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Comment by hypoqtech | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure it is a fact, I mean, these days there are heterosexual people who call themselves queer.

Well, queer encompasses more than just gay and lesbian people.

Non-binary people can be queer, heterosexual trans people can be queer, asexual people can be queer. Same with polyamorous people.

Literally anyone can be queer. Its a meaningless tag.

Literally anyone can be Christian, but that doesn't make it a useless tag. It's a linguistic and mental shortcut that has utility despite the relative ease of application.

Doesn't that make it not a fact then, if people can just opt in and out to being queer?

I would argue that no identity is a fact. All identities are beliefs on the part of the person doing the identifying. To identify something as X is to express the belief that it is X.

This reminds me a class very long ago, when the teacher wrote two contradictory definitions of style in the blackboard, one saying that style is what the authors have in common with their school, the other saying that style is what the authors have that others don't.

Of course, those were defining two different concepts: the style of a school and the personal style.

To be precise, identity is very easy to define: it's to be you, instead of anyone else. Until someone invents some kind of brain trasplant, it's impossible to transfer consciousness, so your identity is your body, more specifically, your brain. That would include your memories that, although can be erased by trauma or illness, are mostly very strongly rooted.

Outwards, it would expand to your habits, your chemistry, your beliefs. All that can change, but it's difficult. So it's more your personality than your identity.

Then there is "identity" that isn't. More like being part of a group, so it's parallel situation to that of style. You identify yourself with a group, you define yourself as the sum of the groups you include yourself in. Identity is very much about individuality. "Identity" seems to be the opposite: the inabilty to be someone on your own.

Unless we're getting to some deep metaphysical stuff, I don't think I buy that. Yes, some identities are solely based on belief. But others are indeed based on facts: someone might identify as "basketball player" because they play basketball. Or they might identify as "tall" because they are in the top 10% of people for height. The height example might sound silly, but there are people who are somehow "proud" of these sorts of traits that they have no control over.

Certainly the situations can sometimes change: the basketball player might stop playing basketball and no longer identify as such. And I suppose someone who has never played basketball in their life could adopt the identity of "basketball player" if they wanted to, but... that's fine, that would be a case where that particular person's identity is based on a belief (or delusion).

I'm not talking about what the identity is based on. I'm talking about what the identity itself is. I think this is useful to help clarify the difference between "X has the identity Y" and "X is Y" which otherwise seem very similar. The former means that "someone believes (or many people believe) that X is Y".

> who call themselves

In which sense? Because 'queer' means "eccentric" - many would describe as that. For that matter, people call themselves "gay" for "joyous".

Incidentally: the queer use of 'queer' predates that of 'gay' (just a piece of trivia).

> For that matter, people call themselves "gay" for "joyous".

Uh... I don't think people do that anymore.

They do, and some will absolutely do (to some it is important to "assess" language) - it really depends on what you mean with "people" (of course I meant a subset).

What happened there is, in the succession of editings I left that 'people' there in a way that happened to be ambiguous. I made a composition error out of inattention.

The subset you're talking about is the union of extremely non-native English speakers and native English speakers over 120 years old.

No. It is not a matter of being «native». It may be your mothertongue of not: it is an approach transversal to all (this class of) languages.

It is the set of those people who intend to speak English, though surely not the language in use among the English. "Currently typical" English does not mean "good" English.

Edit:

On the contrary, «native English speakers» are the one who will follow that: they are the ones supposed to have absorbed more English (and relevant) literature.

I have just checked and I see the terms employed correctly in Joyce, in Wilde, in Chandler, in Hammett, in Paul Johnson, in Niall Ferguson, in Woody Allen, in Spike Milligan.

As absolutely expected: there is the gathering of the Assessors.

Of course queer as "unusual" predates "queer" as gay. :D It's a reclaimed slur. It was a negative label applied to people who ultimately decided to make that negative label a part of their identity.

[Removed chunk because of misunderstanding]

[...] To my info, the first use of 'queer' for "homosexual" is from 1922, and the term was used for "eccentric" for the last five centuries.

('gay' for homosexual was reported as widespread "communitarian" use in medical texts in the 1940's - the use for "promiscuous" is at least four centuries old. In some territories, 'gay girl' still means "prostitute".)

Edit:

I misread your post. Of course, "of course" ""queer" for homosexual" can easily be a "reclaimed slur". There should be no surprise about it.

And your use of 'gay' in «"queer" as gay» is "queer". That is not ""queer" as gay", it is "queer" as "unaligned in sexual orientation", and not necessarily "gay". Just nitpicking on language though.

> In which sense?

Generally in a political sense (related to the gay sense). Someone who does not accept heterosexuality as a norm or default way of being, even though it may something that they personally prefer.

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