This rejoinder was published in TLS, 2 August 2019.
Sir, — Hal Jensen (Letters, July 26) gives one reason “queer” has been
used by gay men: it is “in-your-face and convention-defying.” He
writes, “the odd, the spurious and the deviant ... appeal to me far
more than the purely conventional.” This is his privilege, and I
understand the sentiment.
Without presuming to speak for all gay men, I do imagine that most men,
gay or straight, would not wish to be called “queer”. I'm no
censor. I've fought for free speech all of my life and taken hard
knocks for challenging orthodox narratives. Others can call
themselves whatever they wish, but they should not refer to gay men as
“queers”.
Hugh Ryan writes that “gay” is “most commonly associated with
men.” That's true, and also the words “queer” and “faggot”.
And yet such women as Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler took the
lead in foisting “queer” on gay men. Ryan regards the “LGBT+
culture” as being more inclusive and less sexist — but there is no
LGBT+ culture or community, only a festering alphabetism, of which I
don't wish to be a denizen
There are many causes I support, but life is short. Others can
paddle their own canoes, and I'll paddle mine: the emancipation of male
love. For almost two decades I've concentrated on the English
Romantic poets. My two latest books (2017) are The Shelley-Byron
Men: Lost angels of a ruined paradise and the first scholarly edition
of Don Leon, an early 19th century epic poem, which defends and
celebrates male love. Neither book contains, or ought to contain,
the word “queer”.
Ryan concludes by saying that language changes quickly. Indeed,
it does. But, as the gay scholar Hubert Kennedy wrote to me, “the
effort to make a good word of ‘queer’ is unnecessary, ill-advised, and
— for us who grew up with that word — demeaning.”
JOHN LAURITSEN
Dorchester, Massachusetts 02125