Queer community?

I haven't formed a coherent position yet, but now with Pride in Amsterdam these weeks I realized that I actually don't feel that much community with the people that supposedly are my community. I am a gay man, have in some way or another been aware of this since I was 7 years old, consciously aware since I was 12, and out since I was 18. For most of that time I did feel there was this gay/lesbian community that was maybe divided along gender lines but that by and large had goals that largely were the same.

Bisexuals carved out their niche as time passed. But even though I understood their separate identity, I saw a significant difference in the fact that they very often seemed to be comfortable with 'passing' in a way I wasn't. In a coarse way stated: sex with a bisexual man was ok, but I didn't trust them a step beyond that.
Then transsexuals tagged on. Again, not a major thing. I didn't quite understand them, like in being able to know what it means to feel you live in the wrong body. But I did understand why they'd seek out a corner of society that felt a little bit more welcoming and safer than society at large.

Where we stand today everyone can see. Gay and Lesbian is literally drowning in an alfabet soup and the rainbow flag that stood for all people is slowly being pushed out by something that preaches inclusivity, but does this in a way that is the opposite of inclusivity. And then some person in their twenties, identifying as non-binary, a-sexual and autistic (?) tries to get in with me under the umbrella of being queer. And I feel that actually, enough is enough, I am not willing to give up my identity for people who are utterly desperate to redefine themselves in a non-conforming way while all doing the bloody same. It's like the millennial tattoo craze.

The above has been brewing a while, but I felt like writing this after a report on a speaker at the pride march this weekend who ended his/her speech with a list of lives that mattered. Ending in - ironically enough -' all lives matter'.

I'm not part of their queer community, I will not fight their causes, I will not walk in their marches and I will not fly their flag. I am a gay man.

You're a contrarian.

I don't know what to make of that in this context. But I am not willing to have my identity erased by a bunch of teenager adjacents with an identity crisis.

And you're not going to—any more than anyone is going to have their identity "erased" by boomer adjacents with a midlife crisis. Hazir, what you're saying here in this thread is a viewpoint shared by many gay men over a certain age, and it's just another instance of the way certain types of people—queer or not—start behaving as they age and begin to feel out of place in previously familiar contexts. More conservative positions, more crankiness, a growing list of complaints about unserious youngsters undermining this or that institution, doomer prophecies about modern things like "wokeness", etc. This behavioral change can be seen in men everywhere, and the same type of analysis crops up in discussions about everything from music taste to the fate of our planet. Probably in every single generation throughout human history.

There are many gay men who don't share this feeling and these concerns. Is their gay identity stronger than yours? Is it weaker or less legitimate? Are they all blinkered fools walking, blissfully unaware, to their doom?

I hear what you're saying about not wanting to be a part of the community, and I'm not trying to criticize you for that. I don't think anyone should feel compelled to be a part of any community they don't jive with. But I have to categorically reject this notion that your identity risks being erased by others entering the community. Ironically, this discourse of "erasure" is one that has been embraced by the most aggravating groups on both the woke left as well as the racist right.

I know this may piss you off, and I don't want to make light of what is obviously a difficult and frustrating (to some people outright painful) experience of social displacement. I just want to present an outside perspective with an intensity to match the one you currently hold. Nobody's going to erase your identity. They may make you feel less welcome where you once felt at home, but you have a whole lifetime of experience with knowing who you are in relation to yourself (as opposed to in relation to other people) and creating your own personal context. You can do that without getting weird abt other people. I'll leave it at that and bow out of this thread now. peace

This diatribe puts me in a bit of a conundrum; I could reply to it point by point, but if you hold the believes you have expressed here I seriously have to wonder what makes you, a straight cis man, have the right to lecture me on issues that pertain to my identity but not yours.

In good woke language: is this really the lane you should be in?

I'm somewhat in agreement with Hazir, at least at an emotional level. And while what Aimless says is/can be true, it's a bit reductive and just straight out problematic to project that general more-or-less truth onto any particular person and their feelings and opinions that parallel the more-or-less-true aging behavior. Can we maybe get the social commentary without the heaping side of condescension, kthx?

For myself, I resent the rising gender-fluidity I'm seeing. First and foremost, because as someone who does present as pretty firmly masculine and who personally very strongly attracted to masculinity, I routinely get bashed in "community" spaces (mostly hookup apps) for "wrongthink" and "wrongpass" for not personally being genderfluid nor attracted to it or femininity. 2nd, I resent that they bring a bunch of straight or "straight" men into the "community" spaces, men who wouldn't spit on me if I was on fire. It's the same problem we've had for years with straight women driving us out of our safe spaces because they want to horn in on the freedom of not dealing with straight men when they go out, except that just ends up with the het guys eventually following them and then it's no longer a safe "community" space. 3rd, as a blend of the two, I really don't appreciate how the straight and "straight" guys get a pass for more or less adhering to their orientation and personal nature but I'm not allowed the same freedom because I'm queer and I'm supposed to be more "open-minded"

It may be that, being in my (early) 40s, I'm experiencing some of what Aimless refers to. In fact I know I have some of that. I always had a hard enough time with slang from my own generation. I don't understand gen-Z idiom in the slightest. But I also know that there is more to my feeling of alienation than just being older and "out of touch."

Thanks for your reply LF, not just for the confirmation, on an emotional level. But because I know how difficult it is to come forward with what you feel about recent developments. Not even so much because of the so-called allies in the 'queer community' and their tendencies(I really could care less about the western Gen Z). What kept me silent - at large - was much more than that, the unease over the risk that really unsavory people could use what I say as a weapon.

As you point out, it's not particularly new, we've been dealing consistently with people encroaching on our safe spaces under the guise of being 'allies'. It happened already when I was in my early 20s. And it wasn't always pleasant either, dealing with aggressive heterosexuals in what was at least nominally a gay club. But that was bearable compared to what I witness these days, where I'm not being attacked for being gay, but for being a wrong type of gay.

And that by 'queer' people whose queerness often consists of very little more than having a problem to effectively communicate about their sexuality where it really matters ; with the people to which they may relate.

As an outsider, what gets me is the shift away from a handful of communities to far too many people demanding a separate label for their own situation (i.e., the gender-fluid, aromantic, demisexual who only eats strawberry ice cream) and then vigorously policing the borders of this community of one. Too many people aren't trying to belong and instead demanding to be seen as completely unique and making that their personality.

I am a bit baffled by the proliferation, but that at least I can deal with as 'you do you'. But what these people are doing is, appropriation of gay spaces, symbols, and even 'reclaiming' slurs used against us. And let me be clear about that: I have no over sensitivity against using that term by gay people. In my younger years I used the Dutch equivalent of faggot to talk about my identity. I get the power that gives. But these people using the word queer to describe themselves feels to me how I imagine Black people would feel as if a white suburban teenager 'reclaims' nigger. There is no way you can reclaim something that never was yours to start with, and even less so if you have no shred of understanding of the trauma connected.

Agreed. I get the reflexive "you can't label me, only I can label me" thing. I'm not gonna respect it because honey, analyzing and categorizing is what I do, but I get it. And I understand but don't "get" demisexuality to. I don't see how being genuinely healthy and well-adjusted compared to the rest of us constitutes a sexual orientation, much less is "queer."