linguoboy wrote:Synalepha wrote:(and honestly, I might be wrong, I'm not well-versed in the history of the LGBT+ movement)[/size], "queer" is the result of a well-succeded attempt to hijack and give a positive twist to a word that was used disparagingly towards LGBT+ people in English-speaking countries.
No, you're correct about this. "Queer" also has specific political connotations which other terms lack and which also would be lacking in other languages. I can see trying to import the word in order to preserve these, since it's unlikely there's a word in Italian (or any other language) which conveys them, but that's a pretty ambitious project.
In Spanish it was hip and cool since it appeared (very recently. respectable/academic queers were queer, others were not)
but then
in the last three years it has GAINED bad connotations by being cosntantly used in media and online and in conferences (I'm including here the stochastic terrorism which is actually working) to disparage "the bad lgbt people". Sometimes it's a substitute for the older "ideología de género", the Christian talking point, very often it just means "trans women", and sometimes it's everyone. Asking people repeatedly "but what does queer mean" only to them to literally turn it into a slur through repetition to call trans women with, without aknowledging the words "trans woman" (a win for them), while also openly refusing to aknowledge the actual history of the word has been quite a trip. (it all comes from The Queer Theory ideology, which created us in the 00s. This is why The Queers weren't a problem before that. Queer was never a normal adjective, a slur or anything reclaimed. You're imagining things! ).
So now we've gone all the way from "here it isn't a slur and it's trendy academic stuff" all the way to "please shut the fuck up".
I guess it comes back to the problem that everyone attacking your human rights or existence wants plausible deniability as long as they get away with it. The words will be decontextualized and repeated over and over like a magical incantation, they gotta be always wide in meaning. Otherwise, the words will be extremely specific, to divide (I only want to destroy the bad X. Very typical inside transmisogyny and among LGBT stuff in general). The rules to destroy you will only each do a specific thing, but all of them together will eventually make you illegal in practice. And at no point through all the process will almost anybody say "hey you're being exterminationist here" because NO I'M NOT. SEE. EVERYBODY CAN SEE I'M NOT DOING SO (because the general public doesn't understand the issue).
Geurea dena lapurtzen uzteagatik, geure izaerari uko egiteagatik.