James Finn
1 min readDec 14, 2024

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So, in French, German, and Russian, "queer" is normally used to say queer as we would mean it in the sense of gender and sexual diversity -- with an approximation of the English pronunciation. Otherwise, specific words for positions on that spectrum exist more natively in those languages.

In German, "Ich bin schwule" means "I'm gay," mostly, but there IS a broader umbrella sense to the word, like as used to exist for "gay" here in the U.S. when I was young. So, sometimes a German trans person might call themself "Schwule" in a general sense. But, more specifically, "Ich bin transgender."

In French, "Je suis gay," Je suis lesbienne," "Je suis pansexuel," "Je suis bisexuelle." (Note the different gendered endings -- the masculine "sexuel" and the feminine "sexuelle." Romance languages make gender neutrality HARD!) Or, "Je suis transgenre," a little more natively French than the German way of doing it.

Russian has similar expressions for individual positions on the spectrum, most of them lifted from English, sometimes via other languages. But, amusingly to me, some slurs translate funny. For example, blue is a feminine color in Russian culture, and pink a more traditionally masculine color. So, if you call somebody "goloboy," a Russian word for pastel blue, you're insulting them by saying they are effeminate and probably gay.

But as far as I've ever experienced, when French, German, and Russian speakers want to say queer in the sense we're talking about here (as opposed to the original sense of strange or bizarre) they say "queer" as nearly as they can approximate it.

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James Finn
James Finn

Written by James Finn

James Finn is an LGBTQ columnist, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Act Up NY, and an agented but unpublished novelist.

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