Months ago when I saw a 2 part VICE series featuring members of the LGBTQIA community comprised of pro / anti Trump supporters, I knew my review of the Q&A discussion would’ve been to mentally exhausting and time consuming and the review never manifested. That’s why it was cool to see one of my favorite vloggers -Abe & Preach- speak on a couple of the perplexities that arose throughout the LGBTQIA panel discussion. Specifically how the community identifies. Parts of Abe & Preach’s commentary still kinda treats the LGBTQ community as a monolith even though a panelist clearly states his displeasure for the growing number of alphabets.

Their commentary includes clips from other shows as well but it all stems from the first clip when the Milo Yiannopoulos type guy in the MAGA hat asked the the panelist “what is queer?” The verbal and mental gymnastics the person answering the question goes through is crazy. While I basically understood their reply, my thought at the time was “I could’ve defined queer better” and more concise than they could have, while still explaining why I personally don’t use or apply the term. The person could’ve said “queer is a popularized umbrella term used by those who aren’t straight”.

I would’ve added, “‘Queer’ in itself fails as representation because it doesn’t capture the entirety. Yes it can be inclusive for many but it can also be exclusive and alienating for others. Which is why I rejected it and decided ‘non-heterosexual’-while not perfect- is more understandable or digestible because it’s all inclusive of everyone who is not straight or heterosexual. Or how about simply ‘not straight’? Regardless of what letter you pick, LGBTQIA all falls under ‘not straight’.”

Yes it should be universally acceptable that an individual be able to self-identify what ever way they want…which includes correcting those who blanketly or wrongly assign the term ‘queer’.