Which... surprised me. To be fair, mostly I hang out with queer people who are about my age. I haven't ever really talked with older queer people about their queerness. And I was aware that discrimination against bisexual people from within the gay community existed, but I don't see that much in people my age.
I think I'm significantly older than you (I just turned 28). But I feel pretty much the same way, that the queer people I know are pretty much comfortable with bisexuality. But I used to go to a queer youth group, I think for people 13-17, in the late 90s and I heard that the week the discussion topic was bisexuality (which happened a few months before I started going) things got so heated that some people had to be asked to leave.
I think there's a lot of need for more queer intergenerational dialogue. But it's hard. Once I was in e-mail contact with an older lesbian who told me that "queer" was offensive to her. I didn't know how to respond. Normally, I think that people should get to define for themselves what is offensive, but "queer" is my identity--not gay, or bi, but queer. It's not something that I can really hide for the sake of politeness.
I also like queer as a shorthand for LBGTQ+.
I wasn't able to make it to Wiscon this year, but I looked at the programming and I was surprised to see that there wasn't as much queer content as I would have expected. Did you find that to be true for you? I'm glad that you're proposing a queer panel topic.
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I think I'm significantly older than you (I just turned 28). But I feel pretty much the same way, that the queer people I know are pretty much comfortable with bisexuality. But I used to go to a queer youth group, I think for people 13-17, in the late 90s and I heard that the week the discussion topic was bisexuality (which happened a few months before I started going) things got so heated that some people had to be asked to leave.
I think there's a lot of need for more queer intergenerational dialogue. But it's hard. Once I was in e-mail contact with an older lesbian who told me that "queer" was offensive to her. I didn't know how to respond. Normally, I think that people should get to define for themselves what is offensive, but "queer" is my identity--not gay, or bi, but queer. It's not something that I can really hide for the sake of politeness.
I also like queer as a shorthand for LBGTQ+.
I wasn't able to make it to Wiscon this year, but I looked at the programming and I was surprised to see that there wasn't as much queer content as I would have expected. Did you find that to be true for you? I'm glad that you're proposing a queer panel topic.