Feeling a Bit Queer

When an ex-partner/fomer MEGAcrush recently shared on Facebook his abhorrence of the word Queer as a descriptor for non-heterosexual people, I realised that my feelings about the word have shifted. "Reclaiming" words of hate is a complicated business; when "Queer" became fashionable in UK in the early 1980s I noticed that Queers were almost entirely white, under thirty, had cash enough to be in all the "right" bars wearing a uniform that featured jeans, tight white tee shirts and green "bomber-style" jackets with orange lining. As a black man, I never felt part of that crowd. It amused me that a particular journalist, who was a High Priest of the 'movement' at the time was, a few years ago, calling out guys who dressed like that. The fact that he no longer looks good in that drag might have something to do with it.

My attitude to "Queer" changed when I made friends with a couple of different straight guys who are comfortable-enough in their own sexualities not to be threatened by LGBT people, nor are they concerned by what other people might think of them for being seen with their friends. What I am describing is more than an "ally"- to the guys I'm describing, their relationships with their LGBT friends is unconditional. Queer, has become a term to include people whose attitudes rather than their sexual preferences or activities identify them as different to many "straight" people. I only think of myself as "queer" in association with a range of people with a similar, slightly anarchic, hippie outlook on and experience of life.

There's a line in my play "Battieman Blues": "Where are you gonna find a straight skinhead these days?" which always got a bigger laugh than I'd expected: This was a case of a successful subversion of hateful imagery: in the 1970s "Queer-Bashing" was the casual sport of guys who identified as Skinheads andf they did cause fear. By the end of the 1980s, so many Gay men had adopted the style that its power to oppress faded. I enjoyed watching gay men trash the cliche of the limp-wristed, effeminate pansy who'd wet themselves and run away if anyone said "boo!" to them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with guys who are (for shorthand) "camp", but it was still fabulous to watch pumped-up gay men owning their streets and bars after years of shame and discretion. Today; heterosexual women are still often wary of gym-chiselled men because so many of them are percieved to be possibly gay.

I sympathise with guys (usually of a similar age to me), who simply won't accept "Queer". For many; the memories associated with it are too painful, but... I've mellowed.