What’s with this word “queer,” anyway?
By Chris Hampton
From Vanguard, September 1997
Our organization has been through several names: it started out as the Lawrence Gay Liberation Front (oooh la la, très sixties campus radical!), then Gay Services of Kansas, then Gay and Lesbian Services of Kansas, then Lesbian, Bisexual, and Gay Services of Kansas [LesBiGaySOK]. The full name now is KU Queers & Allies: LesBiGayTrans Services of Kansas, or just Q&A for short.
As you can see, aside from the first change, the alterations have all been made simply to indicate inclusion of various groups among the queer community. As a bisexual woman myself, I can attest to the validity of making an organization’s name more inclusive. I was interested in joining the group for quite some time, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be welcome. Then the name changed to include bi people, and I thought, “They MUST be welcoming of bisexuals, or else they wouldn’t have taken the step,” and then I got involved. And I’m very glad I did. The same logic went into our decision to become more inclusive of transgender and transsexual persons.
So why the word queer? Because “lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and gay” is a big mouthful and “queer” is one all-inclusive syllable. Because it is a little edgy, and it does push the envelope a little. Because “queer” is a word gaining wider and wider acceptance in political and academic circles, and we consider ourselves to be part of the forefront of this movement.
Believe me, we do realize there are negative connotations to the word. We took that into consideration when choosing the name. There is a certain amount of power in reclaiming words that have traditionally been used to hurt us. When we call ourselves queer, it takes a lot of wallop out of the word when others use it to refer to us.
While we understand that not everybody may feel comfortable with using this word, all we ask is that you realize that we thought long and hard about the use of this word in our title and we hope you can respect our decision