Wednesday, November 22, 2006

A Queer Post

Invoking all the outrage of the best linguistic campaigns, I announce my intention to reclaim the word "queer." I don't mean to reclaim it for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, pansexuals, transsexuals, transgenders, intersexes, asexuals, hermaphrodites, or perverts. I mean to reclaim "queer" for those of us who like discussing and, especially, who like writing about queer things. As in, "The Northern Lights have seen queer sights/But the queerest they ever did see/Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge/I cremated Sam McGee." Because a dozen queer things happen to me each day.


The campaign begins now.

Yesterday it was raining, so I took shelter under a concrete awning in front of a shoe store and a bank in downtown Kampala. While I stood there, flâneur-esque, somebody walked by wearing a black 10-gallon garbage bag. He was short, so upside-down it covered his body from head to waist. With his arms straight down, only his hands protruded. I only saw him from the back, so I can't say what sort of arrangement he had in front for which to see his way. It was a queer thing to see.

1 Comments:

Blogger Jills said...

I agree! I remember when I first learned the colloquial meaning of the word "queer." I was about 10, my mom said something odd, and I said: "that's queer, mom." She said, "you don't know what you're saying," and even since then, I have known better than to use the word queer.

But I think you're right -- it's time. Sometimes things are odd, sometimes things are weird, and sometimes things are strange, but frankly, sometimes "queer" would just work better!

2:46 AM  

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