INTRODUCTION

This is a book about queer language, designed to define queer and LGBT+ words and contextualize their histories. It will explore the intrinsic, complicated relationship between sexuality and gender, and illuminate the power in claiming (or rejecting) labels.

“Queer” is deliberately elusive but still has meaning, which will be threaded throughout this book. It is similar to, but distinct from, terms like “gay,” “LGBT+,” “homosexual,” and “transgender”; it is more fluid and political, and it invites constant, critical reinterpretation. “Queer” is in opposition to “straight” and “cis,” but can also find itself in confrontation with “gay” and “LGBT+.” As a reclaimed slur it is not a universally embraced catch-all term, and it should not be coercively assigned to people. In this book, detailed in its own entry, I’ll be using “queer” as an adjective to mean anyone whose identity is gender non-conforming and externally politicized. This includes, for example, a bullied gay teenager, but not a gay man with institutional power who assimilates into heteronormativity (homonormativity) by denying access to resources to the gay teenager. This is already a problematic definition because perhaps queerness should not be conditional on circumstance or privilege, but I think it is context-dependent and absolutely political. The same wealthy homonormative gay man may not be queer in San Francisco, but is absolutely queer in Chechnya where his sexuality would be literally policed. Queer is, if nothing else, a gendered Other. We cannot talk about queer without talking about a history of violence.

People, even queer and trans people, can feel overwhelmed with the current terminology around sexuality and gender. Yet, having the right word to describe yourself and your experience is extremely empowering. More than anything, this book is for people who are exploring their gender and sexuality; second, I hope it is useful for significant others, family, friends, and allies (SOFFA), and professionals who work with trans and queer people.

May this book dispel anxiety around using the wrong words. Words are powerful, and our language reflects our cultural priorities. Yet I hope that we can find the nuance between insisting on inclusive language—on being recognized instead of erased, on having our pronouns used, on shifting away from problematic language—and knowing when to act on good faith and call people in instead of calling them out. I don’t want to live in a world where using the “right” words is more important than doing the right thing. That said, anyone who is truly an ally will welcome being corrected when they use an inappropriate word or phrase.

We must accept—no, embrace—that all words are the wrong words, and the right words, depending on their context. Two people could describe the same experience but choose different words to identify themselves, and shun the label someone else would choose. Best practice for understanding someone else’s identity or experience is to ask them to define it themselves, or better yet, listen to what they’ve already said about it.

The most important aim of this book is to help the reader navigate the relationship between gender and sexuality. The current discourse, even in academic trans/queer communities, is disappointingly muddled on this topic. Why is the “T” part of “LGBT+”? What is the relationship between gender identity and sexual orientation? The historical context of the LGBT movement was born out of centuries of discrimination and demonization of deviance from prescribed gender roles—sometimes expressed in same-sex attraction. Gender identity and sexual orientation are intrinsically linked though obviously not interchangeable. There are aesthetics and behaviors which are “gay” despite having nothing to do with sex or attraction, because they subvert traditional gender norms; for example, men who wear dresses are assumed to be gay and likely to be socially punished accordingly. I want to remind readers that sexuality as we understand it today is defined by gender and gender roles rather than love or sexual practices, contrary to narratives of the modern “love wins” LGBT+ rights movement, or the straight facets of the BDSM scene.

I also want to explain (and destabilize) such pervasive concepts as “man,” “woman,” “sex,” “gay,” and “gender.” I want this book to offer context, somewhere to position these terms, but ultimately to raise questions about them. But this is not an academic book designed to further intellectualize gender and contribute to the discourse (though that would be a happy side effect). I am raising these questions to challenge the current modes of oppression which rest on assumptions about gender and sexuality. I want people to stop policing non-normative gender expressions, to stop invalidating gender non-conforming identities, to stop destroying (through negligence and murder) trans bodies. When there are “normative” genders and sexualities, those deemed to be “non-normative” are made unlivable through violence. We deserve to live with dignity.

This book will cover:

• Words which describe gender: for example, “man,” “non-binary,” “femme,” “cis”

• Words which describe sexuality: “bisexual,” “gray ace,” “MSM”

• Words surrounding the above which are pervasive yet elusive: “gender,” “queer,” “sex (n.),” “sex (v.),” “sexuality”

• Gay, trans, and queer slang words of note: “passing,” “camp,” “chemsex”

• Basic words about drag: “cross-dresser,” “queen,” “king”

• Selective words around BDSM, because as a practice and culture it has distinctly “bent” (not-straight) origins: “kink,” “top,” “sadism”

• Words relevant to LGBT+ rights and anti-discrimination: “transmisogynoir,” “cis gaze,” “Pride,” “LGBTQIA+”

• Words relevant to queer activism: “pinkwashing,” “homonationalism,” “transmilitarism,” “patriarchy”

• Key concepts in politics, privilege, and oppression, which intersect with queer politics: “cultural appropriation,” “anti-Blackness,” “agism”

• Words relevant to gender-affirming healthcare and psychology (in the US and UK): “transition,” “real-life experience,” “T,” “bottom surgery,” “dysphoria,” “AFAB”

• Slurs which have been reclaimed by groups they target: “tranny,” “faggot,” “dyke”

• Words relevant to historical queer culture: “Molly houses,” “Polari”

These words will be presented in a glossary format, alphabetically. Each will offer a concise definition for quick reference, and a longer history and context where appropriate. The text can also be read as a whole, for both a brief history of queerness and as a modern history of current queer discourse, immediately obsolete but a snapshot of its time. As with all snapshots, the photographer has a responsibility to frame the subject in a way which reflects its “truth.” But truth is a phantom, and, like a photographer, I am only able to show you my subject as I see and experience it.

My approach to language is post-structural and descriptivist (not prescriptivist); words do not have inherent meaning, they are signifiers of meanings and these meanings shift across time. I don’t see this being an attempt to remain up-to-the-minute; it’s not possible or desirable to release a new edition every time a word’s connotations shift.

Regardless, this book would still offer a valuable context—both broadly speaking, and as a living history of the moment it was written—and I expect most words will remain relevant for several years or longer.

The shifting meaning of words isn’t linear: a word can have many meanings at the same time, different in different contexts, even for the same speaker. There are often several labels used to describe the same identity, but different labels are preferred in different groups or contexts, and/or they have slightly different connotations which make them more or less appropriate for different contexts. Just because words don’t have stable definitions doesn’t mean they don’t have meaning, history, and context.

Some of the words I seek to define (or rather, discuss) carry political or social legitimacy, while others are out of date, out of fashion, or problematic. Just because a word has more social or political currency doesn’t mean it’s the best word: often the more accepted words are reductive because they’re easier to understand.

Language is a tool of empowerment but it’s also a tool of violence, used to silence and oppress marginalized people. Many of these words are politically charged and were formed through the necessity of creating a group identity, either to demand civil rights, or to Other a group as deviants.

With the acknowledgement that language is malleable and ever-changing, I want to offer context for the words currently and formerly in use. People are beginning to learn that there are certain words that were once in use but are no longer “politically correct,” and I want to demystify that and pre-empt the question “why?”

This book will only cover English-language terms (with a few exceptions), partly to limit the scope, and mostly because as a white American author with no cultural ties outwith the Anglosphere, I am not qualified to define non-English terms, or to fully understand their contexts. However, I want to stress that other languages and cultures have rich histories and wide spectrums of gender variance and sexuality outside the cisgender heterosexuality that is prized as the “default” in our culture. Many other cultures have a long history of third genders or what we might describe as transgender identities and experiences, from hijra to Two-Spirit to Onnabe. The gender binary as we understand it and its coded gender roles—including strict adherence to heterosexuality under punishment of anti-sodomy laws—were exports of European imperialism. English is a language of the colonizer and this book will implicitly reflect that. While I’ve done my best to be comprehensive with Anglophonic terms (though that task is impossible), I make no claims to being comprehensive full stop. I highly encourage readers to undertake independent research on other gender and sexuality terms in different languages.

Despite my best efforts, this book will inevitably be incomplete.

Queer histories are too often co-opted by cisgender straight people. I’m a trans and bisexual-queer author and I want to reclaim control of our narratives, and amplify the work (especially activist work in the past and present) of the most influential yet marginalized in our communities. Transgender people (and those who, in their time, would use different words to describe themselves based on their gender non-conformity) have always been at the forefront of queer liberation. There would be no modern LGBT+ movement if it weren’t for trans women, and in fact all civil rights movements, from women’s suffrage to present-day pro-refugee efforts, rest on the work of trans people. Trans people do not live single-issue lives: we are also disabled, people of color, poor, migrants, prisoners, sex workers, fat, homeless, old, and young, and we are at the front of these struggles as well as fighting for trans and queer liberation.

This book is ethnographic: it is a study of the self, of things I am and am not. I am writing from my own understandings of gender and sexuality, which I think of as relatively well-informed as a queer and non-binary trans person who has spent several years studying and interrogating gender. It reflects my personal experiences, my relationships with these words and with the people who use them, and my personal anarchist politics. It would be arrogant to suggest that these are definitive explanations, and that my definitions are simply correct. Language is context-dependent and there is no escaping my context. I’m a white American queer/bisexual non-binary trans femme Jewish mentally ill millennial boy of the precariat class who’s lived in London and Glasgow and Twitter, and this book will no doubt reflect that. My work as a trans educator and activist, and my history as a sex worker, immigrant, and survivor of sexual violence, will come through; so will my privileges as a white able-bodied thin person.

These are things I know about, but I am not the only one who knows about them, and my experiences and opinions don’t represent everyone with similar identities to my own.

There is no singular trans experience and I in no way represent an entire trans community; I fully reject the notion of being an authority, even on my own text.

Especially regarding transmisogyny, race, class, and dis/ability, I have done my best to amplify the points I’ve heard my more knowledgeable comrades stress. All faults of this book are my own, but its merits are the culmination of decades of theory and discussion which I have tried faithfully to condense.

As a trans person, I essentially get asked to write pieces of this book all the time, for both newly self-described trans people and their allies. I anticipate some resistance from queers who want to keep some of these terms secret. I’m not writing this to let outsiders into our safe spaces (and there will always be undergrounds within undergrounds), but for “new” queers and the people who support them. I appreciate the need for safer spaces and exclusion, but if we are to dismantle straightness and cisness and their inherent oppressions, then we must also expand queerness. But if you’re straight and cis, you need to do the work of undoing your privileges! This book will help illuminate and challenge those privileges. Cisgender heterosexuals don’t need more representation, but they do need help understanding the complicated relationship between sexuality and gender, so that they can be better allies and hopefully interrogate their own identities for further self-understanding. It can be daunting to critically engage with questions of gender and queerness once you realize that heterosexuality and “biological sex” are relatively recent concepts, and I hope these pages give everyone a safe space to explore other possibilities.

Please defer to your own lived experience when deciding what words are applicable to you. Regarding other people, we must acknowledge that they are the experts on their own lives and communities and so we should respect whatever terms they use to describe themselves.

The purpose of this book is not to “normalize” (read “neutralize”) queer terms. I want to arm queer youth and newly identified queers with the language with which to describe themselves, so that they may articulate their needs, throw this book in the bin, set it on fire, and create new words and definitions from the ashes.

If you need permission, you are encouraged to cross out offending sections, make notes in the margins, and rip out entire pages.