Gay content creator attacked for rejecting term ‘queer’

Stephen Price

A Welsh content creator has faced intense online harassment after sharing his thoughts on the terms queer, and questioning the lumping together of sexuality and gender identities under the ‘lgbtqi+’ banner.

Diago Tyler is a content creator from Rhondda, now living in Cardiff, and his reels and social media content have amassed tens of thousands of followers thanks to his engaging content and honest take on living as a gay man in Wales today.

Earlier this week, Diago shared what appears to be an AI image of a woman ‘shoving’ the word ‘queer’ down two men’s throats which has been shared widely across social media by others – many of whom find the word queer offensive, but others who question its merit as an identity since so many nowadays who use the term are heterosexual.

Facing an intense backlash – with many calling him transphobic – from people who wrongly assumed the woman in the image to be representing a trans person – he later pulled the image.

Seemingly regretting his decision, however, he returned to social media to confront his critics.

He shared: “So, this photo got a lot of reactions yesterday. I’ve deleted it, not because of anything that I feel like I’ve said is wrong, but I think that my points weren’t getting across. So I’m going to just try and narrow it down, okay.

“As someone that is a gay man in the ‘lgbtq plus what the fuck else it is’ nowadays. I just go by LGB to me personally LGBTQ all that they are very separate in the community anyway you’ve got to be completely honest you’ve got to just say it as it fucking is – one is a sexual preference one is na identity so you think that you’re someone else the other one is what you’re attracted to they are separate things.

“But that is not the point that I was even trying to make. Everyone kept on jumping on the bandwagon being like ‘oh transphobic this transphobic that’. I have beautiful friends that are trans, I do not have an issue with trans.

He added: “I’ve worked in gay bars… I think trans are some of the best people that you will ever fucking meet. But this picture is nothing to do with trans.

“The person in the picture doesn’t even look trans. She’s got a dog collar on and things with the little badge. And it is this fake woke ideology that everyone has to conform to their belief system.

“And if anybody doesn’t conform to their belief system and if anybody doesn’t confine or conform to that then you are shunned and you’re labeled with things like this. That is the issue that is the complete thing that I was trying to make everyone is so worked up on this is right or this is right or my opinion it’s only my opinion thing is, we wouldn’t be here today as a community if we didn’t have conversations.

“But these people are brain dead. They don’t want to have conversations. And then it goes then into politics. And like, that’s a separate thing in itself. This is the delusion of these people.

“This is not about trans people, that is why I’ve deleted it because i’m not arguing back and forth trying to defend myself against some stupid person that’s trying to say that I’m a transphobe when they know nothing about me. It was a picture and you took from that what you wanted and you created it into your narrative to fit whatever it was that you wanted to fit to make the other person look like a bad person. That is the problem that we have in the gay community, not just the gay community the LGB community – the whole thing that is the issue you have more people these days that are more worked up and worried about LGB rights that are straight that that ain’t in the community.

 

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Diago concluded: “I’m glad that you have an opinion and you know that’s very valid we all need to have opinions with things like this but we can’t continue to allow stupid idiotic people to creating this narrative all the time… I feel like that we need to stand up so this was never about trans this was not even about the non-binary or anything like that it just so happens to be that most people that are that is in this category that – I’m saying i’m not saying all – i’m just saying that you know if the shoe fits honey boo then i’m sorry it is what it fucking is.

“But anyway, I’m done with that i’m gonna just chill out I’m gonna have my moment but I’m not gonna have my community then coming on to me being like, ‘oh my god, you’re transphobic, transphobic, that’, it makes no sense, just because it doesn’t fit your narrative.”

Gender vs sexuality

Diago’s experience reflects a wider rift within the wider ‘LGBT community’ which has noticeably shifted in its ‘gay rights’ / ‘gay pride’ stance, with more prominence given to gender identities nowadays.

Many online commentators point towards what they say is a ‘rewriting’ of history, with Stonewall’s ‘first brick thrown by a trans woman’ narrative pushed to silence anyone who questions why gender and sexuality are entwined, disregarding the decades-long fight for LGB rights across the world long before Stonewall, and ‘over-exaggerating’ of the role played by trans people.

Many gay men in particular also take offence at the term ‘queer’ which is being mainstreamed despite it being used as a hateful slur for many while growing up, with critics arguing that reclamation can happen on a personal level, but with corporate use growing they feel sidelined in favour of more vocal, younger, often heterosexual people.

Friction can be seen in flag use, pronoun use, adoption of queer and non-binary identities by heterosexuals, with many LGB people now rejecting pride and much of the online discourse, arguing that the current movement not only doesn’t reflect them, but outright rejects them.

Reflecting this rift, the LGB Alliance – a UK-based advocacy group founded in 2019 by Kate Harris and Bev Jackson – was established to promote sex-based rights for lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, opposing what it describes as “gender identity theory” in favour of biological sex.

The organisation campaigns on the belief that transgender rights conflict with the rights of lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men. Its primary activities include lobbying and opposing gender recognition reform, puberty blockers for children, and bans on conversion therapy that include gender identity as well as policy influence – challenging mainstream LGBT charities like Stonewall over their support for trans inclusion.

Although the group was registered as a charity by the Charity Commission for England and Wales in 2021, it has faced significant controversy. Critics and trans rights advocates frequently accuse the organisation of transphobia and acting as a hate group due to its campaigns against trans and gender identity inclusion.