A queer TikToker has made a video explaining the difference between gay and queer, saying that a person cannot be queer unless they are participating in queer politics, adding that if a person hasn’t worn a mask for a week, that also means they are not queer.
In the short video clip shared on Twitter by Libs of TikTok, the young woman states that being gay is not the same as being queer because queerness is about being "radical," and about "supporting each other, helping each other, and making sure that we lift up from the most vulnerable of our community."
James Lindsay, who has written extensively about the politics of queer theory, agreed that being queer is a political identity, not a personal identity.
The young activist says in her video that "a lot of you gays are not acting like queers right now, so I’m not going to call you queer." She appears to be completely unaware that many members of the gay community have been strenuously rejecting the label queer for years, calling it offensive and irrelevant to the reality of being homosexual.
Michael Young, the man behind the Wokal Distance Twitter account, took the time to explain the difference in more detail. In an enlightening Twitter thread, Young says queer is not a "catch-all term" for lesbians and gays, but is instead "an explicitly political term."
He says woke activists have never tried to hide the fact that queer is a political identity, and stresses the importance of understanding the term "if we are going to defeat wokeness."
According to Young, queer means anyone who is not "cis" or cisheteronormative, meaning anyone who is not a masculine straight man or a feminine straight woman. Queer theorists believe that all people who are not "cis" are oppressed and must come together to fight against their oppression.
Therefore, under the banner of queer, all these oppressed victims can unite and liberate themselves from their supposedly evil, straight, white, cis male oppressors.
Young ended his thread by explaining that while on the one hand people should be aware that queer is not a neutral term but rather a politically loaded one; on the other, many "normal everyday people are often not familiar with the history of the term." He therefore suggests enquiring what they mean by it, and if necessary, explaining the political significance of it.
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