ORANGIAH OHRANGER (dash! dash! ohranger!)

I have nothing new to say
to you, that has not been whispered
in countless histories,
ancestors to another
millennia of adorations,
children mocking the
palest smoke of lineage.

But all I say is for the first time―
I have never whispered these words
so tenderly to another,
neither has the universe
 (that is you)
ever heard them.

You do not want to leave anything behind in this world,

but you leave me.

I’m sorry you can no longer disappear so kindly.

普段音楽を聴いている時は歌詞に注目せずメロディ中心に聴いている方だけど（特に日本語での歌詞は集中力が必要💦）今日はたまたま最近流れている曲の歌詞をちゃんと聴いてみたらすごく心にグッと来た歌詞で一日中少し憂鬱になってしまった…

正直、まだ色々で自分が大人って認識がない。まあ、それは今の歳でそんなに珍しくないとは思うけど、ただ、人生の経験が周りの人とは違う気がする。少ないというか多いというか、ただただ色々違って、共通感がなくて、時々人に対しての言動や感情が子供っぽいって言われる。（何が子供っぽいって聞いてもまだよく分からない👶）

でも、この歌詞をもし３年前に聴いてたら、きっとこんなに心に響かなかったと思う。これって成長したってこと？だとしたら元の方が好きだった🤔

Had a good talk with a friend yesterday about "queer" as an umbrella term and I want to jot down my thoughts, although I still haven't reached a conclusion and I'm still not sure what a good solution is.

It seems like the main point of contention around the whole "queer is a slur" issue is whether or not "queer" is acceptable to use as an umbrella term for all non-cishet people―individuals can choose to reclaim it for themselves, or reject it for themselves, but nobody should be coercively labeling people against their will.

My two main issues with this:

There is no perfect alternative. Every term has been used as a slur. Every term has ideological problems. Different terms have different applications. While I can say queer community and just follow it up with "if you don't consider yourself part of the queer community then I'm not talking to you," it gets complicated when using "queer" to actually discuss, you know, what it's like to be queer.

Personally, I hate that "gay" has in many circles become the replacement umbrella term, because it's… literally not one. I'm not gay, by definition. Sure, I may sometimes join my friends in playfully screaming "IM GAY" on Twitter, because it's fun and catchy and I like screaming and I pick up slang trends really easily, but at the end of the day, I'm not gay. I'm trans and pan and queer and I take issue with those identities being erased.

On top of that, I personally have had much more experience with "gay" being used as a slur than "queer." I realize this may not be everyone's experience, but I know for sure that I'm not the only one with this experience. "Gay" itself is a reclaimed slur with its own history of hurt.

Then what about LGBT? Aside from the fact that LGBTQ+ is just clunky and awkward and not as catchy, it also erases identities that don't fit within its letters, which is why you end up getting the alphabet soup that is LGBTQIA+ (which I not only also have bad associations with, of people mockingly saying LGBTQIAPKEDMWTFBBQ and so on, but is also ridiculously clunkier and I do think that it's sociolinguistically important to have a label that is easy to say).

In a way it brings up the issue of who, at the end of the day, gets to define terms. I actually disliked "bisexual" for a while, because I did associate it with only acknowledging and being attracted to two binary genders. But now the general consensus among the bi community seems to be that bisexuality refers to being attracted to "same" and "other" genders, as opposed to "male" and "female." And I still feel uncomfortable labeling myself as bi most of the time because of my associations with the word. But if someone called me bi I guess they wouldn't technically be wrong, even though I generally won't use it as a label for myself.

"Queer" is the only word I've found that I can feel fully recognized and safe in. My experience with it is so formative and positive, admittedly, that I do sometimes feel defensive when I see posts on Twitter/Tumblr that feel like they are trying to take that away from me, even though the things that I've gotten from that word have also taken away just as much from other people. It's hard, if not impossible, to find and spread a word that works for everyone, because any word we find will be used as a slur at some point. And I think this speaks to the diversity of experience within the community, which is important to recognize, and I don't particularly care for arguments dismissing all people uncomfortable with being labeled queer as TERFs, or too young to know their own history.

That said, queer is valuable to me specifically as a community identifier.

I used to really dislike the term "person of color." I didn't like the term and I didn't like people labeling me with it and it got to a point where I would even avoid community events solely based on the name. But at the same time, it's very much a community/umbrella identity―that's the whole concept behind it and how it was coined―so it was difficult to tell people that they couldn't use it as one even if I personally didn't identify with it. Ultimately I accepted that the term was used as an umbrella term for non-white people to refer to shared experiences of systemic racism, but it was also a term of political solidarity that individual people might choose not to identify with. (And I've gotten a bit more comfortable with it since then, after contextualizing it more within a US/western-centric political identity rather than a global racial identity, but that's a different discussion.)

So I guess when I say queer I mean it in a similar context, in that individual people can choose not to identify with it, but I use it to refer to a community bound by experiences that those people might also share and also sometimes use it as an adjective to refer to those experiences. Because that's what it was coined for―not as an individual identity, but as a way of speaking to broader experiences of marginalization.

But I don't know if this is a satisfactory answer―if I refer to a big nebulous group of people with a label, I am also by extension referring to each individual within that group with the same label. The problem in this case is that sometimes that means labeling people against their will. And I wish we had a word that worked for everyone. I wish we could unite as a community without so much intracommunity discord and without so much hurt. I find that there's a lot of bitterness and anger in the "can queer be used as an umbrella term"/"is queer a slur" debate, on both sides―because it hurts, to feel like people are intentionally ignoring your request to not call you something because of the trauma it digs up. But it also hurts to have something that gave you so much strength and safety and belonging after a lifetime of struggling with self-hatred, and then suddenly be told that it's bad and you can't use it anymore.

I've been saying for years now that I'd like to return to long-form journaling. In the death throes of my old LiveJournal I would return once every half-year or so to write, "Hello everyone, I miss long-form journaling and I would like to get back into it," then disappear again before coming back a few months later. Rinse and repeat. It was so much easier before, and I wonder if it was because my thoughts were less complex; my emotions less inhibited―or if it was just that I had both the habit and the community, and now I have neither.

It's not that I haven't been journaling at all―I'm nearing the fifth anniversary of my daily log, and I still send myself rambling emails on occasion―but it's nice to have the catharsis of something that feels a bit more like a public venue, even if (for now) nobody is actually here to read it. Tumblr doesn't function too well for that―it's difficult to be completely open since there's no way to control for privacy (my old LJ was 98% public, yeah, but I did still lock down posts once in a while when I wanted to talk about more personal things or things that directly involved other people), and since it's primarily meant to be a media aggregate microblogging platform that I primarily use to share art, getting too real makes me feel… What, apologetic? Intrusive? Vulnerable?

Maybe this is just another iteration of my need to compartmentalize every thought; run away to a clean slate; hide everything in layers and labyrinths so that I can continue claiming to be open but only if you know where to look. Or maybe I just want to write again. I don't know! I am disgustingly introspective and I need somewhere to dump it!! To be honest, I actually hate being so introspective. I'd prefer not to think so deeply. But at the same time I don't think I'm nearly as deep as I try to dig, so my attempts to articulate myself often feel so contrived. What did I use to write about? My life? WHAT LIFE