An LGBT by any other acronym, etc
Tags: acronym, bisexuality, Gay community, gay lesbian and bisexual, GLBT, lesbian, LGBT, LGBTQIA, Straight ally, Transgender Last week, Hal geeked about words. Today, because I now feel free to express my geekiness, I will geek about acronyms. There’s even a chart.
The reason I’m thinking about acronyms right now is because of Law & Order SVU’s recent episode called “PC” featuring Kathy Griffin as a lesbian activist. You can read lots about it if you haven’t already*.
*This has not aired in the UK or Ireland yet, so if you don’t want to be spoiled, don’t watch the YouTube video (or click on those links). Actually watch the video, it won’t tell you anything.
This scene, however, got me thinking. I’ve always wondered what the story was with our myriad acronyms. I’m pretty sure when I came out it was mostly LGB, or just Gay & Lesbian: only two words so no acronym required. Obviously people saw a problem with that and added some more.
Looking at my old university queer group’s out of date website, it now bills itself as for “gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, two-spirited, questioning, and straight individuals.” So that makes it GLBTTSQA?
So, what’s most popular? Let’s turn to Google.
If you google GLBT, you get about 2.8 million results; LGBT however gets 8.9 million. All the rest that I tried were well under the 1 million mark.
The following chart shows the change in usage over the last five or so years in news stories. Where it seems they were once used more or less equally, LGBT has a significant lead now over GLBT.
Usage of LGBT vs GLBT since 2004
What does that mean? Actually, this shows the result of the conscious shift in how we define our community over the years. While the community was initially always referred to as the “gay community”, it was later recognised that lesbians should be mentioned as well. It became the gay and lesbian community. It follows the same with bisexuals, and the acronym GLB was born. Because the term gay was so universally used, many chose to start using LGBT instead as a way of making lesbians more visible. From the Google Trends chart, it looks like it worked, acronym-wise anyway.
Here is the alphabet; please construct your own inclusive acronym, and tell us which you prefer!
A – Allies or asexual
B – Bisexual
G – Gay
I – Intersex
L – Lesbian
O – Omnisexual
P – Polyamorous or pansexual
Q – can stand for questioning or queer. I like queer, because its meaning is wide enough, I think, to include everyone. However many people object to it because it’s been a term of abuse towards our community for a long time.
T – can mean transgender, transsexual or transvestite.
TS – can mean transsexual (like T) or two-spirited, which is mostly used in North America by indigenous groups. Two-spirited refers to anyone who takes on the gender roles of the opposite sex. This role was not considered aberrant, and was understood and accepted in many of the First Nations.
U – Unsure.
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I’m not very fond of LGBTQ
I remember as well having debates about whether the USILGBTRO should USILGBTQRO and the UCDSULGBTRO should UCDSULGBTQRO
I came across LGBTH recently – H meaning HIV positive and I’ve seen also come accross LGBTTI and then some who want LGBTGID and then people who want to get rid of T and have a big long explanation of the term
Perhaps we need to just use one term?
When I was reading up, I saw H show up, but it meant heterosexual. Interesting about HIV+ being included.
I don’t know if we’ll ever find a term everyone can agree on. As I said, I like “queer” but I’m aware plenty don’t. “Gay” is certainly used as a catch-all term, but many groups that are not homosexual men would feel excluded or unrepresented by that.
I vote for “Awesome”. Think of the news reports
“Today, 3 states approved measures legalising awesome marraige.”
or coming out
“Mom, I’m awesome.”
When I was in UCD we used to call it the LGBTQXYZ society, cuz it seemed like every year there was something new being added on.
I like to just use gay, I don’t really see why lesbians need to be identified seperately from the male part of the community, generally. Queer is a nice umbrella term if you want to include everyone under the sun though
“Perhaps we need to just use one term?”
…How about “person”?
two-spirited???
eh “person” is too vague and includes heterosexuals and men and women who define themselves within the binary definitions of men and women
found the article I was looking for and the term she advocated is “sex and gender diverse people”
http://www.thescavenger.net/glbsgdq/dont-call-me-transgender.html
The New Zealand Labour Party have a section called “rainbow labour” – I did read some of their literature referrring to Fa’aafafine so I wondered at the time if they decided they didn’t want to be LGBTF and decided rainbow was a better option
I remember when my uni wanted to rename the LGB society, they asked members for suggestions. Mine was BILGE standing for bis, lesbians, gays etc.
I am gutted to this day that it gained no traction.
Etc. lol
We could go with miscellaneous.
At a table quiz once that I organised we asked people to come up with alternatives to what LGBT stood for – funniest would win
We got
Lovely Girls Bum Touching
Lesbians Give Better Tongue
Lettuce, gays, bacon, tomato
Lettuce, gays, bacon, tomato, WIN
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by gaelick: Published a new post: An LGBT by any other acronym, etc http://www.gaelick.com/?p=7735...
Oh! I like that one!