'Q-Word' Article Sparks Debate About 'Queer' Being a Slur in LGBTQ+

A viral article out of the UK is posing an interesting request — pleading with the public (and the media) to stop using the word “queer” … as the author apparently views it as a slur.

The brief opinion piece — which also seems to be a letter to the editor — appeared in the Guardian this week … and the headline simply read, “Please don’t use the Q-word.” It’s written by a fella named Karl Lockwood, who says he’s a gay man of nearly 7 decades.

In the 113-word editorial, Lockwood hones into a Guardian piece written last week, which notes that England and Wales had started to count trans and nonbinary people in their census for the first time ever — while pointing out only 15,000 ID’d specifically as queer.

He adds, “I suspect that many of the others, like me, consider the term to be insulting and derogatory, and certainly not ‘reclaimed’. I am a gay man of 66 years with many friends and acquaintances, and know no one who would refer to themselves as queer. It would seem a small minority of activists has encouraged the media to use the word without considering its offensiveness to many people. You wouldn’t use the N-word, so don’t use the Q-word.”

In other words, he’s referring to a time when “queer” was used to bully others — which he feels qualifies it as hate speech … and thus, warrants its censoring in public discourse.

It’s an interesting argument, but most of Twitter seems to strongly disagree with this guy … with a lot of folks on the bird app calling it cloaked “TERF” talk that only serves to erase queer people from the larger conversation. Some also think it targets transgender folks.

Of course, there’s also the issue of comparing the use of “queer” to the n-word, which certainly has people fired up. Many say the juxtaposition is apples to oranges — and that conflating the two is a huge disservice to Black people, not to mention LGBTQ+ people of color.