Comments

1
Pardon me for being both ignorant and unwilling to look it up myself, but how is queer different from gay and lesbian?
2
Perhaps there's too much gender connotation to gay & lesbian?
3
Isn't lesbian a subsection of gay? That is, I thought gay meant homosexual, and lesbian is a female homosexual.
4
Queer can indicate genderqueer, which makes choosing an inherently gendered orientation term problematic.
5
@4

*can, but based on the additional context, as well as a separate area to indicate gender identity, I expect it to not be a practical problem.
6
My brother in law, who is heterosexual but kinky, identifies as queer. He thinks "straight" is kind of misleading and doesn't really describe him, and he's probably right.

My husband and I, who are homosexual, do not identify as queer. Too much baggage with that word.
7
And, what's your Relational Orientation?

http://moreperfect.org/site/?p=1406
8
Queer can indicate genderqueer, which makes choosing an inherently gendered orientation term problematic.

Balderdash indeed!
9
@3: gay can be either a nonspecific reference to people attracted to the same sex, or it can refer specifically to gay men. Hence the distinction gay and lesbian.

Sort of like "you" or "we" can be specific or general.
10
Bisexual: I like men and boys.

What if I identify as a cat, will that mean they'll build a litter box for me at UW?
11
@1: As far as I understand it, queer means anything that doesn't fit into Leave It to Beaver. It is the generalized term that includes LGBT, but also includes asexuals and heterosexuals who like bondage and other stuff. LGBTQ is redundant if you include the Q (though, strictly speaking, it is not redundant in the reverse, because the Q includes more than just the LGBT parts).
12
@9: But the list makes no such distinction. It has "gay" (covering men and women) and "lesbian" (women only). There's no "gay man" category. I know more than a few lesbians who are perfectly being referred to as "gay," so this ambiguity may skew these highly scientific results.
13
@5, that might be true if the datasets were linked, but the surveys appear to be independent.

Ansel, am I correct about that? Are you taking these SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE AND LEGALLY BINDING polls without any means to correlate the data? Or are you tracking IPs because Slog polls are SRS BSNS?
14
I'm gay and odd, so queer fits me better.
15
"Masculine and feminine" are gender identities? What about a feminine male or masculine female or a transgender person with either trait? I'm a cisgendered male but as to whether I'm "masculine" or "feminine", I don't particularly know or care. It seems to be on a different continuum IMHO than trans or cis.
16
Queer is also a nice catch-all word for someone who doesn't care to be too specific, or someone who feels the terms gay/straight/bisexual are too limited.

Like maybe you are an androgynous person who likes guys but also likes girls sometimes. Maybe you'd prefer to call yourself queer.

I also like the word queer because it's all-inclusive. It could be anything!
17
How is androgynous different from gender neutral? ??
18
Female bodied masculine person presenting as androgynous/neutral, identified as non-op transgender. Yeah!
19
Oh, and I date only men. Straight men. Does that make me straight?
20
Tracking the sexual orientation of college students? Your results might not be so reliable:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/lesbian…
21
I'm "straight", but I always tick the box labeled "Peculiar".
22
I like doing this right here.
*makes a thumb-finger circle and slides a finger in and out of it*
23
"Queer is also a nice catch-all word for someone who doesn't care to be too specific, or someone who feels the terms gay/straight/bisexual are too limited. "

So it's a political identity. WHy are universities asking what our political identities are?
24
According to the current poll results, SLOG is a sausage fest.
25
Identity politics runnig amok I see. Every kiddy gets a gold star to be sure their fragile little egos don't melt. How long after we create all the identities do we start demanding gub'ment largesse to help protect each little special snowflake with their own manufactured identity?
27
Will a course be offered in the correct usage of all terminology before the questionnaire is given? Even slog commenters can't get it right, and only half of us are straight.
28
@12: the point you are raising has been (or at any rate was) a longstanding argument within the LGBT community ever since it was just LG, or even G. In the early '80s I was active in a campus chapter of the Gay Activist Alliance and we had the same discussion: whether "gay" is an all-inclusive term or whether we shouldn't change our name to GLAA. As a community we sort of did both: continuing to recognize that there's a sense in which "gay" can be inclusive, while also recognizing that you sometimes have to be specifically inclusive of people who feel left out.

Thus was LGBTIQRSTUVWXYZ born.
29
"Queer" is a hobby. Why the hell is the state asking people about their hobbies?
30
I remember when Slog was new, there was a poll (just female or male at the time - good progress) and it was about 50/50. Clearly many women don't feel very welcome here anymore.

The biggest factor has got to be the aggressive/hostile comments. It makes me avoid Slog sometimes even though I feel Internet-masochistic at other times. Any news on an upgrade to the comment section like most blogs have now? Even Blogtown has a +/- button now.
31
@19: yes it does, tilda swinton.
32
Queer can be a good fit for people who aren't clearly straight or gay/lesbian or bisexual. For example, what if you are attracted primarily to people who are intersexed? You aren't homosexual unless you also are intersexed, and for the sake of example, let's say you aren't. But you also aren't what most people think of as heterosexual, even though you are attracted to somebody of a different sex than you are. That's just the simplest (and least likely to come up example), but orientation can be a lot messier than simple categories. Maybe you're mostly lesbian, but find a male you like now and then, and instead of rounding or going with bi, you choose to opt for queer as the best fit. Queer is a good catch-all when none of the others seem to fit just right. Queer is especially useful for people who are primarily attracted to people who are genderqueer, rather than to males or females.
33
I could check several boxes in each survey. Does that make me "interesting," or what? (Don't answer that).

Andie, I know you know this, but you can identify any way you like. You may be a good example of "queer" though.

This survey is messed up, BUT it's an improvement over the usual "M" or "F" (and the occasional "Gay" or "Straight") question. Maybe an "Other-please explain" will help them improve the survey for future students.
34
@ 30, if you're a confrontational participant (and you are), you reap what you sow.
35
My friends and I did a sex survey at college and, since we didn't have to swear an oath to be truthful, our answers were as extreme and untrue as we could make them. It was the foolishness of youth. I therefore would not trust any student poll, ever.
36
So, according to this poll you can't be transgender and masculine (or feminine) at the same time?
37
I think it is brilliant on the part of horny college students looking to get laid. Get the administration to collect and collate the data for you so you know where to look for partners. Tip of the Hat to the students.
38
Gosh, the comments sections on women's issues sure make a lot more sense now.
39
The great thing about categories is how much processing they provoke.
40
@30, oh the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune!
41
Can't we just go with "he", "she" and "it"?
42
@41, was Cousin It transgendered, or genderqueer? How about Thing? Boy, I bet those handjobs were somethin' else!
43
Whatever happened to hir and sie?
44
I looked up the definition of G.I. but I do not think the survey writer did.
Gender identity is how people think of themselves and identify in terms of sex (man, woman, boy, girl). Gender identity is a psychological quality; unlike biological sex, it can't be observed or measured (at least by current means), only reported by the individual. Like biological sex, it consists of more than two categories, and there's space in the middle for those who identify as a third gender, both (two-spirit), or neither. We lack language for this intermediate position because everyone in our culture is supposed to identify unequivocally with one of the two extreme categories. In fact, many people feel that they have masculine and feminine aspects of their psyches, and some people, fearing that they do, seek to purge themselves of one or the other by acting in exaggerated sex-stereotyped ways. http://www.gendersanity.com/diagram.html
45
So, according to this poll you can't be transgender and masculine (or feminine) at the same time?

In the real world as most people experience it: No.

I've been acquainted (using the word loosely) with a handful of transgendered people over the years. They were either males passing as females, with varying degrees of success, or females trying to pass as males, with no success at all. Only one of them pulled it off, a very feminine male cross dresser. The rest, well, I felt pity.

Oddly enough, the "gender queer" stuff, to the extent that I've read about it, strikes me as people who, in their opposition to "traditional gender expectations," seem to depend on those expectations to at least as much a degree as anyone else. The urge to be "genderless," or to cross "boundaries," depends on a laser-like focus on "gender norms," even if only to "queer" them.

In the end, there is often a big theatrical component involved, whether the "trans" realizes it or not. The ultimate torture is for no one to notice.
46
I used to identify as "queer" back when I was ashamed to just say "I'm Bisexual."
47
" either males passing as females, with varying degrees of success, or females trying to pass as males, with no success at all."

All the transgender people you knew about, you mean. I've seen a lot of trans men that are completely indistinguishable from cis men (with their pants on anyhow.)
48
@47, it's impossible for me to say. It's not that I'm constantly scanning everyone to see if they're transitional. What are "cis men" anyway? Another pronoun we're supposed to remember?
49
@47, ignore Noicons. I often find this poster to be both insulting and wrong, without the redeeming feature of being entertaining.
50
Wrong about what, #49?
51
@36, or straight and queer. Or androgynous and feminine.

Please wait...

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