Monday Morning Rant: Queer

I understand why Monty Python is funny.

I have never once tried to say something in an English accent and laughed.

I know that there is no crisis that should not be met with a cup of tea.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm British.

Now, I am a weird hybrid of British, seeing as my lineage covers England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, yet my parents (and I, according to the government) are also Canadian. But the Empire is still in my blood, and having spent my formative (i.e., drunken adolescence and early twenties) in London, I am definitely a British lass.

 Which brings me to this week's Monday morning rant about the word "queer". Because in the UK, "queer" is now a word with two regularly used meanings.
1. The original meaning - something off, wrong, not quite right, weird...
2. The annoying North-American meaning - bi-sexual.

See, I'm bisexual. Or pan-sexual. Or any other possible version of a sexuality that conveys the message that I am attracted to personalities rather than the shape of an individual's genitalia. I will happily have sex, flings, relationships, whatevers....with people who are male, female, trans, or any other part of the spectrum, as long as they are funny. And nice. And hot. Really, if it's just sex, I only care about the hot part. Hey, I'm honest.

What I am NOT, is "queer". I cannot understand how on earth that is not offensive.

Maybe it is because my first introduction to the word was not through "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy", and that I understand that "Queer as Folk" is actually a common phrase, not just the name of a tv show about gay people.

Maybe it is because I have been called "queer" before anyone knew I was anything but the straightest of straight, and it was an INSULT.

Seriously kids. This isn't like the n-word, which was an insult to black people, and was then re-claimed by black people. Queer was never originally an insult to gay people. It was, and still IS, an insult to anything slightly outside the norm. You are not re-claiming the name for your minority in a positive way - you are actively adopting a negative term for something else, in order to describe your minority. And that is just freaking dumb.

Re-claim fag. Go nuts with faggots (giggidy) because I can't think of anyone who has used that word to actually talk about building a fire in the past fifty years. Go crazy with homo, find any other word you want and emblazon it all over your local soho.

But for the love of god, leave "queer" alone. Queer is an awesome word. Queer is a word for which there is no synonym to accurately compare. Some things are just a little queer...and I would be sad for the sake of the english language if we lost that word to yet another nuance of human sexuality.

Queer is also a negative word. Queer means weird. Wrong. Not-quite right. A little off. Strange. Odd.

And I may be all those things, but I am NOT a slave to annoying pop-culture distortions of the language of the empire. So if you call me queer, don't be surprised when I kick you in the <insert genitals here>.

Of course, for anyone confused by that last statement, if you use the word "queer", I never want you to insert your genitals anywhere. Maybe a meat grinder.