Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-188432-20190324211646/@comment-4189499-20190328233837

Chiming in here. I agree that it'd be nice to have categories for those who identify as queer/fall within the queer community. On the point of what to call the category though, that's where I have some thoughts.

I believe that queer is the best term for the category, at least for characters, because as SOTO said, it is an in-universe term to start with.

It's also far easier to be able to identify somebody as not-straight than trying to figure out their exact identity, so putting all the not-straights in the category queer is easier than trying to figure out people's exact gender + sexual + romantic identity. (Also, note how I'm saying not-straight instead of non-heterosexual. Heterosexual people can also be queer, such as those who are heterosexual biromantic or heterosexual trans. Sexuality is only one dimension of somebody's gender + sexual + romantic identity).

I also personally have a problem with the term LGBTQ and its variants, as it feels like it's saying "lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and everybody else", which, if you are one of the "everybody else" like myself (asexual), sort of feels like it's putting you as a lesser member of the community. But that could just be me and other people don't mind as much.

But then you are stuck with the issue of queer being a reclaimed term and so many people, especially older people, still associate it with the older negative connotations. Looking back at our in-universe sources shown at Queer, even in-universe characters like Ianto don't like the term.

And then there's the issue of real world people preferring one term over the other. That could either annoy some people being put into a category whose name they don't think reflects who they are, or both terms could be used and that would really mess with the category tree!

To sum up, I'd prefer the term queer for in-universe characters, but categorising real-world people is a whole 'nother kettle of fish to deal with.