Wall sticker in Marlborough lesbian pub, Brighton.
i’m actually realizing this now
but the original poster said “queer power” and someone erased that and replaced it with “gay power”
real classy
#is this real
Well. I’m not exactly an expert at image analysis, but the bottom text in the first one looks much cleaner than the top text while the second one matches better. Also, the creases in the second one on the Q and U seem like the sort of detail that wouldn’t be faked. Finally, this actually matches up significantly better to “queer” politics than “gay” politics; it was always queers who advocated and took the front lines in direct action.
If you put the image in an editor or just view the full size of the first image, it becomes very obvious that the text on the bottom was added later: all of the vertical lines in every letter are pixel perfect straight lines. That is basically impossible with a photo of a poster that is both visibly at an angle, and has paper weathering and other distortion. Look at the verticals of the white text to compare. The only distortion of the text is the jpg artifacts we would expect in that level of contrast. There is no lighting on the pink text either, another highly suspicious trait.
Additionally, if you crop out the pink text in op and run an image search you get the second photo, as well as four or five other photos of the poster, all reading “queer power.”
With the pink text left in, however, the only version of the poster is this exact image, sourcing to op.
I want every single person who ever argued with me on That Queer Post to take a long, hard look at this. I have been told at least dozens of times that “nobody is saying you can’t identify as queer,” that I’m “ignoring history,” that they’re not trying to shift back to gay, etc.
Now, here’s this post, in which queer people are having their art defaced in order to rewrite their identity. Where they’re being forcibly rewritten as gay. Where history is being literally goddamn erased. It’s got three times the notes of That Queer Post, and as far as I can tell, @bifoxstiles is the first one to challenge this narrative. And I’m not gonna hold my breath on y’all to call out OP.
They’re literally stealing our history, rewriting it into a new version that excludes more than half of the community. And nobody’s challenging this. You’re too busy trying to shut down inclusive, egalitarian language.
Shame on every last one of you.
Queer is a slur and not everyone wants to identify as it stop using it as an umbrella term
MOTHERFUCKER don’t you start that here.
The people who made this poster? They wanted to identify as queer. How do I know? Because they fucking did. And now you’re supporting someone coming along after the fact and literally stealing their identity from them.
Here’s a better idea: I will continue using “queer” as an umbrella term for groups of people who happily identify as queer, and if you don’t like it you’re cordially invited to never talk to a queer person again.
Stop stealing our identities.
You are welcome to identify as queer if you reclaim it, and many ppl do, but that doesnt change the fact that there are plenty of lgbt ppl who think of it negatively (personally i am not one of these ppl so i cant speak for them, but i respect their wishes and i hope u will too). A better umbrella term to use is LGBT, imo.
That would be a lot more reassuring if you hadn’t shown up specifically to defend taking the word queer out of someone’s mouth and relabeling them as gay.
LGBT is a shit umbrella term. It prioritizes the historically-centered parts of the community over historically-marginalized groups, it completely leaves off swathes of the community, and these days it’s habitually used by the sort of gatekeepers who want to actually throw out sections of the community.
Again: If you don’t want to identify as queer, you don’t have to. But you don’t get to take that word away from any member of the community. If you don’t like it, just walk away and make your own shit.
I never thought I’d have to say this to members of the community, but: We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.
I’m not trying to take it away from people. If you want to reclaim it then good for you, but I’m just saying that not everyone wants to be called queer and using it as an umbrella term to include those who are potentially triggered by it or just dont like it is shitty. Also did u practically just say “Im using this slur as an umbrella term and if ur uncomfortable with it then get over it and walk away” or am i reading that wrong
You literally showed up to defend someone who had taken away a queer person’s words to put gay in their place. Stop pretending otherwise. If people don’t like that word, they’re fine not using it – but they can create their own works, rather than stealing and defacing ones made by queer people to erase us from them.
No. I said that if you’re not comfortable with someone using queer as an identifier, the responsible thing to do is disengage from them and make your own art, your own statements, instead of stealing and relabeling theirs.
If you’re not comfortable with someone else labeling you “queer,” you have zero right to label them “gay” without their consent.
I feel the nuance that people keep missing here is that queer is not only acceptable to reclaim on a personal level, because queer groups exist. Groups that gather under that label exist. It is absolutely an umbrella term for those groups. Honestly people hear “umbrella term” and they lose their shit because they think umbrella terms can only be used to encompass the entire community instead of subsets of it, so that must be what you mean, and how dare you! :/
But, honestly, this isn’t a nuanced discussion – it’s an insistence that if you use queer to refer to more than one person at a time and that person is not your own self, you’re coercively labeling other people who don’t want that label. Except… this is incorrect. It is so incorrect it erases swaths of queer people who have been gathering in groups under the label for the last 100 years. It’s a push to eliminate the label altogether, by reducing it to something you have to keep to yourself.
The only coercive labeling going on in this entire post was the OP who changed the poster (and a little the person insisting on using LGBT). Queer is not a super-private self-identifier only that isn’t allowed to be used for finding community, ffs.
I would add something here, but there’s nothing left. @opalescentlesbian nailed it.
Not Gay as in Happy, But Queer as in Fuck You! Every time I think about the Queer Community this is the phrase that I think of.
Thank you @wetwareproblem for standing up for the rest of us.
