i asked stephen sandyfarquhar his thoughts on queer vs mogai and i think they shed some fantasic new insight on the issue (bold is mine):

haha actually i almost sent you a message about queer vs. mogai. i always misread mogai as mogwai, which is a scottish post-rock band.

i have to admit that all this preciousness about “oh no but that word is a slur” irritates the hell out of me. my instinctual response to that message was “oh, you didn’t consent to be called queer? well i certainly did not consent to be called mogai.” i think defining ourselves by our marginalization rather than by our difference is awful and unimaginative and masochistic and ultimately based in respectability politics. under the paradigm suggested by mogai, once homophobia is over, gay people will be over too.

i feel like the resistance to “queer” has to do with ignorance about how the word became what it is today— the aftermath of the initial horror of AIDS and the formation of a group called queer nation out of the ashes of ACT UP, idk if i’m telling you what you already know, but like, it wasn’t like we all just started saying “queer” one day—it came out of a cultural and historical moment where “gayness” as we knew it seemed to have been murdered by the us gov’t negligence w/r/t HIV/AIDS, and it seemed possible that something new might emerge. or rather, it seemed probable that we would have to change because practices one might associate with “gay” rather than the “queer”ness of the 90s and00s—closetedness, anonymous unprotected sex, bathhouses, all this kind of thing—were made less workable by the epidemic. and the political foment, the explosion of activism, that accompanied the epidemic made it clear that there were some gay people who wanted to fulfill the promises of 70s gay lib—smash the state! change the world!—and some who wanted to assimilate. so becoming “queer” seemed like a good solution.

tbh i knew about the origins of ‘queer’ but i didn’t think to assume that critics of the term would not know/would not factor that into their thinking. i guess that means like yes, the people who formed the idea of queer (as a blurred, unbounded, unbinarized term) did reclaim a slur to form it but the term we use how we use it today is not important because it is reclaimed- it is important because of the meaning they gave it. MOGAI is a blanket term for a lot of identities, yes, but it doesn’t do the work that queer does of uniting us by rejecting the binaries that would divide us; MOGAI is not a PC/neutral/non-offense version of queer, but an entirely different word with an entirely different use and meaning.

and it’s true- defining ourself by our marginalization and oppression is fundamentally limited. to conceive of a “we” that is defined by a hatred and fear from “them”… is that better than a “we” that is celebratory and uniting in nature, but is sourced from a slur? at least we say, that was a slur but now it is ours and it is beautiful. MOGAI doesn’t do that- it can only describe oppression and is useless to enjoy the meaty, sparkling, vicseral brilliance of a queer life.

to think of “queer” only as a slur or a reclaimed slur and not as a word formed from the clay of oppression into a queer life-art by incredible, inspiring activists also erases queer history… stephen’s right, i think people who distrust the word “queer” might often not be thinking of this (even if they do know it)

tbh it’s been a while since i read naything on the 80s and i should pick up a book or two again…