Are We Really All Queer?

LGBTQIAPK. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender/Transexual, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Pansexual/Polyamorous, and Kinky.

That’s right. There are new letters. It’s an expanded acronym designed to be even more inclusive of gender identities and sexual orientations. It takes up two lines on my page, and it does some heavy lifting. The beauty of that acronym is that it’s shared. It binds us together into a community that’s big enough to speak up and be heard.

That function saved many of our lives in the 80s when the willful silence of Reagan’s administration during the AIDS crisis would have exterminated our community if not for loud protests from well-networked and organized groups like ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power).

Our acronym works because when one is in trouble, there are many to help. But we’re losing sight of its significance.

People in and out of the LGBTQIAPK community are using the term “queer” as shorthand for our diverse community. “Queer” instead of non-binary. “Queer” instead of trans. “Queer” instead of asexual. “Queer” instead of gay, even. You get the point. The motivation there is questionable. It might be laziness. Or it might be something more positive; a drive to feel closer to one another, for all to sit at one table. On an individual level, it might be a means to avoid discussing our identities with curious strangers.

I sat next to Roxy at Twist, Seattle’s Queer Film Festival. She’s a 56-year-old, self-described “butch lesbian.” We went into that term, “butch.”

“I’m actually non-binary,” she said. Roxy only just discovered the term and began using she/they pronouns a year ago. When she wants to avoid a conversation about intersectionality, she often just says she’s queer. “My partner usually tells people she’s gender-queer,” she confided, “which doesn’t avoid much.”

Yet, the term “queer” can be homogenizing. When it’s used for a collective (i.e. “the queer community”), it doesn’t give us much room to be different — and we are different. Our experiences vary greatly. It’s important to recognize that, because our need for the network of support we developed in the 80s is the same.

According to Human Rights Campaign, last year 29 trans people were murdered; this year, the tally is already at 22 — and these are only confirmed homicides, and do not take into account trans individuals who are currently missing. To call us all “queer” is to equate the trans experience to, for example, the gay experience. The problem with that is that gay people aren’t being murdered at the rate trans people are. Saying “queer” instead of trans erases the specificity our community relies on to rally behind a group that needs support.

We did and do not come together because we are all the same. It’s important to remember that our sameness is not our point of commonality. Our point of commonality, the genesis of our alliance, is fighting to survive a strong and deadly heteronormative current. The symbol of that alliance? Our acronym. Thanks to our acronym, not a single sentence is written without each of us present. Thanks to LGBTQIAPK, we all sit at one table in full appreciation and recognition of our diversity in sexual orientation and gender identity. “Queer,” on the other hand, forces us to share a seat. It imagines a sameness in experience that, frankly, doesn’t exist. It behaves like the trans or non-binary or intersex experience can be likened to the gay experience when the they are each unique.

The acronym is better. But it’s also true that we seldom have a conversation with a heterosexual person without them bringing up how long the acronym is getting. The skeptic will wonder: By adding more letters, are we forgetting that we need to be understood when we speak up? Are we making indigestible alphabet soup? They’ll think it’s the last thing we need.

But “queer” muddies the water. In fact, it’s “queer” that makes us hard to understand. It isn’t a show of solidarity as much as it is a disservice to our mission of equal rights and equal treatment.

In ditching LGBTQIAPK for “queer,” we are silencing a minority of important experiences and turning our backs on the letters of our acronym which most need our support. When did we forget that, for us, silence = death?

 

 

Is Grindr A Subculture?

*The featured photos are selections from gaytona.beach, a project highlighting photographer Andrew Harper’s experience on Grindr in Daytona Beach from the age of 19. 

 

In 1979, the British sociologist Dick Hebdige published an extra-thick wad of social science on similarities between subcultures in a book called Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Don’t worry, I read it for you.

If you want to know whether the crowd of people you’re looking at belongs to a subculture, look out for these things: inventive language, distinctive dress, a common favorite music genre, an exclusive media channel, and, most importantly, a bold philosophy that explains their opposition to mainstream culture. In most cases, the subcultures Dick Hebdige studied had at least one other thing in common: heterosexuality.

Mainstream culture has always been a very serious threat to gay men. Masculinity is the norm, heterosexuality is the law. Disobeying either can threaten your livelihood, if not your body. Years ago, you’d get beaten and/or killed. Today, the abuse is more often psychological than physical. And so, for gay men, repressing our identities has always been an act of self-preservation such that the only place gay men can find acceptance, free from the threat of the mainstream, is in an all-gay space.

At least for younger generations, those all-gay spaces are increasingly virtual – they’re supplements to the physical spaces gay subculture has long inhabited (i.e. clubs, bars, bathhouses, community centers).

Enter Grindr, “the world’s largest gay social network app.” Yes, it’s a media channel for gay subculture, but now it’s also a subculture of its own.

This makes perfect sense when you realize that not every gay man uses Grindr and not every Grindr user is a gay man. The ability to self-select into Grindr is part of what makes it a subculture. Those who choose to use it get to know their sexuality in a space that’s intentionally separate and safe from mainstream culture. Curiosity has a place there. Sexual-expressive freedom is Grindr subculture’s philosophy. And those who use the app quickly realize that its users have a language of their own.

On the platform some key terms were carried over from gay subculture – terms like “top,” “bottom,” and “versatile” that describe a gay man’s sexual preferences (the “top” likes to penetrate, the “bottom” likes to receive, and the “versatile” man likes both). But Grindr users often abbreviate them to single letters which are faster and easier to type: T, B, or V.

Among Grindr’s host of custom (sometimes NSFW) emoticons that have their own sub-textual meanings, there are bunk beds – one depicts a man on the top bunk (for the tops) and one depicts a man on the bottom bunk (for the bottoms).

Of course, that library contains a purple eggplant (an emoji that now cross-culturally represents a penis), but there’s also one that’s brown, one that’s white, one shown through a magnifying glass for the less-well-endowed, and one displayed in a polaroid (sent as a substitute for requesting nudes). There’s a peach and there’s a peach with a phone over it for a booty call. There’s a set of handcuffs, a man with a bear paw for the “bears” (those are hairy, bulky, older men), a man in leather chaps wearing aviators, and the lower half of a man wearing a jockstrap.

Grindr users message each other “looking?” or “DTF?” – shorthands that ask whether the person on the other end of the chat is looking for sex right now. Some users even change their profile name to a “looking eyes” (👀) emoji to reach a wider audience.

“Grindr tribes” offer an even deeper dive into a user’s identity and sexual preferences. Bear, Clean-Cut, Daddy, Discreet, Geek, Jock, Leather, Otter, Poz, Rugged, Trans, and Twink describe the physical and psychological categories a gay man identifies with and/or is looking for in a partner. After all, Grindr exists for sexual exploration.

So, Grindr is a subculture that is also its own exclusive media channel. As a subculture, it also has a philosophy and an original language.

To be sure, Grindr’s place and purpose are complicated by its neighbors – Scruff, Growlr, Hornet, etc. I suspect that technological shortcomings are not why the gay community loves to hate Grindr. I think it’s more about our relationship with shame and our relationships with one another. On some level, we love to hate ourselves. What we see in one another reminds us that mainstream culture taught us to hate homosexuality. If you need proof of that, consider the fact that there’s not a homo among us who hasn’t been asked, “Why are gay people obsessed with sex?” or wondered it themselves in a critical tone.

For gay men, the act and topic of sex is not just a rejection of the idea that we ought to hate our sexuality, it’s a rebellion against the idea that we ought to hate ourselves for it. And that’s why there’s hardly a Grindr user I’ve met who hasn’t deleted the app (often seeking out another) and returned to it because gay sex has never been so freely discussed between so many of us as it is there.