I think lgbt+ or lgbtq+ is fine. Things got weird at lgbtqia+ then at lgbtqia2s+, it got too long for me. This is the sort of thing that makes even centrists cringe at and republicans make alphabet jokes at.
I agree. At a certain point attempting to be too specific is counterproductive, even if the intent is positive.
Most people I know covered under these labels, including many people very close to me, also think it got silly. The + is there for a reason. Heck, so is the Q.
I don’t see the extra long ones outside of small communities and whenever some right wing talking head wants to complain about “clown world” shit for clickbait. No one cares as long as you treat people with dignity.
i never understand why people try to add inclusivity to things that are inclusive.
the pride flag is the rainbow. you know, the thing that’s associated with representing the entire spectrum. adding triangles and circles and extra colors is redundant. you can just say it represents all these things too because it’s the fucking rainbow.
same with lgbtq+. like, q already represents all of it kind of, but ok we also have a + to mean everything else. what’s the point of adding more…
i know it feels like the letters are more important than what’s bundled into the + sign but the answer to that isn’t adding a new letter for every single person, it’s to find a better, more inclusive shorthand that means all of it. as a cishet obviously I’m not going to declare anything unilaterally but personally i think something like GSNC (gender and sexuality non-conforming) would be inclusive of all of it and wouldn’t need expansion.
We had our Amsterdam Pride event earlier this month. Flags were a big issue of contention within the community. Not just whether or not flags like Israel or Palestinian would be welcome, but also regarding the rainbow flag itself.
There’s two schools of thought: the people who see the original rainbow flag as inclusive enough, and the people who want a flag that they feel represents their niche specifically. That one being the ‘Progress’ flag that you’re referring to.
The argument is: by adding more and more of that ‘social awareness’ stuff to it, the overarching message of it gets lost. Basically, people want pride to be about pride and not have it hijacked by other social issues. Which of course leads to animosity with people who do want to protest for social issues.
Personally, I’m a big fan of vexillology and I feel the original flag is still the best, most representative and least devise symbol.
i wish the entire thing got a facelift by someone with at least basic knowledge and interest in graphic design and vexillology. pride flag is the best but it’s mostly because the bar is super low. the individual (gay, lesbian etc) flags are just eyesores imo. terrible color combos. and the progress flag is probably the most egregious.
again i understand people’s concerns with representation but i think we can redefine what is representative of what.
i am also supportive of intersectionality and see why the black and brown was added but i think we’re past the need for it: you can use the original flag to include all of it. it’s a difficult situation because people who are passionate about this will have learned the historical significance of these and might not be easily convinced to rethink how they see the older flags.
as I said I am an outsider, but as an ally and graphic designer i just can’t help but wish for a reimagined set of flags.
To be clear: I’m not in the community as such, but I fully support them and have a fair few gay friends. And guess what? I feel represented by the original flag too. Because it represents good values. From an interview with Gilbert Baker:
Each color of the rainbow flag stands for something. “Pink is for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sun,” Baker told ABC7 News. “Green for nature, turquoise for magic, blue for serenity and purple for the spirit. I like to think of those elements as in every person, everyone shares that.”
Nowhere does it mention things like race. Or even a particular sexuality! As a white, heterosexual dude, that flag represents me just fine. It also represents someone black, brown and by golly, those blue people from Avatar if we ever discover them.
I definitely agree that most pride flags aren’t very good. I understand peoples enthousiasm to have their own flag, but some are just terrible.
You might be familiar with that old XKCD comic about competing standards. I imagine any attempt to make a new, better flag just results in one more getting added to the mix :D
If I was organising something, I’d just stick with the 1979 six color and call it a day. It’s iconic and it represents everyone, whether they like it or not.
Things got weird at lgbtqia+ then at lgbtqia2s+, it got too long for me.
Then I hope it gets even longer. I don’t care about your feelings about letters, I care about queer people feeling included.
Whether or not one or more of LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQIA+, LGBTQIA2S+, GSRM etc. are ‘fine’ is not so much the issue as this: are you fine? Are you okay? If you were okay, do you think you would get over Asexual and Two-Spirit people being included? They do exist, after all.
This is the sort of thing that makes even centrists cringe at and republicans make alphabet jokes at.
Explain to me why I care about the opinions of people who purposefully make the world worse. Here’s the deal: I’ll care about the opinions and morality of the majority when all children are fed. Until then, I don’t give a shit.
A problem with extending the acronym to specifically include more edge cases is that it makes the omissions more obvious. Another is that having a bunch of syllables is clunky in speech. “Queer” is pretty inclusive, though many are still uncomfortable with the term as it has been used as a slur. I’ve always been fond of SAGA (Sexuality and Gendered Acceptance) because it covers everything, is memorable and meaningful, and has no baggage. And using preferred labels when they are known, also a fan of that.
I’ve found people most uptight about nonsense like this, aren’t even queer. They are trying to do some nonsense virtue signaling, but end up just looking foolish.
Do you enjoy creating non-existent problems or what? Lol
LGTBQ+ is the way to go, but sure man, enjoy staying angry I guess. That’s so funny too. I know several members of the LGBTQ+ community (my partner is a member ) and even they think LGBTQ+ is the right size, and that adding all the extra letters is ridiculous. I bet you aren’t even a member of their community based on your behavior here. You sound like a virtue signalling clown getting pissed off over something nobody in the community is remotely worried about.
If you ARE a member of the community, you really need to re-evaluate your approach here, because you sound ridiculous. Btw, thats straight from my partners mouth on the subject.
I hadn’t heard a variant “all the gay people I know think LGBT is going too far!!!” for a while. Nice to know bullshit is still popular. I’m not eating any, you can have as much as you want.
I bet you aren’t even a member of their community based on your behavior here. You sound like a virtue signalling clown getting pissed off over something nobody in the community is remotely worried about.
I bet you generate so little self-worth that you have to be rude to strangers to feel like you’re superior to someone.
I’m a queer person in a same sex relationship for the longest time. Honestly even hearing the term LGBT (without the plus, without anything else) makes me kinda happy. Granted I’m in a place where acceptance is barely normalised.
I’m not even aware of the longer variants myself; I personally just use “queer” in describing myself (see above) and my friends. Even the aces I know seem to just call themselves queer and don’t really seem bothered by the lack of explicit asexual inclusion in LGBT or LGBT+ or LGBTQ+.
I don’t think we should get really stuck on terminology, to the point where we get into arguments with strangers online. I believe labels are important for helping us understand ourselves, but only to a certain point. Either way, queerness to me is quite all-encompassing, so representation here is not an issue? Maybe you could educate me on this.
The flipside being: I am aware that I would like to be more specific in describing myself to people, but it’s difficult to explain bisexuality to others (even queer folk!). I use queer as a shortcut. I don’t really fault them for not knowing the ins and outs of my sexuality though. I’m just queer at first glance. Wanna know more? Fantastic. Lemme tell you about the bicycle.
I get it’s upsetting to kinda “dilute” who we are at times. But being antagonistic about it isn’t really effective in educating, imo. These people are trying. Let them try, fuck up a little, and then gently nudge them in the correct direction.
But being antagonistic about it isn’t really effective in educating, imo.
Being antagonistic is effective in telling people that I, personally, find inclusiveness more important than listening to people who say “the acronym is too long”.
If I want to use LGBTQIA+, or more, that’s my business.
Hmm I’m gonna reply to this against my better judgement.
I think you’re absolutely right that inclusivity is important. You’re still skirting around two issues:
Queer is plenty inclusive (see my original comment). Is queer insufficient? I would love to know as well, as a queer person.
Being antagonistic might allow you to express your thoughts, sure. But I doubt it will allow the other person to internalise anything meaningfully.
You’re also right that it’s no one’s job to police how you use terminology. I think the rest here are taking issue with how you are communicating this (and ironically enough, policing others on terminology).
Either way, I think it might be worth examining why the response to someone’s ignorance felt so visceral and rage-fuelled. Not saying it’s a bad thing, we could all use more inclusivity in our lives! But hopefully we could take a step back and ask ourselves why do we react a certain way? It’s a good exercise to understand ourselves a bit better.
Have a nice day, yea. And have an upvote too! Sick of the downvotes in this thread.
My downvote button doesn’t even work on my instance of Lemmy.
Queer is plenty inclusive (see my original comment). Is queer insufficient?
Queer is great. Not complaining about the existence and use of long acronyms is also great. I am not two spirit, I have no qualms with 2S being part of a longer acronym.
On the other I’m bisexual, some sorta genderqueer, and I only l usually leave it at lgbt. Then again I’m not butthurt about the additions I’m just a lazy fuck lol.
When speaking, I tend to summarize it as queer. Google says “Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender”, which seems to cover the bulk of what comes up in casual conversation.
It’s one syllable, people get what you mean, and it’s generally non-offensive (unless you try).
it got too long for me. This is the sort of thing that makes even centrists cringe at and republicans make alphabet jokes at.
You don’t get to claim you’re uncomfortable with inclusion because of how others might react to it, especially since you’re reacting the same exact way as the centrist straw person you’ve created to shift the blame away from yourself and make yourself feel better, does.
YOU are uncomfortable, because YOU don’t want to take 3 extra seconds to be inclusive.
At least have the conviction to be honest with yourself, the rest of us can see right through you.
You don’t get to claim you’re uncomfortable with inclusion because of how others might react to it
They didn’t
Yes, one can do that. It’s like feeling uncomfortable about something a kid does because you know how the parents would react. You might not care what the kid does, but you know how it’d make the parents feel, and that causes the feeling of discomfort.
They quite literally did, and lets just be clear - are you comparing LGBTQIA2s+ people to misbehaving children, and bigots to their long suffering parents we need to feel bad for? Or is it the other way around, and that queer people are somehow responsible for the behaviour of bigots? I honestly don’t know which is worse.
Either way, what you are still saying is: lets not do inclusion, because it’ll make bigots uncomfortable.
OP is clearly more concerned with bigots’ feelings or reaction, than they are with being inclusive of marginalised people. You can do as many mental gymnastics as you like to try and convince them and yourself otherwise, but they, and you in your defence of their bad take, have made your priorities clear - make sure bigots are comfortable, then consider inclusion.
You are the bigots making a big fuss over the “alphabet soup” or whatever, not some imaginary “other” you want to project your shit take on to so you don’t have to admit to having it (sure, others exist, but you are no different to them).
At least have the conviction to be honest with yourself, the rest of us can see right through you.
If they literally did that, could you quote it, please?
I also understand what you’re trying to do with the example I gave, but I’m not really going to entertain it. Just because I said two things can bring about similar emotions doesn’t mean I’m saying those two things have anything in common (aside from bringing about similar emotions).
I think one of the key points in fighting bigotry is to understand what it stems from. If we tell people that it’s not inclusive to say “LGBT”, what we’re doing is cutting off the people who are trying. Lumping together with bigots the people who are trying, but are simply unaware of all the extra letters they need to add to be “fully inclusive” is counterproductive imo.
Frankly, I just say “queer” when speaking aloud. I’m probably never going to be up-to-date on the entirety of what needs to follow LGBT, and I don’t need to be – I’m not part of that group, and I shouldn’t be expected to know the terminology, especially when it changes fairly rapidly.
At least in my case (because I can’t speak for anyone else), you are arguing against an ally who supports queer rights – it’s been a major consideration in every vote I’ve ever placed.
I even probably know what all of those letters stand for. But I’m not saying them or typing them out every time I want to refer to the broader group. It’s the same reason I’ll sometimes say “America” instead of “The United States of America”. Fewer syllables, and gets the idea across without offending anybody (the majority of the time).
I think one of the key points in fighting bigotry is to understand what it stems from. If we tell people that it’s not inclusive to say “LGBT”, what we’re doing is cutting off the people who are trying.
But the now-removed top post was stating ‘I didn’t want to try, it’s too long’.
Pandering to those who actually don’t want to try is not supportive, it is destructive.
Pandering to those who actually don’t want to try is not supportive, it is destructive.
I get what you’re saying, I just disagree that that’s what this is.
I believe that what you’re hearing from OP is “I don’t need to be fully inclusive, we don’t need to recognize people that fit into my worldview of what LGBT is”. I think that’s too harsh of an interpretation.
I think the comment was more along the lines of “It’s a lot to remember all the letters, and forcing others to memorize and understand all the letters (least be accused of bigotry) is harmful to the cause”.
And to reiterate my position, I don’t think the original comment was bigotry, nor do I think I’m bigoted by referring to the diverse group of people as LGBT or just queer. It’s about efficiency in communication for me, and I understand the argument about optics as well.
I think lgbt+ or lgbtq+ is fine. Things got weird at lgbtqia+ then at lgbtqia2s+, it got too long for me. This is the sort of thing that makes even centrists cringe at and republicans make alphabet jokes at.
I agree. At a certain point attempting to be too specific is counterproductive, even if the intent is positive.
Most people I know covered under these labels, including many people very close to me, also think it got silly. The + is there for a reason. Heck, so is the Q.
Yeah I thought the q is a +. Didn’t understand the need for another + but whatevers.
I don’t see the extra long ones outside of small communities and whenever some right wing talking head wants to complain about “clown world” shit for clickbait. No one cares as long as you treat people with dignity.
i never understand why people try to add inclusivity to things that are inclusive.
the pride flag is the rainbow. you know, the thing that’s associated with representing the entire spectrum. adding triangles and circles and extra colors is redundant. you can just say it represents all these things too because it’s the fucking rainbow.
same with lgbtq+. like, q already represents all of it kind of, but ok we also have a + to mean everything else. what’s the point of adding more…
i know it feels like the letters are more important than what’s bundled into the + sign but the answer to that isn’t adding a new letter for every single person, it’s to find a better, more inclusive shorthand that means all of it. as a cishet obviously I’m not going to declare anything unilaterally but personally i think something like GSNC (gender and sexuality non-conforming) would be inclusive of all of it and wouldn’t need expansion.
We had our Amsterdam Pride event earlier this month. Flags were a big issue of contention within the community. Not just whether or not flags like Israel or Palestinian would be welcome, but also regarding the rainbow flag itself.
There’s two schools of thought: the people who see the original rainbow flag as inclusive enough, and the people who want a flag that they feel represents their niche specifically. That one being the ‘Progress’ flag that you’re referring to.
The argument is: by adding more and more of that ‘social awareness’ stuff to it, the overarching message of it gets lost. Basically, people want pride to be about pride and not have it hijacked by other social issues. Which of course leads to animosity with people who do want to protest for social issues.
Personally, I’m a big fan of vexillology and I feel the original flag is still the best, most representative and least devise symbol.
i wish the entire thing got a facelift by someone with at least basic knowledge and interest in graphic design and vexillology. pride flag is the best but it’s mostly because the bar is super low. the individual (gay, lesbian etc) flags are just eyesores imo. terrible color combos. and the progress flag is probably the most egregious.
again i understand people’s concerns with representation but i think we can redefine what is representative of what.
i am also supportive of intersectionality and see why the black and brown was added but i think we’re past the need for it: you can use the original flag to include all of it. it’s a difficult situation because people who are passionate about this will have learned the historical significance of these and might not be easily convinced to rethink how they see the older flags.
as I said I am an outsider, but as an ally and graphic designer i just can’t help but wish for a reimagined set of flags.
To be clear: I’m not in the community as such, but I fully support them and have a fair few gay friends. And guess what? I feel represented by the original flag too. Because it represents good values. From an interview with Gilbert Baker:
Nowhere does it mention things like race. Or even a particular sexuality! As a white, heterosexual dude, that flag represents me just fine. It also represents someone black, brown and by golly, those blue people from Avatar if we ever discover them.
I definitely agree that most pride flags aren’t very good. I understand peoples enthousiasm to have their own flag, but some are just terrible.
You might be familiar with that old XKCD comic about competing standards. I imagine any attempt to make a new, better flag just results in one more getting added to the mix :D
If I was organising something, I’d just stick with the 1979 six color and call it a day. It’s iconic and it represents everyone, whether they like it or not.
https://youtu.be/O3MGsBW_eQQ
Then I hope it gets even longer. I don’t care about your feelings about letters, I care about queer people feeling included.
Whether or not one or more of LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQIA+, LGBTQIA2S+, GSRM etc. are ‘fine’ is not so much the issue as this: are you fine? Are you okay? If you were okay, do you think you would get over Asexual and Two-Spirit people being included? They do exist, after all.
Explain to me why I care about the opinions of people who purposefully make the world worse. Here’s the deal: I’ll care about the opinions and morality of the majority when all children are fed. Until then, I don’t give a shit.
SLook, I’m bi, I support my LGBT brother, sisters, and others, but this is a stupid fucking thing to attack someone who is otherwise an ally over.
The obsession with labels detracts from the real discussion that needs to be had
LGBT was supposed to be all inclusive. Adding all the letters is dumb as fuck.
Yeah that’s why I added the “+”. That means there’s more
Also tje Q was intended to be pretty inclusive as well.
A problem with extending the acronym to specifically include more edge cases is that it makes the omissions more obvious. Another is that having a bunch of syllables is clunky in speech. “Queer” is pretty inclusive, though many are still uncomfortable with the term as it has been used as a slur. I’ve always been fond of SAGA (Sexuality and Gendered Acceptance) because it covers everything, is memorable and meaningful, and has no baggage. And using preferred labels when they are known, also a fan of that.
Good! Then we will think about who we are omitting, and why.
You sure have a stick up yours. Imagine being so stuck up that you need to create conflict about an acronym whose entire purpose is acceptance.
I’ve found people most uptight about nonsense like this, aren’t even queer. They are trying to do some nonsense virtue signaling, but end up just looking foolish.
Do you enjoy creating non-existent problems or what? Lol
LGTBQ+ is the way to go, but sure man, enjoy staying angry I guess. That’s so funny too. I know several members of the LGBTQ+ community (my partner is a member ) and even they think LGBTQ+ is the right size, and that adding all the extra letters is ridiculous. I bet you aren’t even a member of their community based on your behavior here. You sound like a virtue signalling clown getting pissed off over something nobody in the community is remotely worried about.
If you ARE a member of the community, you really need to re-evaluate your approach here, because you sound ridiculous. Btw, thats straight from my partners mouth on the subject.
I hadn’t heard a variant “all the gay people I know think LGBT is going too far!!!” for a while. Nice to know bullshit is still popular. I’m not eating any, you can have as much as you want.
I bet you generate so little self-worth that you have to be rude to strangers to feel like you’re superior to someone.
I’m a queer person in a same sex relationship for the longest time. Honestly even hearing the term LGBT (without the plus, without anything else) makes me kinda happy. Granted I’m in a place where acceptance is barely normalised.
I’m not even aware of the longer variants myself; I personally just use “queer” in describing myself (see above) and my friends. Even the aces I know seem to just call themselves queer and don’t really seem bothered by the lack of explicit asexual inclusion in LGBT or LGBT+ or LGBTQ+.
I don’t think we should get really stuck on terminology, to the point where we get into arguments with strangers online. I believe labels are important for helping us understand ourselves, but only to a certain point. Either way, queerness to me is quite all-encompassing, so representation here is not an issue? Maybe you could educate me on this.
The flipside being: I am aware that I would like to be more specific in describing myself to people, but it’s difficult to explain bisexuality to others (even queer folk!). I use queer as a shortcut. I don’t really fault them for not knowing the ins and outs of my sexuality though. I’m just queer at first glance. Wanna know more? Fantastic. Lemme tell you about the bicycle.
I get it’s upsetting to kinda “dilute” who we are at times. But being antagonistic about it isn’t really effective in educating, imo. These people are trying. Let them try, fuck up a little, and then gently nudge them in the correct direction.
Being antagonistic is effective in telling people that I, personally, find inclusiveness more important than listening to people who say “the acronym is too long”.
If I want to use LGBTQIA+, or more, that’s my business.
Hmm I’m gonna reply to this against my better judgement.
I think you’re absolutely right that inclusivity is important. You’re still skirting around two issues:
You’re also right that it’s no one’s job to police how you use terminology. I think the rest here are taking issue with how you are communicating this (and ironically enough, policing others on terminology).
Either way, I think it might be worth examining why the response to someone’s ignorance felt so visceral and rage-fuelled. Not saying it’s a bad thing, we could all use more inclusivity in our lives! But hopefully we could take a step back and ask ourselves why do we react a certain way? It’s a good exercise to understand ourselves a bit better.
Have a nice day, yea. And have an upvote too! Sick of the downvotes in this thread.
My downvote button doesn’t even work on my instance of Lemmy.
Queer is great. Not complaining about the existence and use of long acronyms is also great. I am not two spirit, I have no qualms with 2S being part of a longer acronym.
lmao OK. Have a nice day man :)
Honk honk
On one hand that guys a cunt.
On the other I’m bisexual, some sorta genderqueer, and I only l usually leave it at lgbt. Then again I’m not butthurt about the additions I’m just a lazy fuck lol.
Still, that guys a cunt.
I don’t think that person is a cunt.
When speaking, I tend to summarize it as queer. Google says “Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender”, which seems to cover the bulk of what comes up in casual conversation.
It’s one syllable, people get what you mean, and it’s generally non-offensive (unless you try).
The line is at policing other people using long initialisms. Using a short one yourself is fine, telling others not to use long ones is a dick move.
It really isn’t -gay guy.
You don’t get to claim you’re uncomfortable with inclusion because of how others might react to it, especially since you’re reacting the same exact way as the centrist straw person you’ve created to shift the blame away from yourself and make yourself feel better, does.
YOU are uncomfortable, because YOU don’t want to take 3 extra seconds to be inclusive.
At least have the conviction to be honest with yourself, the rest of us can see right through you.
If someone says “I hate gay people now because the acronym is too long”, THEY ALWAYS HATED GAY PEOPLE.
You’re right. Nobody said that though.
They quite literally did, and lets just be clear - are you comparing LGBTQIA2s+ people to misbehaving children, and bigots to their long suffering parents we need to feel bad for? Or is it the other way around, and that queer people are somehow responsible for the behaviour of bigots? I honestly don’t know which is worse.
Either way, what you are still saying is: lets not do inclusion, because it’ll make bigots uncomfortable.
OP is clearly more concerned with bigots’ feelings or reaction, than they are with being inclusive of marginalised people. You can do as many mental gymnastics as you like to try and convince them and yourself otherwise, but they, and you in your defence of their bad take, have made your priorities clear - make sure bigots are comfortable, then consider inclusion.
You are the bigots making a big fuss over the “alphabet soup” or whatever, not some imaginary “other” you want to project your shit take on to so you don’t have to admit to having it (sure, others exist, but you are no different to them).
If they literally did that, could you quote it, please?
I also understand what you’re trying to do with the example I gave, but I’m not really going to entertain it. Just because I said two things can bring about similar emotions doesn’t mean I’m saying those two things have anything in common (aside from bringing about similar emotions).
I think one of the key points in fighting bigotry is to understand what it stems from. If we tell people that it’s not inclusive to say “LGBT”, what we’re doing is cutting off the people who are trying. Lumping together with bigots the people who are trying, but are simply unaware of all the extra letters they need to add to be “fully inclusive” is counterproductive imo.
Frankly, I just say “queer” when speaking aloud. I’m probably never going to be up-to-date on the entirety of what needs to follow LGBT, and I don’t need to be – I’m not part of that group, and I shouldn’t be expected to know the terminology, especially when it changes fairly rapidly.
At least in my case (because I can’t speak for anyone else), you are arguing against an ally who supports queer rights – it’s been a major consideration in every vote I’ve ever placed.
I even probably know what all of those letters stand for. But I’m not saying them or typing them out every time I want to refer to the broader group. It’s the same reason I’ll sometimes say “America” instead of “The United States of America”. Fewer syllables, and gets the idea across without offending anybody (the majority of the time).
Bro I’m bisexual but I just tell people I’m queer. It’s all encompassing and I’m lazy and it’s only one syllable.
You are a good, well-spoken person.
Haha, I try my best. Thank you.
But the now-removed top post was stating ‘I didn’t want to try, it’s too long’.
Pandering to those who actually don’t want to try is not supportive, it is destructive.
I get what you’re saying, I just disagree that that’s what this is.
I believe that what you’re hearing from OP is “I don’t need to be fully inclusive, we don’t need to recognize people that fit into my worldview of what LGBT is”. I think that’s too harsh of an interpretation.
I think the comment was more along the lines of “It’s a lot to remember all the letters, and forcing others to memorize and understand all the letters (least be accused of bigotry) is harmful to the cause”.
And to reiterate my position, I don’t think the original comment was bigotry, nor do I think I’m bigoted by referring to the diverse group of people as LGBT or just queer. It’s about efficiency in communication for me, and I understand the argument about optics as well.