Queers and Freaks
I think you, Miriam, fail to understand that "queers and freaks" includes myself. Amongst the wide group of people I love and still very much miss in New York City, some of who actually read me on Medium, neither queer nor freak is an insult, but a badge of pride. I suggest that you take a few seconds to find out a few facts before commenting. Web search is your friend — example, example.
I suggest also that misspelled insults without any explanation aren't just a poor look, they would not actually convince anyone that they were wrong. You throw invective, not because it will make the world a better place, or change anyone's mind, but because it makes you feel big and strong and important.
I thought long and hard before using that phrase "queers and freaks" — I didn't accidentally use it. Clearly I'm aware that pervasive racism is a cancer on America — I said so in my first sentence. I clearly can't be totally without a social conscience. So if I use words you find offensive you might want to start by asking me what I mean by them and why I believe this is OK.
For your future reference, "queer" is an umbrella term encompassing any sexual minority, and "freak" is an even bigger umbrella encompassing anyone with a philosophy or lifestyle straights (that’s our term for you lot) would find offensive or weird - queers, drug users, punks, anarchists, antifa, communists, Luddites, body modifiers, hippies, squatters, you name it. These people are my community.
From your name, and your other writing, and the fact you live in San Diego, I get the impression you’re some straight, affluent white lady. Am I right?
I might add that as a writer, I hope this wasn't a typical example of your work. Invective is a fine exercise for any writer, but you did not rise to the challenge. You have three sentence fragments in only ten sentences, surely some sort of record.
Given that your browser highlights spelling errors, writing “obmnoxious” is weak sauce — in fact, let’s look at that whole paragraph:
Pathetic, sad, obmnoxious. Yep, this is exactly how I would describe you.
Pathetic and sad are very close to synonyms, particularly since you are using them as generic insults. On the other hand, obnoxious is close to an antonym of sad — a sad obnoxious person is rather hard to visualize, so you need more details. So this sentence fragment is all over the place.
The second sentence not only offers no value at all — you already described me this way, yes?, so it isn’t how you would describe me but how you did describe me — but pointlessly switches into a spoken register with the “Yep”.
And ending off with “pathetic”, a name you already called me just a few words before — it’s simply a missed opportunity.
Overall, your vocabulary choices really do not shine. Offensive, pathetic, sad, obnoxious, pathetic — that’s it. That sends a clear message that the writer is angry — but it says almost nothing about the subject. And the very words are quotidian and jejune. Can’t we get a bit of creativity? “Miserable cur”, “drooling mouth-breather”, “foetid cave-dwelling troglodyte”, the sky’s the limit!
I suggest a subscription to The Guardian for all your invective needs.
And yes, to ease your worries, I will tell you that my wife and I did leave America for good — and good is definitely the operative word there.
I sat through nine Presidential elections in America, each with two choices — a right-wing, pro-war, pro-fossil fuel, pro-Wall Street candidate, with whom I shared very little; or a far-right-wing candidate who was additionally pro-gun, anti-birth-control, and with whom I shared nothing.
My wife, an American, was even less fond of the place and had been hinting we should leave for years. The exact moment I decided to leave was likely when Hillary Clinton was publicly touting her long and personal friendship with the proven war criminal Henry Kissinger, whose delusional and paranoid beliefs were responsible for the deaths of over two million innocent people in South East Asia.
So we left. We didn’t even think that Trump winning was a possibility — the combination of clinical psychopathy and drooling incoherence seemed a sure loser, but in hindsight, I should have remembered that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” So much the better that we left.
I write this now overlooking a canal in Amsterdam.
