Reclaiming a former slur from its history of hate: Is it OK to use the word queer?

Gordon Sauer was waiting for his mom outside a supermarket when eight words cut through the air like daggers into his 11-year-old heart.

Hey kid in the Chrysler, you are queer.

“I thought, oh God, please make there be another Chrysler,” said Sauer, now 70.

The verbal onslaught ended when the attackers’ mother whisked the taunting children away; the shaken Sauer never told his own mom.

“If I close my eyes right now, I can hear that situation 59 years later like it was yesterday. That’s how these kind of things can be,” said Sauer, who leads the Jersey City affiliate of SAGE, a national organization that advocates for older LGBTQ adults.

While the memory has simmered in his mind for decades, Sauer has made his peace with a term that in recent times has been a subject of debate: Is queer a weighted word bearing a history of hurt that should be avoided or a label of empowerment for the LGBTQ community?

Cathy Renna, communications director for the National LGBTQ Task Force, recalls the word becoming more commonplace in the 1980s. “It was a middle finger to those who were using it against us,” she said.

Renna has her own painful history, being labeled “queer, a dyke, a fag. You know when someone is saying something to hurt you.”

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As the term queer has picked up steam as an umbrella label, Renna stays sensitive to its usage around older individuals who might be uncomfortable with a longtime slur.

But she embraces the word and loves that it is becoming a growing part of the vernacular. “What I like about queer is that it is inclusive. it’s like an unlabel,” she said. “I always go back to what the context and intent are when someone uses a word.”

‘Think about the history of the word’

Some people started defiantly identifying as queer in the wake of the Stonewall Riots in 1969, which ignited the LGBTQ rights movement. The group Queer Nation, which was founded in 1990 by HIV/AIDS activists in New York, later co-opted the term.

Sauer, an educator who taught language for 40 years, knows the ebbs and flows of words: “Language evolves,” he said.

“For years, generations have had to accommodate and learn and understand the terminology used by younger generations,” he said. “Our parents did that, we are doing that, and eventually these young people – when they get a certain age – they will be doing this.”

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Sauer, who says he is personally comfortable with the term now, also serves as a professional development coordinator for the Central New Jersey chapter of GLSEN,  which works to make schools safe for LGBTQ students. Depending on whether he is working with older generations with SAGE or young people with GLSEN, Sauer says it’s important to know your audience. “We have to think about the history of this word.”

‘Never assign someone else a label’

For Fiona Dawson, 44, a director, writer and producer, the terminology has been entwined in her life.

Dawson first came out in 2004. “The term lesbian didn’t ever really quite fit 100% comfortably with me,” she said. “But I didn‘t understand why. And I think part of it is because it was a stereotype to whom lesbians are ... and I knew that wasn’t exactly me.”

Dawson, who preferred “gay” at the time, would jokingly call herself a “misfit lesbian”

A few years later she started “secretly dating guys. I realized the only reason I was turning down a date with a man was because I labeled myself gay or lesbian. But if I was honest with myself I was attracted to that guy.”

She looked within, then the epiphany came when she realized “there’s a B in LGBT, which is something I’m ashamed I overlooked.”

Dawson, who reidentified as bisexual in 2012, said labels are critical, but the nuances are complex.

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“We need those labels to be able to write our rights into law and health care and to be able to have equal protection and access within our community,” she said.

It’s important to think about the history of a term – and “never assign someone else a label,” she said. “Don’t assume the word queer is going to be comfortable with everyone, and at the same time don’t’ assume it’s going to be offensive to everybody. Ask questions … listen and find out what’s comfortable.”

‘I’m not the priority of our community’

Andrés Oswill, 29,  is a first-generation queer Peruvian American who lives in Portland, Oregon, and uses both he and they pronouns. He grew up during a time “when queer was not a positive term.”

Oswill even recalls a childhood game called “Smear the Queer” that had "nothing to do with sexuality. It was a way of throwing in a derogatory comment about people and implying weakness or inferiority.”

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They eventually found connection and community on the internet and through college studies and now embrace the use of queer.

Oswill – who is chief of staff for Oregon Futures Lab, a nonprofit that uplifts people of color for leadership roles – sees a bigger point in any debate over terminology: Keeping a spotlight on people and issues that can fall through the cracks such as murders of trans people or a growing number of homeless youths.

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“When I think about using the term queer, it’s about recognizing … I’m not the point, I’m not the priority of our community," he said. "There is so much more happening and so many other people who don’t have the privilege I do in moving through the world – and intentionally putting that at the center.”

Oswill says it’s key to look at the community through an intersectional lens: “See what parts of the community are better taken care of and what parts are still fighting for their support.”

Younger generations don’t want to be in a ‘box’

As more young people identify as LGBTQ – 21% in a recent Gallup poll – they are driving conversations about labels and terminology, Renna said.

“I think what we are seeing is that generations coming up and coming out are less interested in checking off boxes, less interested in restrictive labels,” she said.

Dawson agrees. “Younger generations are breaking the binary gender and sexuality identities, so it’s a more organic lexicon to use to describe the fluidity and less constrained concepts of identity,” she said.

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In 2005, Dawson left her Ford Ranger in a bar parking lot when she took a cab home after a night of clubbing. The next day when she returned she saw that someone had tried to key “faggot” into the side. The perpetrator's misspelling: “faget.”

The incident was upsetting, embarrassing – and humorous, she said.

The takeaway, Dawson said, is that “words have power when we personally give them power. If I choose to embrace queer as a positive for me, it doesn’t let anyone use it against me.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Is the term queer now a label of empowerment or still a word to avoid?