WORDS BY DAN COTTAM (HE/HIM)

The word ‘queer’ has always been a difficult one for me. It’s been shouted at me in school and in the street, once accompanied by flying stones, occasionally (and far more effectively humiliating) by a gob-full of teenage spit or a door slammed in my face.

‘Queer!’ - an indictment of hatred and wrongness. An intention of harm that seemed fairly acceptable in 1986. I was thirteen in1986, had no idea what was going on with my sexuality but by the general (boy)population of Kingussie High School I was seen as different and therefore, ‘a queer’. Their decision, not mine. Their word, certainly not mine.

Aged 19, I used it in protest, with placards and chants; ‘We’re Here. We’re Queer - Get used to it!’ Anger in unison at the insidious law, Clause 28 helping to weaponise past trauma, marking the reclamation of a slur.

 Apart from then, despite its common usage to positively describe a group of people with whom I belong, the word has made me wince. I know it can also ignite an immediate and intense anger in some of my closest (and oldest) friends.

 This last year, while forming Cairngorms Pride and figuring out what we stand for, I’ve had to confront this polarising word. Much discussion over words has ensued. Their meaning, effectiveness and power picked over like battle spoils. ‘It’s a reclaimed slur’, ‘it’s how younger people identify’, ‘it’s inclusive and freeing’. All this I can get behind and when it comes down to it, what other word is there to encompass us all?  At Cairngorms Pride HQ, we want to bring queer joy to the mountains. Bringing LGBTQIA+ Joy doesn’t quite cut it does it?

I understand that words can radically change meaning over time but feelings responding to trauma tend to hang around..

 My partner, the lovely Josh, proved this case in no uncertain terms.  Josh is a very even-tempered person, in 5 years hardly a cross word has passed between us but on sight of a text expressing and naming ‘queer joy’, his buttons were well and truly pushed. I’ve never heard him shout in anger before, or seen him so riled. For him, who has a few years on me (his thirteenth year was 1966), the word 'queer' holds nothing but utter hatred and fear of real physical harm and imprisonment. He simply could not support an organisation that used such a cursed word. He will not stand to be ‘queer’. We are talking about it again as I write and he has just told me that he would still be deeply offended if someone called him queer- it holds so many egregious connotations.

Confronting this word has dredged up some hurtful and challenging memories for us both and has brought an unexpected conflict to navigate.  How can I use a word so prominently at my work that is so hated at home? It hasn’t broken us, it has made us stronger and while the matter is not quite reconciled, we are in a better place of understanding. We have learned that it is indeed an age thing. How we have experienced the word does and should matter. 'Queer' keeps and maintains our pain, our anger, our offence, our pride, our joy and the darkest of our humour.  (Josh has just called me an “effing queer!”).

To be happily accepting of queer is not forgetting or erasing a dark past.  To me, queer is joy through adversity. It encompasses the span of our societies’ changing values. It represents an entire tribe of wonderfully different people who have special insight and have a great deal to offer in our volatile world.

Queer is a teacher and, dare I say, a healer examining our past, sustaining the present and pointing at the future.

Picture: Dan (on left) with partner Josh