On the other hand, I feel like I’m watching youngsters steal history from those who struggled and died for it and turn it into something that is, at times, both powerful and farcical. On the one hand, I'm glad that younger people won't have to fight as hard as I did for inclusivity. Seeing gay male friends reclaim “queer” makes me happy for them, but I’m still ambivalent about the term being “reclaimed” (acquired? co-opted? expanded?) by younger generations to mean anything they want it to mean. The relationship was abusive, so I left and started dating a gender-nonconforming human. I dated a few women before marrying a man. In middle school, I knew I was attracted to guys and girls. I'm a 40-year-old woman who identifies as queer. Even as a slur, the word described those who exist outside of what society mandates, so it’s fitting that the term now defies all restrictions of love and self that the world has placed on us. That said, I know how empowering it feels to reclaim words that have been used to harm us, and I appreciate “queer” specifically because it has always carried a sense of undefined abstractness. So I understand why generations before me balk at the word. As an adult, I've been harassed with these same slurs. In middle school, kids followed me home calling me “queer,” “fag,” and more. So yes, queer-bashing was literally a childhood ritual. The neighborhood kids played a game called “smear the queer.” You’d toss a football back and forth, and whoever caught it was the “queer” for everyone to tackle. When I was a kid, “queer” was a pejorative.
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