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COPYRIGHT 2003 Curve Magazine, Outspoken Enterprises, San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 863-6538
PRIDE AND NAMING GO TOGETHER.
At early Gay Pride marches in the 1970s, we chanted, "Say it loud/gay and proud." In the activist 1980s, when AIDS was killing gay men with such ferocity, we chanted, "Say it! Silence equals death." In the 1990s we had a new chant: "We're here; we're queer; get used to it." What we call ourselves is both an evolving process and an essential element of self-acceptance, or what we have come to call pride.
I spoke about identity and pride recently at the University of Pennsylvania. The topic was the word queer and the ongoing debate over its use. Like nigger or kike, it is a loaded word that comes with a history of violence. Reclaiming epithetical language remains highly problematic; renaming ourselves with the negative slurs of the dominant culture in an attempt to assert prideful dominance over their intent to wound is politically laudable, but it doesn't always work. I have never witnessed a Jewish friend do anything but cringe at the word kike. Many blacks find the use of nigger in rap and hiphop lyrics offensive, just as many lesbians...
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