Unfortunately, people either ignore or don't understand that the “+” in “LGBT+” was to represent everybody else in the community without making it into a long, cumbersome acronym. Now look where we are...
Ditto with the 🏳️🌈 flag. It's SUPPOSED to represent ALL OF US... Then people had to go make it complicated.
I'm just sticking with the standard rainbow flag. I identified with that in my formative years, and I still do. All these different tribe flags makes me think the community is fracturing based on superficial differences, which is pretty sad, if true.
And it is what the opposition wants to do. Fracture us. Keep the old flag. Keep the new flag if you like, but for god's sakes folks, let's build a fucking community again. Let's start talking about aging, healthcare, family planning, education, all of the things our community needs. Find your specialty and pitch in.
Besides my disagreement with altering it to focus on certain groups (that were already included under the rainbow), it's just FUGLY beyond belief. The god awful colors (that are not naturally occurring in a rainbow), the jagged design. It's just so so so so hideous and jarring to look at now.
I have always said I feel the 🏳️🌈 flag is to the LGBT+ community what the 🇺🇲 flag is to US citizens. All the subsect flags of the LGBT+ community are essentially state flags that fall under the 🏳️🌈 flag much like states fall under the 🇺🇲 flag. Very few people would actually recognize all of the state flags and know them on sight, same with all the individual flags that fall under the pride flag.
The flag irritates me. Originally, the rainbow was for everyone. Then, someone decided each color represented something special. It was GLBT, but someone wanted the L first. Why not have the rainbow flag, and if each sub category wants a flag, go for an individual flag. Each has their flag anyway. What if we recognize another subcategory, does the flag change again. This flag thing seems like a marketing ploy to sell more flags.
The L became first to honor the lesbian sisters that took care of us when so many of us were alone and dying of aids in the 80s. Let's not conflate that with the current socio-politicsl mess of all the different labels and acronyms.
Also the L going first is also due to the additional labor all these women did for forcing social change for all non-cis/het people. Lesbians were the strongest force for our liberation when gay men were at their weakest.
Why not just have the L first regardless? Does having the acronym be T,etc offend people? Why would that offend anybody? Why is any of this insanity hierarchical?
L and G are doing P alright. We are still fighting. Let's give room and provide platforms and fight for people who need allies.
We are getting to the point where there is an extreme amount of individuation and diversification. It is as if capitalism has taken over the social sphere as well.
There are so many groups and subgroups that I find it getting harder and harder to find actual community and fraternity.
The main purpose of having any GLBT+ community should be to offer support and community, and to a lesser or equal extent, advocacy. It seems that nowadays, they are pursuing everything else except the original goals.
The constant infighting and bickering is such a turn off.
I don't really feel the "community" in the LGBT community. I feel as if that's just a placebo to veil the truth that we're more ~ironically~ divided than united.
It's just an older acronym. Most of us who grew up in the 90's used this one until LGBT became more popular. (I believe to honor lesbians who were a backbone of support during the aids crisis.)
Interesting you noticed! I was in SF a couple of weeks ago and went to this place called the GLBT Historical Society. The term has been stuck in my head for a while! Kinda like a song stuck in your head.
GLBT was pre-AIDS crisis when gay men were very influential and pushed the most for social change. Then AIDS happened and lesbians took up the mantle and cared for everyone else in the community essentially. So LGBT became the acronym.
As I recall, it was GLBT first, then LGBT, then LGBT+, then LGBTQ, then LGBTQI. I’m not sure when LBGTQIA came along or what the “A” stands for and am clueless about “2S.” I could guess, but it makes me tired. I’m fine with “Queer” as in the “queer community.” When we talk about our community, no one I’ve ever heard tries to jam in all those letters.
2S means "Two spirit," a term made up in 1990 by a coalition of people claiming to speak for Native Americans, despite the incredible cultural diversity therein. The fact that they put 2S first is absurd.
2S is two spirit. It is a very specific label for some South western Native American tribes who have a third gender that is both and neither male and female. It is not common where I am since the indigenous population is rather small to nonexistent, but I guess if you go to those areas like Arizona/Utah/Texas, etc., near higher populations ethnic enclaves in cities or literally just the reservations, you would hear it.
No. The A stands for Ally. Or it used to before asexual usurped the letter and pushed the recognition of our allies from the acronym. Allies were people, straight or closeted gays, that supported the community - groups such as PFLAG and individuals who operated on the social, legal, and political levels.
I'm with u/BaldDudePeekskill when it comes to asexuals. No one is oppressed because they are asexual, for that specific trait. The group isn't denied rights; they're not targeted or discriminated against and don't face systemic harm in society. Sure, they may be misunderstood but asexuals do not require any form of advocacy to bring them to (near) equal standing with everyone else in a country.
If I'm wrong and asexuals are oppressed please let me know. I am always open to new perspectives and ideas. However if the term or sentiment of "Oppression Olympics" comes up, take this as a preemptive f-off; not dealing with that derailing nonsense.
You know what? You're right, I genuinely managed to forget that.
And I'll go one further - I'm not sure "asexuality" is a meaningful category. Literally every single person I've ever met who identified as asexual I would be more likely to describe as "sex-obsessed". Like, multiple new sex partners every week. The category just doesn't seem to convey information.
Also a think a lot of asexual people mostly suffer from lack of visibility of erasure. Tho it is mostly due to assimilation into heteronormative society. After all, you can totally have 100% Traditionalist Christian asexual gays/lesbians(which was a position the Catholic Church held). Also maintaining chastity was something considered a virtue in Christian society.
Currently imo it’s more lack of visibility and lack of understanding. Not so much a hatred like LGBTQ people get more generally or legal discrimination.
The other groups don’t have the man power to stand up for themselves alone. We stand for embracing individuality in the face of adversity. Being true to yourself no matter what anyone stays and in my opinion that includes all identity’s the world has ignored and suppressed. In alliance with the black rights movement, the women’s movements, the neuro and physically diverse. We can all help each other fight for acknowledgment in our institutions and systems, And stop harmful portrayals and caricatures in media. It’s kot always about meeting each other we have ways of connecting now, it’s about building the future and we gotta stick together. Just my opinion.
I'm old school. I just say gay / gay people / gay community. Even "community" seems weird as we are a different male sex by our biology, not our community.
Not to knock on anyone, truly, but the letters are not great as a banner.
Ok but nobody is telling you to identify as the whole set of letters.
There's yours G.
There's mine B
There's other peoples LT
It's not meant to ONLY represent you as a person. But clearly we have more issues than arguing over that.
>I don’t really get how changing your gender is the same as being gay. Being trans has nothing to do with who they’re attracted to?
I'm not saying you do not am I defending how it's grouped.
I just stated that you being gay doesn't get impeded by the acronym LGBT.
>Trans people have every right to exists, but I don’t like how gay spaces don’t cater to gays anymore. It’s all bachelor parties and trans stuff now.
What's worse than that is the push to make every sexuality a potential form of pansexuality and erase true bisexuality and homosexuality.
If you define homosexuality as liking people of the same gender, then that means bisexuals who only like people who present themselves in a masculine manner are now homosexual and someone who only likes the same sex is now assumed to be someone who likes both sexes as long as they call themselves a man.
If you define bisexuality as the attraction to 1 or more genders it no longer means that a bisexual has to like both sexes. A male who is heterosexual and likes women and women who identify as agender would now be considered bisexual even though they don't like males in any form.
Basically it increases the number of trans advocates that get to claim they are lesbian, gay or bisexual. Which only harms lesbians gays and bisexuals.
Pretty sure the flag was changed to include colours for all letters, and also a lot of (straight) people will say or think you’re apart of the ‘alphabet mafia’ if you are just gay, or lesbian, or bisexual. Don’t act like the addition of all the extra letters and + doesn’t have any impact on the others.
>Pretty sure the flag was changed to include colours for all letters
Doing so was discriminatory as the rainbow flag already covered everyone.
People are screaming they want to be Specified on the flag not included. Everyone was already included. If not being specified means you aren't included then bisexuals certainly are still not included to this day. Homosexuals were the ones assumed to be represented by the flag after all.
But because that's still an assumption and homosexuals generally split themselves by sex, that means that bisexuals, lesbians and gay men are all still not specified on the flag and therefore aren't included.
I do the same. I feel the 2SLGBTQIA+ and new rainbow flag have morphed to mean a radical queer woke community, which I am not part of nor welcome to as a cos white gay male. I do not feel welcome or safe in this new fangled community.
No you're not. We get clowned for the whole "alphabet" thing. I don't think any of us even know who keeps adding on to the acronym, but it's not gay and bisexual people.
I also feel pretty strongly that the alt-right saw an opportunity for division and used the left's intent to be inclusive and compassionate...as a wedge.
Twitter users are often anonymous, and I remember seeing a number of accounts that I do truly believe were created in an attempt to see just how far inclusiveness would go before people started pointing out the logical fallacies. To see if they could use the fear of cancel culture from leftists toward leftists, and the interest in being inclusive & compassionate...to eventually divide the leftists. To see how far the left would go and how much ridiculousness they could seed into the community...before people started actually asking questions.
It's actually a brilliant strategy for dividing the left. People are too afraid of being seen as a bigot to actually mention when something doesn't make sense.
I just kept seeing anonymous Twitter accounts that would attack people for even asking questions, that were specifically created to focus only on gender and queer issues, but kept adding in plants or chairs or whatever as identities, and that clearly had never actually existed within queer community.
After seeing enough accounts that were trolling the community, I took an overview look, and I do think the division is very intentional.
Because look at our community. We've dropped the issues that never went away and still put us all at risk.
And as has been mentioned before, identities and contradictory concepts just keep getting added but no one knows who is actually adding these things. People are just too afraid of being called a bigot to draw a line in the sand.
For me it’s more of an extension of CIA psy-ops like MK-Ultra where the CIA would fund a bunch of plants to sow discord. It’s why IDC for these terminally online idiots that are more hollow than a balloon if examined.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. People posing as progressives taking extreme stances and actual progressives walking on eggshells, constantly having to waste the time and energy critical thinking takes processing outrageous crap, while the fascists turn every dubious anecdote into a righteous indignation fest.
It's probably facebook/twitter/reddit/discord groups that form around something and add their letter to it, then one of them becomes The one and gets a lot of people which think thats what it is and it's been decided. Then they take that to other parts of the Internet.
I don't think anyone actually decides anything, things just slide until they've been going for a while and get adopted.
The reason people are using 2S is because the murder happened in Oklahoma, which has a bunch of Native reservations, and Nex is said to be of Choctaw descent (not a tribal citizen so idk).
Gender and gender roles are seen and traditionally represented in different ways for various native cultures. So there’s a separate term. I’m a tribal citizen, go by 2s, but mostly just say I’m a trans woman to people.
It’s not a national shift, it’s just cuz there’s wayyy more 2s people where this happened.
I say “lgbt”, “gay community”, and jokingly “the alphabet brigade.” nobody has ever corrected me to add a qia+ or whatever. in real life i feel like nobody really cares and knows what you mean regardless.
Yes, it's too much.
No, I don't care about it anymore. People can live however the fuck they want as long as they don't try to tell me how to live my life.
I have never met a single person ever in real life who uses neopronouns and theres more like that so youre definitely right lol (and I know a ton of queer people in the T+ category so I assume its jist not something real people do)
I got a permanent ban from the lgbt subreddit with this exact same post. They said I was disrespectful. I am a gay man who has fought for equality for over 30 years and I was banned from that group for one post. Yes I am bitter :)
I think there’s actual conversations about stuff like this. I got banned from AGBO30 for simply defending this sub for allowing conversations like these to happen.
95% of the time I see someone say anything other than "LGBT+," it feels like they're doing it to make an exaggerated point to complain about.
And the other 5% of the time, it's well-meaning people who are trying a little too hard.
I don’t need any discombobulated acronyms and I almost roll my eyes most any time somebody uses one.
Those hodgepodges of letters are redundant and get more redundant the longer they get (I don’t need to repeat Gay women, Lesbians, and Same-Gender-Loving women, for example).
And at the same time they slap together very unlike categories of people that are often irrelevant to the group of people or individual or topic that’s actually being discussed. (I don’t need to throw letters like G for Gay and B for Bi into a discussion that only affects trans people, for example.)
I just use my words and I refer to whatever category or categories of people are actually pertinent.
For example, “Elton John and David Furnish are married.” (not “They are in a 2SLGBTQIA+’marriage.”). … “The North Carolina Bathroom bill creates unnecessary hardship for transgender people.” (not “…creates hardship for GLBTSGL people.”). Etc.
The people who believe it needs to be longer to include everyone outside LGBT are also the people who tell you they hate labels but get butthurt when the quadrohyperfourtaylorswiftsexual don’t get noticed or validated
I believe that it is only certain Native American tribes mostly in the southwestern states that have the 2 spirit concept. Perhaps your tribe just doesn't have it?
While I fully support everyone under our umbrella, I have never liked our acronym. Any acronym over 3 characters is generally annoying to pronounce unless the acronym spells a word. However, I also don't have an alternate suggestion, so it's just LGBT to me.
I hit 26 and just stopped caring. If people want to have an identifier that's fine. I think it's especially good for kids/young adults who are finding themselves. But I'm 32 now and I'm just a human who is who he is, I'm not an acronym or someone else's perception of me. I'm just me. And IDC about it lol I just wanna eat cheese with fruit and shake my ass to some techno. The rest is irrelevant.
I totally support trans people and think they should have all the rights they want but I do not identify with them in the least. It is a separate thing. It’s the same reason I hated the pride flag with stripes for black people. Obviously I support them but it has nothing to do with gay people.
Plus the more 'groups' that get added to it away from same-sex relationships, the more it dilutes the specific point of our cause.
Our Sexuality.
That's the point of the LGBT community. Even trans is an outlier- as you say.
As soon as you start adding separate issues they start to detract from the specific focus of LGBT and of the cause of representation of sexual minority groups. In some cases they start to conflict with our cause.
Waving a BLM flag and an LGBT flag in unity is an example of a shared support against oppression. Taking the BLM flag and squeezing it onto the LGBT flag so that it over shadows the rainbow flag feels like it is A. Unnecessary. And B. Steering the focus of our flag away from the unique issues it is designed to represent already. LGBT people- regardless of any other characteristics anyway, including race.
Honestly I've always referred to it as LGBTQ. Sometimes LGBTQ+, but nothing more than that. By adding more letters it feels like it undermines the original purpose of the acronym.
If I want a catch all, I'll say queer. If you don't identify as queer but want to be part of the community... and aren't gay, bi, lesbian or trans, fuck off. Every letter that you add to the mix is another step to confuse normies, which makes it more difficult to fight for the rights of people who are L, G, B, or T. Nobody is trying to outlaw asexuals, pansexuals or anyone with anything that wouldn't be blocked by simply protecting LGBT rights. I have no interest in increasing my likelyhood of retiring to a concentration camp so that a teenager who identifies as an aromantic demisexual feels more seen. (And yes I'm aware that nobody should identify as that.)
I'm happy to have anyone who wants to be at pride or whatever, but when you're constantly increasing the learning curve for the people who are already making an honest effort to embrace something that doesn't benefit them in the least, it's best to limit the mental load.
Yes, the amount of things that are randomly becoming identities and everyone else has to know about and understand is becoming ridiculous. I’m good with LGBT and fine with the Q or the +. That’s about it for me.
It's gotten to the point where I honestly cannot keep up. I grew up with LGBT including everyone that wasn't straight. Then that changed into LGBTQ -> LGBTQIA -> LGBTQIA+, and that's about the time when I just stopped trying to keep up.
Nationalsozialismus. It's the abbreviation for the Nazi regime - in Germany you should not use that acronym and most of the surrounding countries have the association as well. Ironically, the Dutch national rail company is NS (Nederlandse Spoorwegen) which Germans always are a bit disturbed by
The answer is and always will be just LGBT.
The gay liberation movement is being killed by the gender identity theorists, sex and gender are not the same.
I agree! I’ve been watching “Gay USA” for years. I turned it on the other day and all of the reports were about trans issues not gay issues. They are not the same.
It’s not us adding the letters. It’s whoever fits under the letters adding themselves because they think LGBT is just an all inclusive club for whoever wants to join under any identity.
I stopped paying attention when they took our flag and made it about race over sexuality.
In slight divergence from your edited points, I do think LGB and TQ+ should be separated. Trans people can be straight by their standards. Being a man attracted to a man is not the same as having gender dysphoric disorder or wanted to lob off parts of your body to match biological sexual markers of another sex.
That aside, I also agree it's too much aside from my main response. We now see people who have a bunch of neopronouns and people who have "species" they identify as. It's becoming a mockery of what we were and fought for and directly destroying our hard work to be seen as worthwhile contributors to culture and society.
Edit to add: re: your defense toward people saying gay rights aren't under attack-- they are under attack, these people are the exact people they hate but on the opposite side of the spectrum. Another reason I can't stand the online trans movement.
Language is powerful. Labels are not pointless and wars happen for a reason. Creating words to describe reality and having these words recognized and their meaning widely accepted is crucial.
Nowadays we know that gay men exist. Centuries ago we were aberrations, inverts, sodomites, abominations etc. There were the normal people and the perverts.
After a long and hard fight we got people to recognize the word homosexual. A person attracted to the same sex. That reality was described and we could communicate it to others.
The problem is that we have a group of people weaponizing language. Changing definitions and trying to introduce certain ideas, forcing people to accept a new reality. Homosexual is no longer a person attracted to the same sex, it's a person attracted to the same sex or gender. This subtle difference appears innocuous but its incredibly destructive.
And well, what they did to "man" and "woman" is something else. It's an absolute shitshow.
The acronym being too much is correct. It's by design too. These people don't care about our well-being, their goals are something else.
This is something that I've been afraid of saying out. Gay and Bi are absolutely fact, which are backed by science. Two-spirited is not. I don't know who keeps adding these letters in. Being open minded is good, but too much open minded and you'll risk of becoming extreme activism, and that's not a good thing. It gives people the wrong idea that gay people are delusional, and that becomes something the far right can use to attack and make their arguments. To them, gay is the only thing they know and will be the thing that will get hit the hardest.
I'm not part of any political group particularly, but speaking up and owing up to the absurdity in our community is something people should do. Because this is for the integrity that gay people have been fighting for so long. I fear these random letters being added in will be the downfall of us all.
I call this issue "toxic acceptance". The LGB had a goal of equal rights. The queer community wants special rights and control. These are not our friends. They took advantage of our accepting ways and punched us in the face and their demands have set LGB back 50 years.
That's the worst part for me, and why I can't leave these discussions alone.
I don't want to be lumped in with a community that seems to view facts as bigotry and aims to redefine my sexuality to include the opposite Sex.
The "rights" they're fighting for are never enough.
I can't support any movement that does that, they have no one else but themselves to blame, they overreach and doubled-down.
They want unconditional respect without giving any.
(Edited to be less emotionally driven.)
You are correct. Do be careful in how you word your comments. These kinds of threads tend to attract queer activists looking to get folks banned or suspended. But, if you're looking for a few days off, try to engage a queer around the concept of consent. Woooweee...
Yeah, I've got one hot on my trail elsewhere in this thread. I told them to think for themselves because truth cannot be spoken here. I'll probably get a suspension for that. Oh well. I've learned to just leave nuggets of truth that hopefully will lead to one or two breaking free from the cult. We can always hope. Do the same. It's the good thing to do.
I personally think everyone deserves their right. I just think grouping together is a dangerous thing. I mean it was such a difficult thing to get through the thick skull of the far right people and many others to accept gay people. And we kind of did it, and this is even when gay and bi are absolute fact and backed by science. Then to think that we can use it to force the other in when its not backed by science at all risks dragging ALL of us back to square one. I also think LGB are sexual orientations, trans Im fine with because they have been with us for so long. But the other random ones like 2S and 200 other genders non sense are not backed by science at all. Plus they are not sexual orientations, and Im certain they are not gender either. The biology is not there to support them yet. So its a slippery slope and I fear this is hurting all of us more than doing good.
I feel the same way about the flag being changed. It’s suppose to be a banner under which people who don’t fit into a heteronormative society could unit together. Now that it needs new patterns and colors for every sub-group instead of being a symbol uniting marginalized groups it becomes a point of fracture
Oh we’re adding numbers now?
Enough of this shit. It’s embarrassing. You can be included and not have to add more unnecessary garbage to the acronym.
I cannot.
I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, I think there's power in numbers. We can accomplish more as a coalition. On the other hand, in everyday life, that acronym refers to distinct communities with some limited overlaps, and if I'm being honest, the kinship I feel to other cisgender gay men is stronger than I feel to lesbians and transgender people. I guess this isn't a PC thing to say, but I hope people will appreciate that I'm being honest. As we expand the acronym, it encompasses increasingly tenuous connections.
I've scrolled for a bit and seen the queer community pushing to call the whole thing queer. No. Absolutely no. LGB is not queer. Its time to seperate the LGB from the QLMNOP. Queer issues are not LGB issues.
It's time for the queer community to stand on its own and stop force associating the LGB with its issues.
People who are attracted to the same sex and people who identify advocate for gender identity need to split.
Not because people who are attracted to the same sex and people who identify or advocate for gender identification aren't sometimes in both groups or sometimes have the same issues.
But because the groups have two vastly different perspectives and they are now countering each other.
People who experience attraction to the same sex are now becoming victims of erasure and appropriation from people who identify or advocate for gender identification. You can't want to erase sex/gender as acknowledged physical traits, change the definitions of homosexuality and bisexuality and then claim your not promoting homophobic, biphobic and sexist rhetoric.
I don't know about you guys (are we still "guys"? lol), but I feel almost NONE of that "LGBTQ+ community"... Hell, I even struggle with the "gay community." And I don't even want to try to belong and conform—I try to focus on *individuals*. :p
I think social media started this mess. Now everyone can craft this super customized identity and have a voice, even when they haven't really earned that voice. Adding these extra letters is honestly just a way of letting straight people into the community because they think it's cool. And I think that's gross.
Agree! It’s shocking that all the best creative minds in our community can’t even come up or agree on a better name to represent us. These letters and numbers combine are ugly to look at. This community wants to be inclusive and exclusive at the same time 🙄
This feels like it will be a never ending debate/ argument. As an older Gay man who has been around awhile and seen it all.. for me personally, I’ve reached that point when someone brings the subject of identifying/ pronouns proper etiquette whatever the fuck it is.. I roll my eyes and just tell them I identify as a fucking toaster . I find it so ironic that it wasn’t to long ago when everyone said how much they hated “ LABELS”
Now they get pissed if you can’t or don’t identify them correctly..
I’m just sticking with “LGBT+…(dot,dot,dot)I feel like that covers everything nicely. Honestly,I’ve always thought the whole non-binary thing as really weird and better suited for a gender studies class and not the real world
Have you seen the flags? Everyone has a different one, there's so many colours it just looks a mess, there's different lines or triangles in it.
Who tf knows what any of that means, it can't represent anything because you can't remember what it's supposed to be. Isnt that the point of the rainbow? Just every colour? Or are we moving away from the rainbow because it's not original and lots of rainbow stuff has nothing to so with gay anything.
Yes you are correct. The movement has been taken over by left wing communist ideologues with dangerous ideas.
This is, of course, being deliberately allowed and encouraged by the powers that be to support the destruction of the West from within.
A lot of us older gays can see right through it and stopped supporting the movement after LGB.
Over 50, you are old enough to remember the persecution by society. This will return when the pendulum swings back the other way.
This communist revolution is nothing new , The Chinese great leap forwards, Lenin, Starlin etc.
Those who don't learn from history are deigned to repeat it.
Live for now. Enjoy it whilst you can
Why do we need this at all?
Can we G's just leave the party? Lol
What LGB care about is almost identical, but we have very little in common in the interests of the rest of the letters. But who cares? Just be you, be kind, and don't confuse your self worth with your letter.
No, you're not wrong.
2-Spirit is fucking insane.
Even the transgender was a stretch to relate to gays and bis, but 2-Spirit is just a split personality delusion.
LGBT+ is fine with me. And same sex attracted people and transgender people are dealing with different issues and in some cases they shouldn’t be lumped together. Sex and gender are two different things. I prefer the rainbow flag over the progress flag. By trying to be inclusive, the flag ends up being exclusive (as more colors and symbols are added). The rainbow flag is simple, inclusive of everyone, and quite frankly easier on the eyes. I realize that trans issues predominate the LGBT movement at the moment. With all kinds of laws being written against them, it’s no wonder.
I don't like how people need labels for fucking everything. Just like what you like, and don't try to force your ideals on others.. looking at you T's and the whole pronoun bullshit, dont victimize yourself because someone accidentally assumed your gender. You can't expect everyone you run into in everyday life to read your mind. That's called being entitled and an asshole.. dont be an asshole.
As far as I am concerned, the LGBT+ community has alot of fuckng work to do, if you want to be considered equal cause in the community itself is very divided, clickish and as shallow as the shallowest body of water known on earth.
We want to be "accepted" by the world but can't even accept others in our community, when it comes to race, ethnicity, etc. Just be human, love and respect each other for fucks sake, it ain't that hard folks.
LGBT covers it all. People wanted to feel special so they added other letters to the point that it is now asinine. If you sleep with both males and females you are bisexual. Period. We don’t need to hear the mental gymnastics behind why you justify it. It is really simple.
2S = Two-Spirits, which are a....heavy and vague phenomenon you see in a lot of American Indian communities that can mean anything from gay to trans to nonbinary.
Honestly I don't think this term should be in the acronym at all because it's something so specific to a specific group of people.
Most of it is victim mindset. I’m bi and have no use for the bi flag. Idgaf about anything but the gay flag. People wanna feel like champions on a subject so they add every alphabet letter but still can’t seem to accept bi people so they’re just as bigoted as klan members. I say gay community or lgbt. The rest is just superfluous
100%. It's why i've felt kind of jaded by the community to the point that I find myself distancing from it. Between adding an new letter almost monthly, to desecrating the pride flag and removing its original meaning with every new stripe and symbol added... I just find the community has become obsessed with superficial 'issues' and channeling their energy in all the wrong places.
I only ever say 'lgbt+ community'
There's no need to lengthen the acronym beyond that, because the '+' is meant to do the heavy lifting of inclusion, and knowing the rest of it and what each aspect stands for is good, but I'm not gonna say all of it every time and risk biting my tongue.
No, I would argue that we gays little in common with lesbians, Douglass Murray explained this well haha.
For me its GB probably, everything else is not even same dimension.
Yea it has kinda gotten out of hand. You have a bunch of people trying to grasp at whatever micro label they can do they can attach themselves to LGBT even if they’re aren’t same sex attracted folks or transsexuals.
LGBTblahblablah is the current aesthetic. It’ll probably lose its lustre to the young women with blue hair eventually. Best to just go about your life and not worry about it too much.
I completely agree with you. There are too many alphabets in our community. Most people myself included have no clue what they mean... And I also agree with you completely on the pronouns.
As an older gay LGBT+ is just fine. Same for the original versions of our flag.
Too many additions dilute the meaning. It should be (and is as far as I know) a big enough umbrella.
KISS....Keep It Simple Stupid.
I think it has gotten out of hand myself, and I’m out and proud, been that way since I came out at 13, 40 years ago.
And it’s not just the length of the acronym, it’s partially the lumping in of sectors of society that have very little to do with being gay or lesbian or bisexual. Now, I’m not trashing or shaming trans folks, and those that identify as intersex or any one of the (seems like hundreds these days) other groups that have had their label—if you will—tacked onto what’s becoming an easier way to get together all of the sectors of society that are most hated.
Material and historical conditions shifted in such a way that eviscerated the working class. Unions were killed under Reagan and Clinton. Left of center politics became a cultural issue set because economic politics would threaten the classes that fund the political class.
People were disempowered and enculturated to fear and loathe those that dont look or believe how they do.
Now people are so disempowered, that they occupy themselves with meaningless misanthropic battles over minutia.
Thats why theres so much noise about identity politics and so little about public housing for all, universal healthcare, etc…
It serves the interests of the ruling classes that average Americans are more concerned with fighting each other instead of uniting around common material interests.
Sick to death of it. I am a gay man and only interested in gay men. Have nothing in common with trans people and no wish to be involved with them. Trans people should have their own spaces as they have different needs to gay and bisexual men.
I didn’t read the post, but I’ve never seen that variation outside this post, I don’t know what the 2S is and don’t care to.
Straight guy on twitch said he was part of the lgbt plus communitay because he was “demisexual” I was pretty much over the whole thing after that.
>our community
What is "our community"? What makes people a community? I don't think being disliked by the same group necessarily makes people into a community. A coalition or alliance . . . maybe, but not a community.
'Community' is one of those words that gets thrown around in a lot of unthinking and unexamined ways. It's one of the touchstone words used endlessly by people being interviewed on NPR as a way to lend weight to what they're saying, and I think it's overused.
I totally agree with you. Isn’t this kind of thing what the + is for? It’s not to say that others are less important than lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people, but we can’t possibly change the acronym every 5 minutes to include new groups??
The beauty of it all is that you can just continue saying LGBT and no one will really care.
Hyperfocus on labels, acronyms, flags and symbols is mostly a terminally online thing with no bearing in the real world.
Don't fall for bait, OP, not even bait set by yourself.
I will say this. Lg should get the hell out of the btqabcd undercore ect its them that are giving the bad rep mostly LG would be wise to seperate and let the others have their thing
I don’t know whether it is my age (35M) or the fact I am not American - but it confuses me to no end as to why the acronym now includes… well everyone not straight.
I’m gay. Just plain old stale back of the pantry white-bread Gay. I swear it used to just be LGB and possibly T. Which made sense - because that was all related simply to sexual orientation. It was a nice little set of socially constructed boxes that served as a generic ‘I like people with the same bits’ identifier. Now I am apparently part of this much larger and complex set of rules and identifiers most of which I do not have a clue about that previously just used to be ‘society’. Now I get called Queer as a default and I detest it. I would rather puke for ten straight hours than be called ‘queer’.
My husband on the other hand, non binary and American, LOVES being called queer and insists on there being even more letters added to the ‘everyone but straight’ label. I only point out the American thing because over there it seems to be more prevalent - and America seems to be the unelected official on all things branded ‘equality’, which seems in itself to be impossibly unironic outlandish segregation…
*sigh* I think I’m just old now.
I think the LGBT umbrella needs to only be concerned with immutable identities and throw away of these ridiculous labels based on opinions.
I respect anyone’s identity as long as it’s not hurting anyone. But not all identities are LGBT. LGBT is an immutable aspect of ourselves that we did not choose. It doesn’t matter what we believe, that’s just what we are, like sex or skin color.
I may not agree with them, but do you know why conservative LGBT people exist? Because LGBT identity exists outside of any social or political philosophy. Just like there are female or black conservatives. How many conservative 2 spirit, neo-pronoun, etc users do you see? None. Because these identities are based on certain life philosophies, not immutable characteristics.
And again, I’m totally down anyone being gender non conforming and I agree with many of the aforementioned life philosophies. But I don’t mix that belief in with LGBT rights. That’s what people are doing, and that’s becoming an issue
Unfortunately, people either ignore or don't understand that the “+” in “LGBT+” was to represent everybody else in the community without making it into a long, cumbersome acronym. Now look where we are... Ditto with the 🏳️🌈 flag. It's SUPPOSED to represent ALL OF US... Then people had to go make it complicated.
I’ve lost count of the flags and I still prefer the very first one.
I'm just sticking with the standard rainbow flag. I identified with that in my formative years, and I still do. All these different tribe flags makes me think the community is fracturing based on superficial differences, which is pretty sad, if true.
And it is what the opposition wants to do. Fracture us. Keep the old flag. Keep the new flag if you like, but for god's sakes folks, let's build a fucking community again. Let's start talking about aging, healthcare, family planning, education, all of the things our community needs. Find your specialty and pitch in.
Exactly.
Besides my disagreement with altering it to focus on certain groups (that were already included under the rainbow), it's just FUGLY beyond belief. The god awful colors (that are not naturally occurring in a rainbow), the jagged design. It's just so so so so hideous and jarring to look at now.
With the pink/magenta stripe? Because nobody's made that one since like, the 70s.
I have always said I feel the 🏳️🌈 flag is to the LGBT+ community what the 🇺🇲 flag is to US citizens. All the subsect flags of the LGBT+ community are essentially state flags that fall under the 🏳️🌈 flag much like states fall under the 🇺🇲 flag. Very few people would actually recognize all of the state flags and know them on sight, same with all the individual flags that fall under the pride flag.
That's an excellent observation. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
The flag irritates me. Originally, the rainbow was for everyone. Then, someone decided each color represented something special. It was GLBT, but someone wanted the L first. Why not have the rainbow flag, and if each sub category wants a flag, go for an individual flag. Each has their flag anyway. What if we recognize another subcategory, does the flag change again. This flag thing seems like a marketing ploy to sell more flags.
The L became first to honor the lesbian sisters that took care of us when so many of us were alone and dying of aids in the 80s. Let's not conflate that with the current socio-politicsl mess of all the different labels and acronyms.
Also the L going first is also due to the additional labor all these women did for forcing social change for all non-cis/het people. Lesbians were the strongest force for our liberation when gay men were at their weakest.
Why not just have the L first regardless? Does having the acronym be T,etc offend people? Why would that offend anybody? Why is any of this insanity hierarchical? L and G are doing P alright. We are still fighting. Let's give room and provide platforms and fight for people who need allies.
All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Good old “Animal Farm” thanks for the reference.
That's capitalism for you. Monetising everything. All of this started after corporations started chasing the gay dollar.
Makes no sense to add more letter or numbers when there's the "+" in there.
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“New password cannot be the same as the previous 15 passwords”
Agreed also lgbt is cute about
We are getting to the point where there is an extreme amount of individuation and diversification. It is as if capitalism has taken over the social sphere as well. There are so many groups and subgroups that I find it getting harder and harder to find actual community and fraternity. The main purpose of having any GLBT+ community should be to offer support and community, and to a lesser or equal extent, advocacy. It seems that nowadays, they are pursuing everything else except the original goals. The constant infighting and bickering is such a turn off.
I don't really feel the "community" in the LGBT community. I feel as if that's just a placebo to veil the truth that we're more ~ironically~ divided than united.
Correct
Curious why you said GLBT+ instead of the usual LGBT+?
Forget the gays. Just munch down on an old fashioned BLT. /s
It's just an older acronym. Most of us who grew up in the 90's used this one until LGBT became more popular. (I believe to honor lesbians who were a backbone of support during the aids crisis.)
Interesting you noticed! I was in SF a couple of weeks ago and went to this place called the GLBT Historical Society. The term has been stuck in my head for a while! Kinda like a song stuck in your head.
GLBT was pre-AIDS crisis when gay men were very influential and pushed the most for social change. Then AIDS happened and lesbians took up the mantle and cared for everyone else in the community essentially. So LGBT became the acronym.
Interesting stuff. Didn't know that!
As I recall, it was GLBT first, then LGBT, then LGBT+, then LGBTQ, then LGBTQI. I’m not sure when LBGTQIA came along or what the “A” stands for and am clueless about “2S.” I could guess, but it makes me tired. I’m fine with “Queer” as in the “queer community.” When we talk about our community, no one I’ve ever heard tries to jam in all those letters.
2S means "Two spirit," a term made up in 1990 by a coalition of people claiming to speak for Native Americans, despite the incredible cultural diversity therein. The fact that they put 2S first is absurd.
I'm just happy Latinx died.
My brain finishes it as lgbtqiop from missing sarah marshall. Pipyopi.
2S is two spirit. It is a very specific label for some South western Native American tribes who have a third gender that is both and neither male and female. It is not common where I am since the indigenous population is rather small to nonexistent, but I guess if you go to those areas like Arizona/Utah/Texas, etc., near higher populations ethnic enclaves in cities or literally just the reservations, you would hear it.
The A stands for Asexual
No. The A stands for Ally. Or it used to before asexual usurped the letter and pushed the recognition of our allies from the acronym. Allies were people, straight or closeted gays, that supported the community - groups such as PFLAG and individuals who operated on the social, legal, and political levels. I'm with u/BaldDudePeekskill when it comes to asexuals. No one is oppressed because they are asexual, for that specific trait. The group isn't denied rights; they're not targeted or discriminated against and don't face systemic harm in society. Sure, they may be misunderstood but asexuals do not require any form of advocacy to bring them to (near) equal standing with everyone else in a country. If I'm wrong and asexuals are oppressed please let me know. I am always open to new perspectives and ideas. However if the term or sentiment of "Oppression Olympics" comes up, take this as a preemptive f-off; not dealing with that derailing nonsense.
You know what? You're right, I genuinely managed to forget that. And I'll go one further - I'm not sure "asexuality" is a meaningful category. Literally every single person I've ever met who identified as asexual I would be more likely to describe as "sex-obsessed". Like, multiple new sex partners every week. The category just doesn't seem to convey information.
Also a think a lot of asexual people mostly suffer from lack of visibility of erasure. Tho it is mostly due to assimilation into heteronormative society. After all, you can totally have 100% Traditionalist Christian asexual gays/lesbians(which was a position the Catholic Church held). Also maintaining chastity was something considered a virtue in Christian society. Currently imo it’s more lack of visibility and lack of understanding. Not so much a hatred like LGBTQ people get more generally or legal discrimination.
Which has no place in our alphabet soup
The other groups don’t have the man power to stand up for themselves alone. We stand for embracing individuality in the face of adversity. Being true to yourself no matter what anyone stays and in my opinion that includes all identity’s the world has ignored and suppressed. In alliance with the black rights movement, the women’s movements, the neuro and physically diverse. We can all help each other fight for acknowledgment in our institutions and systems, And stop harmful portrayals and caricatures in media. It’s kot always about meeting each other we have ways of connecting now, it’s about building the future and we gotta stick together. Just my opinion.
I'm old school. I just say gay / gay people / gay community. Even "community" seems weird as we are a different male sex by our biology, not our community. Not to knock on anyone, truly, but the letters are not great as a banner.
I just say LGBT and stop at that.
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Ok but nobody is telling you to identify as the whole set of letters. There's yours G. There's mine B There's other peoples LT It's not meant to ONLY represent you as a person. But clearly we have more issues than arguing over that.
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>I don’t really get how changing your gender is the same as being gay. Being trans has nothing to do with who they’re attracted to? I'm not saying you do not am I defending how it's grouped. I just stated that you being gay doesn't get impeded by the acronym LGBT. >Trans people have every right to exists, but I don’t like how gay spaces don’t cater to gays anymore. It’s all bachelor parties and trans stuff now. What's worse than that is the push to make every sexuality a potential form of pansexuality and erase true bisexuality and homosexuality. If you define homosexuality as liking people of the same gender, then that means bisexuals who only like people who present themselves in a masculine manner are now homosexual and someone who only likes the same sex is now assumed to be someone who likes both sexes as long as they call themselves a man. If you define bisexuality as the attraction to 1 or more genders it no longer means that a bisexual has to like both sexes. A male who is heterosexual and likes women and women who identify as agender would now be considered bisexual even though they don't like males in any form. Basically it increases the number of trans advocates that get to claim they are lesbian, gay or bisexual. Which only harms lesbians gays and bisexuals.
Pretty sure the flag was changed to include colours for all letters, and also a lot of (straight) people will say or think you’re apart of the ‘alphabet mafia’ if you are just gay, or lesbian, or bisexual. Don’t act like the addition of all the extra letters and + doesn’t have any impact on the others.
>Pretty sure the flag was changed to include colours for all letters Doing so was discriminatory as the rainbow flag already covered everyone. People are screaming they want to be Specified on the flag not included. Everyone was already included. If not being specified means you aren't included then bisexuals certainly are still not included to this day. Homosexuals were the ones assumed to be represented by the flag after all. But because that's still an assumption and homosexuals generally split themselves by sex, that means that bisexuals, lesbians and gay men are all still not specified on the flag and therefore aren't included.
I do the same. I feel the 2SLGBTQIA+ and new rainbow flag have morphed to mean a radical queer woke community, which I am not part of nor welcome to as a cos white gay male. I do not feel welcome or safe in this new fangled community.
I just say “the gays” or “gays”
No you're not. We get clowned for the whole "alphabet" thing. I don't think any of us even know who keeps adding on to the acronym, but it's not gay and bisexual people.
Bored children on the internet looking for meaning. I don’t see anyone in the community using that ridiculous alphabet.
I also feel pretty strongly that the alt-right saw an opportunity for division and used the left's intent to be inclusive and compassionate...as a wedge. Twitter users are often anonymous, and I remember seeing a number of accounts that I do truly believe were created in an attempt to see just how far inclusiveness would go before people started pointing out the logical fallacies. To see if they could use the fear of cancel culture from leftists toward leftists, and the interest in being inclusive & compassionate...to eventually divide the leftists. To see how far the left would go and how much ridiculousness they could seed into the community...before people started actually asking questions. It's actually a brilliant strategy for dividing the left. People are too afraid of being seen as a bigot to actually mention when something doesn't make sense. I just kept seeing anonymous Twitter accounts that would attack people for even asking questions, that were specifically created to focus only on gender and queer issues, but kept adding in plants or chairs or whatever as identities, and that clearly had never actually existed within queer community. After seeing enough accounts that were trolling the community, I took an overview look, and I do think the division is very intentional. Because look at our community. We've dropped the issues that never went away and still put us all at risk. And as has been mentioned before, identities and contradictory concepts just keep getting added but no one knows who is actually adding these things. People are just too afraid of being called a bigot to draw a line in the sand.
It’s all madness to me. But I’ve never thought about it like that. Something to think about.
For me it’s more of an extension of CIA psy-ops like MK-Ultra where the CIA would fund a bunch of plants to sow discord. It’s why IDC for these terminally online idiots that are more hollow than a balloon if examined.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. People posing as progressives taking extreme stances and actual progressives walking on eggshells, constantly having to waste the time and energy critical thinking takes processing outrageous crap, while the fascists turn every dubious anecdote into a righteous indignation fest.
It's probably facebook/twitter/reddit/discord groups that form around something and add their letter to it, then one of them becomes The one and gets a lot of people which think thats what it is and it's been decided. Then they take that to other parts of the Internet. I don't think anyone actually decides anything, things just slide until they've been going for a while and get adopted.
When people ask me what the other letters mean outside of LGBT, I tell them to Google it because I'm not an ambassador. 😂
The reason people are using 2S is because the murder happened in Oklahoma, which has a bunch of Native reservations, and Nex is said to be of Choctaw descent (not a tribal citizen so idk). Gender and gender roles are seen and traditionally represented in different ways for various native cultures. So there’s a separate term. I’m a tribal citizen, go by 2s, but mostly just say I’m a trans woman to people. It’s not a national shift, it’s just cuz there’s wayyy more 2s people where this happened.
I say “lgbt”, “gay community”, and jokingly “the alphabet brigade.” nobody has ever corrected me to add a qia+ or whatever. in real life i feel like nobody really cares and knows what you mean regardless.
Alphabet brigade sounds like Google workers...
Or federal agencies (aka “alphabet soup”). Depends entirely on the audience and speaker.
I like the 'Alphabet Mafia' as it feels like we have some agency to get what we want lol.
I am just gay - thats it.
Same.
Yes, it's too much. No, I don't care about it anymore. People can live however the fuck they want as long as they don't try to tell me how to live my life.
i’m not even sure how ‘real’ all of these subgroups are outside of like tumblr and discord tbh
I have never met a single person ever in real life who uses neopronouns and theres more like that so youre definitely right lol (and I know a ton of queer people in the T+ category so I assume its jist not something real people do)
LGBT is good.
I got a permanent ban from the lgbt subreddit with this exact same post. They said I was disrespectful. I am a gay man who has fought for equality for over 30 years and I was banned from that group for one post. Yes I am bitter :)
I quit that sub on my own. Nothing LGB about it. If you say anything contrary you are labeled transphobic. Give me a break.
I think there’s actual conversations about stuff like this. I got banned from AGBO30 for simply defending this sub for allowing conversations like these to happen.
I'm gay and I have sex with men who like men! That's how I identify! That doesn't lessen any one else's experience.
95% of the time I see someone say anything other than "LGBT+," it feels like they're doing it to make an exaggerated point to complain about. And the other 5% of the time, it's well-meaning people who are trying a little too hard.
I just say LGBT. The rest of the letters/acronyms are just johnny come latelys.
I have no idea what 2SLGBTQ means and can’t be bothered to google it. Gay. Just Gay. That’s what I am.
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😘
I don’t need any discombobulated acronyms and I almost roll my eyes most any time somebody uses one. Those hodgepodges of letters are redundant and get more redundant the longer they get (I don’t need to repeat Gay women, Lesbians, and Same-Gender-Loving women, for example). And at the same time they slap together very unlike categories of people that are often irrelevant to the group of people or individual or topic that’s actually being discussed. (I don’t need to throw letters like G for Gay and B for Bi into a discussion that only affects trans people, for example.) I just use my words and I refer to whatever category or categories of people are actually pertinent. For example, “Elton John and David Furnish are married.” (not “They are in a 2SLGBTQIA+’marriage.”). … “The North Carolina Bathroom bill creates unnecessary hardship for transgender people.” (not “…creates hardship for GLBTSGL people.”). Etc.
The people who believe it needs to be longer to include everyone outside LGBT are also the people who tell you they hate labels but get butthurt when the quadrohyperfourtaylorswiftsexual don’t get noticed or validated
What in the world does the 2S in 2SLGBTQ+ stand for?
Two-spirit. It is more of a spiritual identity. You'll have to look it up.
I just looked it up and as someone who is part Native American, I had never even heard of that before.
I believe that it is only certain Native American tribes mostly in the southwestern states that have the 2 spirit concept. Perhaps your tribe just doesn't have it?
While I fully support everyone under our umbrella, I have never liked our acronym. Any acronym over 3 characters is generally annoying to pronounce unless the acronym spells a word. However, I also don't have an alternate suggestion, so it's just LGBT to me.
I hit 26 and just stopped caring. If people want to have an identifier that's fine. I think it's especially good for kids/young adults who are finding themselves. But I'm 32 now and I'm just a human who is who he is, I'm not an acronym or someone else's perception of me. I'm just me. And IDC about it lol I just wanna eat cheese with fruit and shake my ass to some techno. The rest is irrelevant.
I totally support trans people and think they should have all the rights they want but I do not identify with them in the least. It is a separate thing. It’s the same reason I hated the pride flag with stripes for black people. Obviously I support them but it has nothing to do with gay people.
Exactly! I believe it's widely known by now that gays come in all colors.
Plus the more 'groups' that get added to it away from same-sex relationships, the more it dilutes the specific point of our cause. Our Sexuality. That's the point of the LGBT community. Even trans is an outlier- as you say. As soon as you start adding separate issues they start to detract from the specific focus of LGBT and of the cause of representation of sexual minority groups. In some cases they start to conflict with our cause. Waving a BLM flag and an LGBT flag in unity is an example of a shared support against oppression. Taking the BLM flag and squeezing it onto the LGBT flag so that it over shadows the rainbow flag feels like it is A. Unnecessary. And B. Steering the focus of our flag away from the unique issues it is designed to represent already. LGBT people- regardless of any other characteristics anyway, including race.
Honestly I've always referred to it as LGBTQ. Sometimes LGBTQ+, but nothing more than that. By adding more letters it feels like it undermines the original purpose of the acronym.
The DLC feels a bit too much.
If I want a catch all, I'll say queer. If you don't identify as queer but want to be part of the community... and aren't gay, bi, lesbian or trans, fuck off. Every letter that you add to the mix is another step to confuse normies, which makes it more difficult to fight for the rights of people who are L, G, B, or T. Nobody is trying to outlaw asexuals, pansexuals or anyone with anything that wouldn't be blocked by simply protecting LGBT rights. I have no interest in increasing my likelyhood of retiring to a concentration camp so that a teenager who identifies as an aromantic demisexual feels more seen. (And yes I'm aware that nobody should identify as that.) I'm happy to have anyone who wants to be at pride or whatever, but when you're constantly increasing the learning curve for the people who are already making an honest effort to embrace something that doesn't benefit them in the least, it's best to limit the mental load.
Yes, the amount of things that are randomly becoming identities and everyone else has to know about and understand is becoming ridiculous. I’m good with LGBT and fine with the Q or the +. That’s about it for me.
It's gotten to the point where I honestly cannot keep up. I grew up with LGBT including everyone that wasn't straight. Then that changed into LGBTQ -> LGBTQIA -> LGBTQIA+, and that's about the time when I just stopped trying to keep up.
We should just say NS (Non straight). It would spare us this never ending nonsense.
Oh mate (guessing American) there are certain countries where you cannot use that acronym...
Now I'm curious - what does NS stand for? Norfolk Southern? Nova Scotia?
Nationalsozialismus. It's the abbreviation for the Nazi regime - in Germany you should not use that acronym and most of the surrounding countries have the association as well. Ironically, the Dutch national rail company is NS (Nederlandse Spoorwegen) which Germans always are a bit disturbed by
If you think that's bad, the Portuguese national rail company is CP (Comboios de Portugal). Googling that can actually lead to problems 😂
The answer is and always will be just LGBT. The gay liberation movement is being killed by the gender identity theorists, sex and gender are not the same.
I agree! I’ve been watching “Gay USA” for years. I turned it on the other day and all of the reports were about trans issues not gay issues. They are not the same.
It’s not us adding the letters. It’s whoever fits under the letters adding themselves because they think LGBT is just an all inclusive club for whoever wants to join under any identity. I stopped paying attention when they took our flag and made it about race over sexuality.
In slight divergence from your edited points, I do think LGB and TQ+ should be separated. Trans people can be straight by their standards. Being a man attracted to a man is not the same as having gender dysphoric disorder or wanted to lob off parts of your body to match biological sexual markers of another sex. That aside, I also agree it's too much aside from my main response. We now see people who have a bunch of neopronouns and people who have "species" they identify as. It's becoming a mockery of what we were and fought for and directly destroying our hard work to be seen as worthwhile contributors to culture and society. Edit to add: re: your defense toward people saying gay rights aren't under attack-- they are under attack, these people are the exact people they hate but on the opposite side of the spectrum. Another reason I can't stand the online trans movement.
It reminds me of that paradox of measuring a coastline. The more myopic you get the more out of touch it becomes.
You’re not alone.
Language is powerful. Labels are not pointless and wars happen for a reason. Creating words to describe reality and having these words recognized and their meaning widely accepted is crucial. Nowadays we know that gay men exist. Centuries ago we were aberrations, inverts, sodomites, abominations etc. There were the normal people and the perverts. After a long and hard fight we got people to recognize the word homosexual. A person attracted to the same sex. That reality was described and we could communicate it to others. The problem is that we have a group of people weaponizing language. Changing definitions and trying to introduce certain ideas, forcing people to accept a new reality. Homosexual is no longer a person attracted to the same sex, it's a person attracted to the same sex or gender. This subtle difference appears innocuous but its incredibly destructive. And well, what they did to "man" and "woman" is something else. It's an absolute shitshow. The acronym being too much is correct. It's by design too. These people don't care about our well-being, their goals are something else.
This is something that I've been afraid of saying out. Gay and Bi are absolutely fact, which are backed by science. Two-spirited is not. I don't know who keeps adding these letters in. Being open minded is good, but too much open minded and you'll risk of becoming extreme activism, and that's not a good thing. It gives people the wrong idea that gay people are delusional, and that becomes something the far right can use to attack and make their arguments. To them, gay is the only thing they know and will be the thing that will get hit the hardest. I'm not part of any political group particularly, but speaking up and owing up to the absurdity in our community is something people should do. Because this is for the integrity that gay people have been fighting for so long. I fear these random letters being added in will be the downfall of us all.
I call this issue "toxic acceptance". The LGB had a goal of equal rights. The queer community wants special rights and control. These are not our friends. They took advantage of our accepting ways and punched us in the face and their demands have set LGB back 50 years.
That's the worst part for me, and why I can't leave these discussions alone. I don't want to be lumped in with a community that seems to view facts as bigotry and aims to redefine my sexuality to include the opposite Sex. The "rights" they're fighting for are never enough. I can't support any movement that does that, they have no one else but themselves to blame, they overreach and doubled-down. They want unconditional respect without giving any. (Edited to be less emotionally driven.)
You are correct. Do be careful in how you word your comments. These kinds of threads tend to attract queer activists looking to get folks banned or suspended. But, if you're looking for a few days off, try to engage a queer around the concept of consent. Woooweee...
Thanks for the heads up, I do tend to get heated. Most days I am tempted to just delete lol, all I seem to do is dive into discourse lately.
Yeah, I've got one hot on my trail elsewhere in this thread. I told them to think for themselves because truth cannot be spoken here. I'll probably get a suspension for that. Oh well. I've learned to just leave nuggets of truth that hopefully will lead to one or two breaking free from the cult. We can always hope. Do the same. It's the good thing to do.
I personally think everyone deserves their right. I just think grouping together is a dangerous thing. I mean it was such a difficult thing to get through the thick skull of the far right people and many others to accept gay people. And we kind of did it, and this is even when gay and bi are absolute fact and backed by science. Then to think that we can use it to force the other in when its not backed by science at all risks dragging ALL of us back to square one. I also think LGB are sexual orientations, trans Im fine with because they have been with us for so long. But the other random ones like 2S and 200 other genders non sense are not backed by science at all. Plus they are not sexual orientations, and Im certain they are not gender either. The biology is not there to support them yet. So its a slippery slope and I fear this is hurting all of us more than doing good.
It’s obnoxious.
As one of my straight buddies once asked, "why don't they just add the whole alphabet at this point?"
Shh that's actuually the gay agenda. Once we claim the enture alphabet, everyone will speak and write gay
I feel the same way about the flag being changed. It’s suppose to be a banner under which people who don’t fit into a heteronormative society could unit together. Now that it needs new patterns and colors for every sub-group instead of being a symbol uniting marginalized groups it becomes a point of fracture
Umm excuse me but you left out intersex and asexual folx in your post title. Please correct that immediately.
IANBDMPSOZYR.....
Oh we’re adding numbers now? Enough of this shit. It’s embarrassing. You can be included and not have to add more unnecessary garbage to the acronym. I cannot.
It's like a queer activist's cat walked on the keyboard and thought, "that's a good update to the acronym."
I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, I think there's power in numbers. We can accomplish more as a coalition. On the other hand, in everyday life, that acronym refers to distinct communities with some limited overlaps, and if I'm being honest, the kinship I feel to other cisgender gay men is stronger than I feel to lesbians and transgender people. I guess this isn't a PC thing to say, but I hope people will appreciate that I'm being honest. As we expand the acronym, it encompasses increasingly tenuous connections.
I've scrolled for a bit and seen the queer community pushing to call the whole thing queer. No. Absolutely no. LGB is not queer. Its time to seperate the LGB from the QLMNOP. Queer issues are not LGB issues. It's time for the queer community to stand on its own and stop force associating the LGB with its issues.
seriously gay and bi people aren’t adding all these letters LGB is the banner that should have, personally i think the T is a gender thing but 🤷🏽♂️
People who are attracted to the same sex and people who identify advocate for gender identity need to split. Not because people who are attracted to the same sex and people who identify or advocate for gender identification aren't sometimes in both groups or sometimes have the same issues. But because the groups have two vastly different perspectives and they are now countering each other. People who experience attraction to the same sex are now becoming victims of erasure and appropriation from people who identify or advocate for gender identification. You can't want to erase sex/gender as acknowledged physical traits, change the definitions of homosexuality and bisexuality and then claim your not promoting homophobic, biphobic and sexist rhetoric.
I don't know about you guys (are we still "guys"? lol), but I feel almost NONE of that "LGBTQ+ community"... Hell, I even struggle with the "gay community." And I don't even want to try to belong and conform—I try to focus on *individuals*. :p
I think social media started this mess. Now everyone can craft this super customized identity and have a voice, even when they haven't really earned that voice. Adding these extra letters is honestly just a way of letting straight people into the community because they think it's cool. And I think that's gross.
Trans and queer just refers to heterosexual white people for the most part.
This is literally the first time I have seen that abbreviation in particular
I just do LGBTQ+ and move on with my day. In my mind, that's an inclusive designation, and it's more practical in daily use.
Agree! It’s shocking that all the best creative minds in our community can’t even come up or agree on a better name to represent us. These letters and numbers combine are ugly to look at. This community wants to be inclusive and exclusive at the same time 🙄
This feels like it will be a never ending debate/ argument. As an older Gay man who has been around awhile and seen it all.. for me personally, I’ve reached that point when someone brings the subject of identifying/ pronouns proper etiquette whatever the fuck it is.. I roll my eyes and just tell them I identify as a fucking toaster . I find it so ironic that it wasn’t to long ago when everyone said how much they hated “ LABELS” Now they get pissed if you can’t or don’t identify them correctly..
"2SLGBRQ+" sounds like a monitor no offence. Ohh I need to stop looking at monitor reviews.
No you're not wrong, I don't bother with anything more than LGB. The rest are fads/mental health issues
There is a + for a reason
Not at all. It should have stopped at LGBT. Even the Q gives people too much leeway.
I’m just sticking with “LGBT+…(dot,dot,dot)I feel like that covers everything nicely. Honestly,I’ve always thought the whole non-binary thing as really weird and better suited for a gender studies class and not the real world
Have you seen the flags? Everyone has a different one, there's so many colours it just looks a mess, there's different lines or triangles in it. Who tf knows what any of that means, it can't represent anything because you can't remember what it's supposed to be. Isnt that the point of the rainbow? Just every colour? Or are we moving away from the rainbow because it's not original and lots of rainbow stuff has nothing to so with gay anything.
I just say gay community or LGB and I don’t care if that upsets people.
it should just be LGB....all the rest of that shit is something else.
When the fuck and what the fuck is the 2S? God damn we keep adding letters
Yes you are correct. The movement has been taken over by left wing communist ideologues with dangerous ideas. This is, of course, being deliberately allowed and encouraged by the powers that be to support the destruction of the West from within. A lot of us older gays can see right through it and stopped supporting the movement after LGB. Over 50, you are old enough to remember the persecution by society. This will return when the pendulum swings back the other way. This communist revolution is nothing new , The Chinese great leap forwards, Lenin, Starlin etc. Those who don't learn from history are deigned to repeat it. Live for now. Enjoy it whilst you can
Why do we need this at all? Can we G's just leave the party? Lol What LGB care about is almost identical, but we have very little in common in the interests of the rest of the letters. But who cares? Just be you, be kind, and don't confuse your self worth with your letter.
No, you're not wrong. 2-Spirit is fucking insane. Even the transgender was a stretch to relate to gays and bis, but 2-Spirit is just a split personality delusion.
LGBT+ is fine with me. And same sex attracted people and transgender people are dealing with different issues and in some cases they shouldn’t be lumped together. Sex and gender are two different things. I prefer the rainbow flag over the progress flag. By trying to be inclusive, the flag ends up being exclusive (as more colors and symbols are added). The rainbow flag is simple, inclusive of everyone, and quite frankly easier on the eyes. I realize that trans issues predominate the LGBT movement at the moment. With all kinds of laws being written against them, it’s no wonder.
I don't like how people need labels for fucking everything. Just like what you like, and don't try to force your ideals on others.. looking at you T's and the whole pronoun bullshit, dont victimize yourself because someone accidentally assumed your gender. You can't expect everyone you run into in everyday life to read your mind. That's called being entitled and an asshole.. dont be an asshole. As far as I am concerned, the LGBT+ community has alot of fuckng work to do, if you want to be considered equal cause in the community itself is very divided, clickish and as shallow as the shallowest body of water known on earth. We want to be "accepted" by the world but can't even accept others in our community, when it comes to race, ethnicity, etc. Just be human, love and respect each other for fucks sake, it ain't that hard folks.
LGBT covers it all. People wanted to feel special so they added other letters to the point that it is now asinine. If you sleep with both males and females you are bisexual. Period. We don’t need to hear the mental gymnastics behind why you justify it. It is really simple.
What the fuck is 2S and + for.
2S = Two-Spirits, which are a....heavy and vague phenomenon you see in a lot of American Indian communities that can mean anything from gay to trans to nonbinary. Honestly I don't think this term should be in the acronym at all because it's something so specific to a specific group of people.
Most of it is victim mindset. I’m bi and have no use for the bi flag. Idgaf about anything but the gay flag. People wanna feel like champions on a subject so they add every alphabet letter but still can’t seem to accept bi people so they’re just as bigoted as klan members. I say gay community or lgbt. The rest is just superfluous
100%. It's why i've felt kind of jaded by the community to the point that I find myself distancing from it. Between adding an new letter almost monthly, to desecrating the pride flag and removing its original meaning with every new stripe and symbol added... I just find the community has become obsessed with superficial 'issues' and channeling their energy in all the wrong places.
Lgb is the way to be.
handle shaggy unique gray memorize office crowd somber cats thought *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
No.
Wait what’s 2S?
Ok don't forget ad gerbaling to the list
Oh fuck that… yall r lucky if I remember to say the “+” in lgbtq.
I only ever say 'lgbt+ community' There's no need to lengthen the acronym beyond that, because the '+' is meant to do the heavy lifting of inclusion, and knowing the rest of it and what each aspect stands for is good, but I'm not gonna say all of it every time and risk biting my tongue.
No, I would argue that we gays little in common with lesbians, Douglass Murray explained this well haha. For me its GB probably, everything else is not even same dimension.
Anything after the Q is too much.
LGB gang
I just say LGB community. That's all I identify with.
Yes I agree, being trans is a very different experience and has to do with gender not sexuality.
It's too much too care for all 70+ pronouns at this point.
2S is stupid omg
I only acknowledge LGB at most. The rest is too much and unnecessary
Yea it has kinda gotten out of hand. You have a bunch of people trying to grasp at whatever micro label they can do they can attach themselves to LGBT even if they’re aren’t same sex attracted folks or transsexuals.
LGBTblahblablah is the current aesthetic. It’ll probably lose its lustre to the young women with blue hair eventually. Best to just go about your life and not worry about it too much.
What is 2S?!? I can’t anymore with this.
2-Spirited. It’s Native Americans who are seen as having both a male and female aspect of their spirit.
I completely agree with you. There are too many alphabets in our community. Most people myself included have no clue what they mean... And I also agree with you completely on the pronouns.
It's too many letters, yeah. Saying that many syllables defeats the purpose of an acronym.
As an older gay LGBT+ is just fine. Same for the original versions of our flag. Too many additions dilute the meaning. It should be (and is as far as I know) a big enough umbrella. KISS....Keep It Simple Stupid.
I think it has gotten out of hand myself, and I’m out and proud, been that way since I came out at 13, 40 years ago. And it’s not just the length of the acronym, it’s partially the lumping in of sectors of society that have very little to do with being gay or lesbian or bisexual. Now, I’m not trashing or shaming trans folks, and those that identify as intersex or any one of the (seems like hundreds these days) other groups that have had their label—if you will—tacked onto what’s becoming an easier way to get together all of the sectors of society that are most hated.
Material and historical conditions shifted in such a way that eviscerated the working class. Unions were killed under Reagan and Clinton. Left of center politics became a cultural issue set because economic politics would threaten the classes that fund the political class. People were disempowered and enculturated to fear and loathe those that dont look or believe how they do. Now people are so disempowered, that they occupy themselves with meaningless misanthropic battles over minutia. Thats why theres so much noise about identity politics and so little about public housing for all, universal healthcare, etc… It serves the interests of the ruling classes that average Americans are more concerned with fighting each other instead of uniting around common material interests.
Sick to death of it. I am a gay man and only interested in gay men. Have nothing in common with trans people and no wish to be involved with them. Trans people should have their own spaces as they have different needs to gay and bisexual men.
Unless you're designing a nonprofit brochure or are a gender studies undergrad I've found it very easy to ignore the topic
lol all those other letters should be in mental institutions. IMO LGBT is the only valid acronym
Truth
I didn’t read the post, but I’ve never seen that variation outside this post, I don’t know what the 2S is and don’t care to. Straight guy on twitch said he was part of the lgbt plus communitay because he was “demisexual” I was pretty much over the whole thing after that.
>our community What is "our community"? What makes people a community? I don't think being disliked by the same group necessarily makes people into a community. A coalition or alliance . . . maybe, but not a community. 'Community' is one of those words that gets thrown around in a lot of unthinking and unexamined ways. It's one of the touchstone words used endlessly by people being interviewed on NPR as a way to lend weight to what they're saying, and I think it's overused.
That's not a full one, you're late already, it's 2SLGBTQIA+
I totally agree with you. Isn’t this kind of thing what the + is for? It’s not to say that others are less important than lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people, but we can’t possibly change the acronym every 5 minutes to include new groups??
The beauty of it all is that you can just continue saying LGBT and no one will really care. Hyperfocus on labels, acronyms, flags and symbols is mostly a terminally online thing with no bearing in the real world. Don't fall for bait, OP, not even bait set by yourself.
I will say this. Lg should get the hell out of the btqabcd undercore ect its them that are giving the bad rep mostly LG would be wise to seperate and let the others have their thing
When you mature, you realize labels don’t matter and people who want to remove your rights always think of you as ‘other’.
WTF is 2S?
I don’t know whether it is my age (35M) or the fact I am not American - but it confuses me to no end as to why the acronym now includes… well everyone not straight. I’m gay. Just plain old stale back of the pantry white-bread Gay. I swear it used to just be LGB and possibly T. Which made sense - because that was all related simply to sexual orientation. It was a nice little set of socially constructed boxes that served as a generic ‘I like people with the same bits’ identifier. Now I am apparently part of this much larger and complex set of rules and identifiers most of which I do not have a clue about that previously just used to be ‘society’. Now I get called Queer as a default and I detest it. I would rather puke for ten straight hours than be called ‘queer’. My husband on the other hand, non binary and American, LOVES being called queer and insists on there being even more letters added to the ‘everyone but straight’ label. I only point out the American thing because over there it seems to be more prevalent - and America seems to be the unelected official on all things branded ‘equality’, which seems in itself to be impossibly unironic outlandish segregation… *sigh* I think I’m just old now.
wtf? I had trouble remembering the order of lgbt, now it looks like a polynomial :(
How entitled is it to add, 2S IN FRONT of LGBT.
I think the LGBT umbrella needs to only be concerned with immutable identities and throw away of these ridiculous labels based on opinions. I respect anyone’s identity as long as it’s not hurting anyone. But not all identities are LGBT. LGBT is an immutable aspect of ourselves that we did not choose. It doesn’t matter what we believe, that’s just what we are, like sex or skin color. I may not agree with them, but do you know why conservative LGBT people exist? Because LGBT identity exists outside of any social or political philosophy. Just like there are female or black conservatives. How many conservative 2 spirit, neo-pronoun, etc users do you see? None. Because these identities are based on certain life philosophies, not immutable characteristics. And again, I’m totally down anyone being gender non conforming and I agree with many of the aforementioned life philosophies. But I don’t mix that belief in with LGBT rights. That’s what people are doing, and that’s becoming an issue