Radqueer

The radqueer community originated on Tumblr as a community for paraphiliacs and people with other stigmatized non-normative identities (such as transid).

Meaning

This label can be interpreted in multiple ways, with acceptance of non-normative identities as the unchangeable key component. Foucault-divine-mephisto, the coiner of the label and the creator of the first flag, posted the following text on November 14, 2021:

– ’RadQueer’ (radical queer) was created in response to the puritanism, hypocrisy and general rejection in the Queer community regarding a range of marginalized and stigmatized Queersexualities (paraphilias), internal identities (transage, transabled, transill/transnoso, transpecies, alterhumans/transnonhuman etc) and behaviours (social, sexual eccentricity etc). ♢

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– Compared to the average queer, RadQueers hold a much more radical position on this topic believing that these identities are also part of the Queer community due to their Queer (=strange, non-normative) nature. ♢

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– Even if the term “RadQueer” designate an attitude inclusive of anything falling outside the normative, the dominant and the ‘legitimate’, it can be used interchangeably, if one wishes, with Queer, and the RadQueer pride flag can be used to represent the Queer flag, as the term ’Queer’ is already radically inclusive in itself.

- foucault-divine-mephisto

In the same post foucault-divine-mephisto released the original radqueer flag.

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  The first radqueer flag

A new flag and a slightly new definition were posted by a Tumblr user equiradqueer on May 15, 2022:

Flag for queers that love all sorts of identitys. Even “problematic” ones like transable,trace, transage, ect.

+ supporting paraphilas.

Basically all good faith identitys. Even the ones the “inclusionists” won’t touch.

- equiradqueer

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  The new radqueer flag

This flag became the main radqueer flag and is still actively in use.

On July 1st, 2022, a blogger p-30-w reuploaded the old flag and posted the following definition: 

RadQueer is unconditionally inclusive of: ALL trans-x/transid identities (and supports all their social and medical transitions) ALL paraphilias and the multiplicity of their related contact stances (anti-contact, complex-contact, neutral-contact, restricted-contact, pro-contact). — Pro-c’s on “potentially harmful paraphilias” (if acted upon) are completely welcomed in the RadQueer community if they stay behaviorally non-offending/non-active. Ex-offenders are welcomed too! Debating on contact stances is totally acceptable as long as it doesn’t directly incites to committing offenses ~

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As RadQueer is strongly in favor of morphological and cognitive liberty, it is also indisputably pro medpunkism and xenomaladies. Radqueer is strictly against all forms of antisexualism/erotophobia as this system of oppression is responsible for the exacerbation, or creation, of the stigma against paraphilias/atypical sexualities and sexual expressions. Radqueer is against ageism, adultism and ableism —

- p-30-w

Judging by the style of the posts, it's possible that p-30-w was foucault-divine-mephisto after an account suspension. However, it is not confirmed.

As one can see from these texts, with time the label "radqueer" lost the aspect of automatic inclusion of everything non-normative into queerness. The focus shifted onto being queer and being paraphiliac, transid, or supportive. Nowadays there is no agreement in the radqueer community on whether these identities are inherently queer or no.

It is also important to note that this label stays quite niche, and most people it was supposed to be inclusive of do not identify with it.

Radqueer emoji code

Emojis have been used sometimes as euphemisms for stigmatized identities. The world map emoji (🗺️), for instance, is sometimes used by maps. There were also several cases of false attribution of emojis to maps: in 2019 antis accused maps of using the pear emoji (🍐) as an identity, and several months later - the clown face emoji (🤡). This resulted in a "map emoji of the month" joke, where the Twitter map community would collectively vote for a new emoji each month and later put it in display names and bios.

It is unclear whether the radqueer emoji code took inspiration from these events. The code assigns unique emojis and emoji combinations to paraphiliac, transid, and other identities. According to this code, minor attraction can be presented as any of the following emojis: cocktail glass (🍸), sun (☀️), world map (🗺️).

Derivative terms

Alternative terms and subcategories for radqueerness were proposed. They typically follow the same pattern, where the root "rad" is replaced with some other word. For instance, "safequeer" is a term for anti transid and anti paraphilia people who still want to signal defense of more palatable non-normative identities. A tumblr blog blankqueer became one of the first to archive them . Blankqueer was established as the default term to refer to such identities.