I donβt want to detract from that post, but like- people not learning queer history is genuinely the source of so many of our problems in the queer community today.
Itβs why people donβt understand the roots of the word βqueerβ in the first place, or why itβs important to so many people
Itβs why people think βgayβ is some apolitical neutral term with zero negative connotations, ever, for anyone
Itβs why people actively feed into lesbian separatism, political lesbianism, and TERF movements without even knowing it
Itβs why people think βLGBTβ is some True Name that has never been changed, challenged, nor shaped over the years to better represent the community
Itβs why people feed βwho can reclaim which slursβ discourse without giving living human beings older than 25 any real consideration
Itβs why people straight-up donβt know what the βdrop the Tβ campaign was/is, or understand the troubled history between the trans community and the rest of the queer community
Itβs why people donβt understand what βtransβ used to mean, or how that meaning has changed over the years, or why
Itβs why people donβt understand the differences between queer communities and identities by country, or often how theyβre complicated by race
Itβs why people donβt understand what βbutchβ and βfemmeβ actually mean, the many definitions they can have, or how those labels have intersected across communities for decades now
Itβs why people donβt understand the differences between the transfemme and transmascs communitysβ histories, or the differences in struggles they have- and then feed into those struggles without even realizing it
Itβs why people straight-up recycle old homophobic and transphobic rhetoric, uncritically and unironically, as if theyβve discovered cool some new bigbrain hot take for the βsuper smartβ gay kidsΒ
Itβs why people treat these complicated, contradictory-sounding, or lesser-known identities like βtrendy new ways to claim youβre oppressedβ- without understanding the history behind those labels, and those communities, and that theyβve been here longer than any of these people have been alive.
Likeβ¦ yes, weβre moving forward now. Things are changing, and in many ways, itβs for the better! But we seem to forget that most of our community was lost in the 80β²s and 90β²s, and those folks left a massive, gaping chasm behind.
We donβt have the same easy, communal roots to our history that we used to. And in order to rebuild that, we- the entire community- is going to have to do some work to learn it and teach it and move forward with it in mind.
