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Gay Not Queer

Gajdics, Peter
http://quillette.com/2022/11/25/gay-not-queer/

Publisher:  Quillette
Date Written:  22/11/2022
Year Published:  2022  
Resource Type:  Article

Gay identities are based on biological sex; gender identities erase biological sex and replace it with gender.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

I am not queer. I am a gay man. And I do not buy the notion that 'gay' must automatically be grouped into or conflated with the label of 'queer.' The former is not the same as or even a subgroup of the latter. In fact, in many respects, the identities of gay and queer stand in direct opposition to each other. Like the host of the podcast, most people typically never bother to ask me how I identify. They learn that I am gay, and they simply assume that makes me queer. It does not.

Until recently, I never thought it necessary to define 'gay' or 'man,' but when I say that I am gay, I mean that I am same-sex attracted; when I say that I am a man, I mean that I am an adult male. In other words, I am an adult male who is attracted to other adult males. Males are one of the two sexes of a binary species Homo sapiens. Just as adult males are called men, adult females are called women; and just as same-sex attracted males are called gay men, same-sex attracted females are called lesbians. Gay men are attracted to other males; gay women, or lesbians, are attracted to other females. None of this implies that gay men or lesbians are queer, for the identity of queer is another matter entirely.

These definitions, it turns out, are important, because contemporary queer ideology does not necessarily accept them. In fact, it seeks to disrupt and deconstruct them. The word 'queer' was long used as a pejorative against gay people. As a deeply sensitive nine-year-old in 1973, I still remember being called queer in my elementary school playground. I didn’t know what the word meant, except that it had something to do with the way I behaved.

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