your adolescence [PAUSE] where you fit within that within the subcategories, if you choose to place yourself in one of those subcategories. These are all social constructs -- aside from behavior. The labels are something we've made up. And why should young people -- why should any people -- be bound by these conventions which are artificial to start with? So the word 'queer.' or a word that takes in all of the variations of humanity, is not a bad thing. I just wish it weren't the word 'queer!' [LAUGHS]
[NANCY END CREDITS MUSIC STARTS]
TOBIN: This episode was produced by Helen Zaltzman. Music and production help by Martin Austwick. Special thanks to Caroline Crampton, Dan Hall, Dave Pickering, Phoebe Judge, Eleanor McDowall, as well as Gerard Koskovich and Nalini Elias at the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco.
KATHY: You can find "The Allusionist" on Facebook and Twitter -- "allusionistshow" is the handle -- and at allusionist.org.
TOBIN: I’m Tobin Low.
KATHY: I’m Kathy Tu.
TOBIN: And "Nancy" is a production of WNYC Studios.
[NANCY END CREDITS MUSIC ENDS]