Queer Is Not Just a Word

I recently read Matthew Vines’ opinion piece in The New York Times, “I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters.” While I appreciate the sincerity behind his argument, I came away with a very different conclusion.

If the word gay is the word that best describes your life, your identity, and your experiences, I will defend your right to use it every single time. No one should have an identity imposed upon them. I simply ask for that same respect in return.

I call myself queer

Not because I don’t understand its history, but because I do.

I know it was used as a slur. I know it was shouted across school hallways, whispered in churches, and weaponized against LGBTQIA+ people for generations. That history is exactly why the word matters.

Reclaiming a slur is not pretending it never caused harm. It is refusing to leave that harm in the hands of the people who created it. It is taking ownership of language that was once used to diminish us and transforming it into something that reflects resilience, survival, community, and pride. The people who once used it to shame us no longer get to decide what it means.

To me, gay describes my sexual orientation.
Queer describes something much larger.

It reminds me of Magnus Hirschfeld and the Institute for Sexual Science, where research into sexuality and gender was flourishing long before the Nazis tried to erase both LGBTQIA+ people and the knowledge that affirmed our existence. It reminds me of Paragraph 175, the pink triangle, Stonewall, the AIDS crisis, ACT UP, Queer Nation, and an entire generation that transformed unimaginable grief into action while governments looked away and friends buried friends. It reminds me that

Pride began as protest before it became celebration.

I also think it’s important to distinguish between two different conversations.

I believe sexual orientation is not a choice. The overwhelming body of scientific evidence supports that conclusion, and the “born this way” message helped change hearts, laws, and lives. It dismantled the harmful idea that LGBTQIA+ people were simply choosing to be different, and it gave millions of people a framework for understanding that we deserved the same dignity and protections as everyone else.

Where I respectfully differ is in the belief that this should be the foundation upon which our equality rests.

I am not arguing against “born this way.” I am arguing for something even stronger.

My rights do not exist because I can prove my identity is innate. They exist because I am a human being.

Even if science one day revealed that sexual orientation is influenced by a complex interaction of biology, prenatal development, genetics, environment, and factors we do not yet understand, my humanity would not become any less deserving of equal protection under the law.

Human rights should never depend upon successfully proving why someone exists as they do. They should exist because every person possesses inherent dignity and deserves the freedom to live honestly, love freely, and exist without discrimination.

I also reject the idea that gay and queer are opposing identities.

I am both.

Gay tells you who I love.

Queer reminds me of the history, the community, and the generations of people whose courage made it possible for me to love openly in the first place. Those truths do not compete. They complete one another.

Whether you identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, nonbinary, queer, or something else entirely is your decision to make. That is one of the greatest victories our movement has ever achieved.

For so much of our history, everyone else claimed the authority to define us. Governments defined us. Churches defined us. Doctors defined us. Politicians defined us. The struggle for LGBTQIA+ equality has always been about reclaiming the authority to define ourselves. That includes the words we choose to describe our own lives.

This post only scratches the surface of why this conversation matters.

After reading the article, I found myself wanting to write far more than I expected. What began as a response quickly became an opportunity to explore the history of the word queer, its reclamation, the AIDS crisis, Stonewall, respectability politics, the “born this way” narrative, and why I believe queer carries a history that extends far beyond a single identity label.

Some of these topics are ones I’ve written about before, but revisiting them here isn’t repetition for repetition’s sake. They’re essential pieces of a much larger story. Bringing them together in one place allows me to add historical context, connect ideas that are often discussed separately, and explain why the word queer cannot be understood apart from the history that shaped it.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be adapting this Facebook post into a long-form series on my Substack. There, I’ll be able to explore these subjects in much greater depth, provide the historical context that simply doesn’t fit in a Facebook post, and share why, for me, queer is not simply a word.