LGBTQIA+: Issues and Discussion Thread

Every time I’ve seen it my first thought is always:
“Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xir and the Ko-Dan Armada!”

Is this somehow a problem for someone?

Oh man, you really stuck your birth genitalia into the hornets’ nest now.

It’s a small group already. It would be… unfortunate if it was split further.

One of the youth I worked with during my Americorps gig was a young man identifying as transgender. One of the big struggles she had is going through our healthcare program, working with patients, she had to use her legal name which did not match her visual appearance. Most the kids in the program were generally poor and uneducated, GED was part of the program, so we managed to get some money together and fill out the paper work to encourage a legal name change but there was resistance there. There was also a lot of struggles, I mean she was never going to be an attractive woman without major work, and it’s hard enough dealing with appearances as a woman anyway.

My other experience is a co-worker was in a lesbian relationship, and her partner transitioned, like fully surgery and everything. He’s got a number of articles about his experience out there. That was a struggle for them. She entered a relationship with woman and ended up with a man.

Anyway I empathize with these groups, lots of unique struggles and I would really like to help drop the suicide rates down but trying to force relationships doesn’t seem ideal.

I nominate this for Post of the Year.

What I learned from reading this is that “Mikey” Neumann is apparently the Jack McFarland of asexuals.

But, you can’t be upset with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with a trans person. I mean, that’s like being mad at a gay person for not wanting to have sex with the opposite sex.

I don’t see how this is an even remotely reasonable thing to be upset about.

That’s not what I meant. What I mean is… the group is kind of moving as a whole to invoke change, support and understanding. If they split the LBGQTA group into smaller splinter groups, that might make it harder. Am I making sense when I say that, like right now it’s a whole group and if it was say 3 different groups moving independently , maybe asking for different things, I don’t think that would work well.

There’s a broad variety of acceptance and views across the LGBTIAQ community, but amongst some, especially the lesbians in the radfem movement, the driver is just as much phallophobia and misandry, and self-identification/personal belief is not going to override this.

I don’t use misandry as misogyny is used, the radfems are radfems for a genuine reasons;, male sexual violence, male violence, a male dominated society and the patriarchy. I totally understand and accept why they fear/hate/distrust people with penises and calling them transphobes (and calling their employers or physically attacking them) because they reject sex with people with penises isnt going to ever change their minds.

Having said that, there are some genuine transphobes in this community. Deadnaming, misgendering, binning CVs/opposing memberships and jobs, and outright hatespeech are to be found.

Don’t let the Christian Gay Conversion Camps hear about this. If they think this sort of thing can successfully change a person’s sexuality then there’s no telling what would happen.

It feels like these terms are important when discussing nuances in a discussion around D&I or sexual orientation but not not so much when used in political contexts.

I really wish there was a there was a single term that everyone can rally around that is fully inclusive rather than going for something like LGBT.

Donnie, you’re out of your element.

Shit, I don’t know what half of those mean. :)

I know all of them, but I am incapable refuse to learn actual important stuff. :(

One thing I have learned (read on line in forums) is that people withing the alphabet communities don’t always get along or agree with each other. I know this sounds like a simplification, but if they can’t, how is a cisgendered male supposed to understand.

I just accept that they have their own lives to lead and that it is none of my business. But apparently in the politicized world we live in that is not always enough for some.

When Class War (BlackBloc/anarchists), turn up outside the court case of one of their own, in court for assaulting a 61 year old woman at Speakers Corner and fill socmedia with threats to punch more (because old lesbians are “worse than nazis”) then its moved way beyond internal community issues.

tara-wolf-trial

They are making it their business, so standing back and washing your hands of it doesn’t really work.

2S+

That is the way the string of letters must end.

Catching up on my Qt3 reading after a weekend away, so apologies for being late to the party. The acronym discussion compels me to tell a story about a young guy that I used to support in my role as a government consultant. I think it will amuse, but there are some important points I’ll cite later.

Actually, I'll just hide the story for easier reading. I think it's a fun tale, but it's secondary to the main point.

I am closing on 50 and as a consultant I occasionally get put into a place where I kind of act as a mentor/tutor/guide to some young up-and-comer government folks, and this one one of those times. I was asked to assist this 27-year-old guy and help him get his arms around some of the work that our group does. Besides being long in the tooth, I’m also fairly scary-looking, being very tall and broad… not to mention that I keep my hair short and sorta look like a cop or a military guy. So most folks’ impression of me is to assume I’m fairly conservative. And also that I disapprove of them.

This young guy was identified as a rising star by his superiors, and in addition to his normal managerial work he was tasked to help stand up a sexual diversity organization within his agency… an agency that had not traditionally been overly friendly to the non cis-gendered.

After a couple weeks of working together we’ve got a pretty good report, having chatted about hobbies and what TV shows we watch; that type of thing. We haven’t delved into politics because that’s not the type of thing that a govie chats about with a contractor, generally, but I am aware that he is gay though there is no reason he should know that I know.

I’m in his office and he’s on his phone talking with someone that he can’t hang up on for like ten minutes and I’m kind of left hanging. Sitting on his table are a bunch of draft material that he’s helping prepare for this diversity initiative, so I peruse one of them, which is a draft of a newsletter.

He hangs up the phone and I hold up the draft and say, “I have some problems with this.”

He goes totally pale and eyes-wide. He’s a fairly slight, young gay man and I’m this hulking, older, girm-faced guy. Sure he’s technically my boss, but that doesn’t register on the poor kid at that time.

I let him stew for maybe two seconds before I continue on. “It’s the acronym creep: This is a three-page newsletter and you change the major acronym four times. It’s maddening.”

At this point he’s starting to realize that he’s not going to have to stand up for his sexual identity, but he’s still not sure what the fuck is going on. I continue:

“Here on the first page, you’ve got ‘LGBT’. You don’t define it in your first instance, but that’s fine because it’s not an official document and the acronym is well-known. But here on the second page, you add an ‘A’ to the end of it and here you do define it… but only the ‘A’ for ‘Ally’, not any of the other letters. Then, on the third page in the top paragraph, you drop the ‘A’ and add a ‘Q’ and don’t define anything. Finally, in the final paragraph, you drop the ‘Q’, re-add the ‘A’ and also add a plus-sign, redefining the whole thing again… except THIS time, the ‘A’ is for the plural ‘Allies’ rather than the singular.”

I wave the paper at him again and shake my head slowly, frowning disapprovingly.

“Listen,” I say, “If you want to advance your career, you’ve got to show that you know how to keep a handle on your acronyms and not let them get away from you. This is just criminal.”

At this point, he’s in on the joke and we have a good laugh. But more importantly, we have a nice discussion on the “+” and the “A”, which I had never run into before.

He explained that the term “LGBT” and its variants aren’t really meant to be a taxonomical value, it’s more supposed to be the label that you use for political organizations or rights groups. Thus the inclusion of the plus-sign or the “Q” was supposed to indicate that an LGBTQ or an LGBT+ group was not limited to just “traditional” homosexual and transsexual persons… anyone who wanted to fight for recognition of their sexual identity were welcome.

Likewise, the “A” for Ally/Allies was intended to send the message that you don’t have to have a “controversial” sexual identity to join the group or to engage in the fight. Heterosexual persons such as myself were welcome to pitch in and help under the same (rainbow) banner.

Wait, the “A” stands for asexual, not ally.

This was two years ago and at that time, in his newsletter, it stood for “Ally”. Or “Allies”. I forget how he finalized it.