From the course: Sustainable LGBTQ+ Allyship
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Understanding the word queer
From the course: Sustainable LGBTQ+ Allyship
Understanding the word queer
- Some people avoid the ever-growing, ever-changing LGBTQ+ initialism by simply using the word queer. As in, I'm part of the queer community. I agree that having one word for the entire community would be great, but unfortunately, I don't think queer is it. I believe we must use the word queer with caution, at least for now. Here's a story to illustrate why. For 15 years, I worked at an organization in Upstate New York called The Gay Alliance. It had an old, outdated name because it was one of the oldest LGBTQ+ centers in the nation. In 2017, the staff decided that we needed to change the name to something more inclusive. Some of the ideas we came up with included the word queer. For example, The Rochester Queer Center. Thankfully, before we finalized our decision, several older adults from the Rainbow Seniors Group came to speak with us. They told us that the word queer was so offensive to them that if we used it in…
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