had a conversation with one of my friends who is more than just a wee bit lavender the other day. it got me pondering and remembering.
see back when i was a young'n there was one word in common use: gay. then lesbian came out (haha) into casual parlance as a distinction for the ladies. i wasnt too many years later that i got to actually meet some gay/les people and hear about the community as a whole, pride marches and what not. i was informed that it was called the "LGB" community for the PC amongst us you know, lesbian, gay and bi.
i guess somewhere in the mid 90s i heard and saw it referred to as the LGBT community, adding transgendered into the mix. i asked my favorite friend of dorothy why that was added in to the "official" parlance of groups like PFLAG and such. he said that the community was pretty inclusive and accepting of the differently gendered for many reasons, and gave plenty that led me to a better understanding of things. (not going into those here would be TL;DR)
about a month ago i began to see it written as LGBTQ. i thought Q? wtf is a Q in there for. i asked around (having more than just one or two friends who happen to be light in the loafers these days) and found out it indicates queer. i said "wtf?" yet again. isnt that a derogatory term? well turns out that it is, but its being used now to indicate folk who aren't LGB or T, but fall into the cracks between those letter labels. i asked "such as?". the answer was "man, i honestly have no fucking idea". following that we spent an hour or so laughing our asses off at the theoretical possiblilities such as dogs who are species dysphoric and want to become cats.
point being that we sort of wondered how far it could go. since "queer" isn't a definite article for any known group, gender, sex or preference that we could figure out isn't it just a catch all? how inclusive is too inclusive? all the wonderful folk who are a little fey tend to be very accepting of other's predilictions. has it gone so far now that it no longer (LGBTQ that is) represents a group of people long thrown to the fringes of society? are my compatriots of the "men's men and lady's ladies" persuasion now so accepted in large that they can comfortably extend their banner of love and shelter in community to just about anyone?
we reached no conclusion as the conversation veered so far into silliness that we could not recover. (even though we did dig up a long list of "polite" phrases for gay guys from over the years which i had to inculde here for my own entertainment).
any thoughts?
see back when i was a young'n there was one word in common use: gay. then lesbian came out (haha) into casual parlance as a distinction for the ladies. i wasnt too many years later that i got to actually meet some gay/les people and hear about the community as a whole, pride marches and what not. i was informed that it was called the "LGB" community for the PC amongst us you know, lesbian, gay and bi.
i guess somewhere in the mid 90s i heard and saw it referred to as the LGBT community, adding transgendered into the mix. i asked my favorite friend of dorothy why that was added in to the "official" parlance of groups like PFLAG and such. he said that the community was pretty inclusive and accepting of the differently gendered for many reasons, and gave plenty that led me to a better understanding of things. (not going into those here would be TL;DR)
about a month ago i began to see it written as LGBTQ. i thought Q? wtf is a Q in there for. i asked around (having more than just one or two friends who happen to be light in the loafers these days) and found out it indicates queer. i said "wtf?" yet again. isnt that a derogatory term? well turns out that it is, but its being used now to indicate folk who aren't LGB or T, but fall into the cracks between those letter labels. i asked "such as?". the answer was "man, i honestly have no fucking idea". following that we spent an hour or so laughing our asses off at the theoretical possiblilities such as dogs who are species dysphoric and want to become cats.
point being that we sort of wondered how far it could go. since "queer" isn't a definite article for any known group, gender, sex or preference that we could figure out isn't it just a catch all? how inclusive is too inclusive? all the wonderful folk who are a little fey tend to be very accepting of other's predilictions. has it gone so far now that it no longer (LGBTQ that is) represents a group of people long thrown to the fringes of society? are my compatriots of the "men's men and lady's ladies" persuasion now so accepted in large that they can comfortably extend their banner of love and shelter in community to just about anyone?
we reached no conclusion as the conversation veered so far into silliness that we could not recover. (even though we did dig up a long list of "polite" phrases for gay guys from over the years which i had to inculde here for my own entertainment).
any thoughts?
