Amid concerns
When the Mail gets it and “progressives” don’t:
The BBC has been heavily criticised for describing playwright Noel Coward as ‘queer’ amid concerns that the term, ‘reclaimed’ by some in the gay community, is still offensive to many.
A social media post by the BBC Arts account promoting the BBC2 Boxing Day documentary about the actor, singer and composer’s life described him as being ‘queer’ in a ‘very straight world’. The same wording is used on the show’s description on the BBC’s iPlayer.
Critics accused the corporation of using ‘homophobic slurs’ saying Coward was a ‘gay man’, while another said the term ‘queer’ was an ‘insult for most gay men and women’.
And it’s not for the BBC to err on the side of insulting most gay women and men. The BBC, pillar of the establishment including the royals, is not the institution you want babbling about queer this and queer that one minute and kissing an archbishop’s bum the next.
BBC News’ own style guide says the term should not be applied to an individual or group ‘unless they have already adopted it’.
It adds: ‘Originally a pejorative term… “queer” has been reclaimed by some in the LGBTQ+ community. However, it is not universally accepted and has the potential to cause offence.’
Yeah kind of like the way the word “nigga” does when used by white people. Duh.
In response to the BBC post, Dennis Noel Kavanagh, director at the Gay Men’s Network, said: ‘You know damned well a good portion of gay men find this term offensive, but it’s plainly more important to you to offend us and show how much you love Stonewall rather than behave like an independent broadcaster.’
The BBC has been accused of being too close to campaigning gay charity Stonewall, an organisation that has sparked controversy for its views on issues such as trans rights.
Gay rights activist Fred Sargeant said Coward ‘would never have embraced a slur used against his generation of gay men’.
Two of my favorite gay rights activists.
Pathetic that the Mail gets this and the Beeb doesn’t.
Sargeant has the heart of it. Coward absolutely would have understood it as a slur.
Noel Coward to Truman Capote, gossipping about the Duke of Windsor (the former Edward VIII, who abdicated in 1936) and his wife Wallis Simpson:
Source: Capote in an article in Esquire. Quoted in various sources to be found in a search on Google Books. Unfortunately it does not seem possible to make a functioning link out of a Google Books search.
I think the sound and fury over the BBC post is misplaced. And I will repeat what I have said in a comment on an earlier post: “Not so very long ago, many homosexual people, male and female, in Britain – I do not know about the States – self-described as ‘queer’ and felt comfortable about it.” I remember that time; but then, I am a quarter of a century older than Denis Noel Kavanagh.
That’s interesting!
On the BBC post, however, I still differ. The BBC is not “queer” nor is it subject to homophobic violence. The BBC calling people “queer” in public isn’t all that comparable to Noel Coward doing so in a private letter.
I also differ, for a different reason: the word ‘queer’ highly ambiguous in today’s parlance, being that it is used by almost anyone with purple hair, irrespective of their sexual preference. Unclear language is best avoided, escept where quoting people. The clearest language here is simply that he was gay.