Contextual language

OrangeRakoon wrote:

IAmTheSaladMan wrote:Recently I sparked a minor debate on Facebook

Here was your problem

Arthur Scargill ought to stay out of SaladMan's Facebook feed.

I had to look up who that was on wikipedia to get that joke

OrangeRakoon wrote:I had to look up who that was on wikipedia to get that joke

Young people.

I used queer the other day to describe something about the community that is strange.

Queer is strange and being strange isn't bad anymore, whether that's gay or not, as gay people are still a minority ultimately. Self association with being strange or different in some way makes the use of words that basically mean "other" increasingly harmless. It comes down to symbology and I don't think the word queer as an adjective has the same symbolic status as the "otherliness" that is to be "a queer" in the LGBT community. It also depends on whether there has been some persecution ie human rights towards those labeled as such in recent history. I guess queer can come under that, but something like fag or poofter is much more derogatory. I think some gay people would be more likely to take "queer" as a compliment, as it's a fundamental part of the fight to be integrated and accepted to own your own differences and accept them yourself, or that's not possible. But I probably wouldn't advise it.

I believe that the word "queer" is now used by some people to signify their sexuality. Not in terms of the older, derogatory way of meaning gay, but to indicate that they believe their sexuality to be undefined; neither heterosexual nor homosexual. The acronym LGBT is sometimes expanded to LGBTQ to take account of this preference.

As far as I am aware, I don't think too many folk would be offended if someone used the word "queer" in its more traditional reference to something being odd or unusual.