Gay or Queer and Why it Matters

Some use it to encompass all non-heterosexual, non-cisgender identities. That’s an understandable use of the term – like I mentioned, I interpret it to be partially about giving space for exploring gender and sexuality, and including so many different groups of people demands that space, demands a challenge to stability. Certainly a wide variety of non-heterosexual, non-cisgender folks are queer.

But though queer might cover some part of that spectrum, it is not limited to it. I am not gay nor lesbian nor bisexual nor transgender. I am not anything other than just queer.

There are people who some of you might call straight, if you looked at them and their partners and impose genders onto them, but who are actually queer. And many gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals do not identify as queer.

Like plenty of the names marginalized people call themselves, queer has a fraught history of reclamation, many controversial political implications, and a universalizing aspect that is too contradictory for some.

Source: 3 Differences Between the Terms 'Gay' and 'Queer' — and Why It Matters - Everyday Feminism

Adrian Ballou is a Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism. A genderqueer writer, artist, activist, and educator who does youth development work both inside and outside the classroom, they particularly enjoy writing and facilitating social justice education and youth organizing curriculum.

Letter to the Editor

People around the world are angry at America for our support for Israel and its mass murder in Gaza. We don’t see it on American TV, but in the past week there have been massive demonstrations all over the world: in London, Tel Aviv and Washington, DC. In Indonesia, Latin America and Turkey.

This saddens me. I am a natural born American. My father and grandfathers fought in both World Wars. My ancestor, George Wythe, signed the Declaration of Independence.

I cannot stomach what my country is doing.

We are giving BILLIONS of dollars of our tax money every year to a state that practices apartheid and genocide.

Israelis complain that Sderot is the target of Hamas’ homemade rockets. Sderot is built on the old Arab village of Najd

, which was ethnically cleansed on May 13, 1948. Over 700 Palestinians were massacred there by Israeli forces.

During the 1948 war

, dozens of Palestinians in Jaffa were DRIVEN INTO THE SEA by advancing Jewish fighters. THIS is why in the past Hamas has advocated reciprocating these massacres. Would we do any differently? We consistently use the deaths of Americans on 9/11 as the reason for advocating war. WE OURSELVES do not practice “turning the other cheek” as Jesus taught!

Today, Israel is using Gaza to test weapons: uranium weapons, DIME weapons, microwave weapons and others. The bright flashes you see in pictures of Israeli bombing of Gaza are white phosphorus, which is internationally outlawed for use against civilians. Israeli jets overfly Gaza (which has NO air defense), deliberately creating sonic booms. The UN estimates over 46% of the children in Gaza suffer hearing loss and severe psychological trauma as a result.

Now, Israel is bombing Gaza after months of starvation and denial of water, electricity and medical attention to its people. Palestinians are being killed, mostly civilian: the number is now over 1000, but how can anyone know how many more bodies lie in the rubble? The American mass media tell us NOTHING of what is going on but you can see the true extent of the slaughter on the Internet. Again, the denial of necessities of life to civilians is against international law.

What would Jesus say? Palestinian CHRISTIANS are targets of Israeli ethnic cleansing, too, yet Christians in this country say nothing even about that.

Israel has been condemned around the world for its war crimes and genocide. The victims of the Nazi Holocaust have now become the victimizers.

I am ashamed that my country is an accomplice to these crimes.

Sent by Hajja Romi

"The lesson of the Holocaust is that when you have the capacity to halt genocide, and you do not, no matter who carries out that genocide or who it is directed against, you are culpable... Jewish Holocaust Survivor”