Great post. My personal perspective is that I use "queer" because these things are messy and intersectional. I've never been bashed in a way that was exclusively about my gender or my sexuality. It's always been both.

And the fact that Queers Read This was distributed the year I chose to come out and do community activism probably helped.

And lately I'm just so frustrated with wank that tries to pick fights between my gender and my sexuality. "Queer" communicates the intersection of anti-femininity and anti-gay prejudice that I have to deal with. It includes the embrace of queer theology, queer theory, and queer art which actively critiques the social construction of sexuality and gender. Lately if I say "bi," many people try to put me in an insulated box of rhetoric. Those people are wrong about "bi," but "queer" outflanks them.