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Kawastyselir wrote:

I've been derogatorily called queer in the past by an older woman, although granted she had a bad case of dementia. But it's clear her filter was gone and the slur came from a time when LGBT+ people were seen in a much worse light. It also doesn't sit well with me that the term is synonymous with "weird." If we're talking about the larger goal of normalizing LGBT+ culture, I would personally use a different term.

I agree with you. My first remembered exposure to the word "queer" was in Lord of the Rings, where J.R.R. Tolkien uses it in the old sense of "odd" or "unsettling" or "weird," and for a couple of years I thought of the word in that sense only, until I became aware at some point that it also referred to non-straight people, and not often in a good sense. I've never thought of myself as "queer," but if the word were rehabilitated, so to speak, it might be fine. It's just not how I personally think of myself.