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A dire warning for everyone in the “LGB” part who thought they could keep themselves safe from the fash by throwing “TQIA+” under the bus:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/03/republicans-same-sex-marriage
And if you’re none of the above, if you thought that is an LGB-specific warning and not addressed to •you•, I promise you, whatever •your• letter is, they’re coming for yours sooner than you think. Stop them now or pay later.
this is one reason the term should always have been “queer” — the alphabet soup of LGB…+ aspires to be inclusive and comforting but mostly only divides
yes, some people are discomfited by “queer” but its history as a slur actually helps make the point that it’s not any one specific difference that marks you as a target for bullying: bullies will fix on **any** difference as a target for their disgust and fear and hate
@possibledog
I'm sympathetic to that argument in many ways — I'm a programmer and a mathematician, and I like to handle things in the general case! — but in the past 10 years or so, I've really come around to the importance of •individually naming• each marginalized subgroup.
BLM activists in particular taught me about this. The danger of using an umbrella term is the “All Lives Matter” pitfall: a term that •theoretically• should include everyone ends up •in practice• only including people culturally regarded as the neutral default. And such terms don't challenge anyone whose thinking dwells in that default: someone who doesn’t really think of Black people at all when they hear “all lives,” or doesn’t think of transgender people when they hear “queer.”
@possibledog
So, yes, I personally like the term “queer” in the broadly inclusive bell hooks sense of capturing a wide spectrum of gender-related experiences that may not even have a good name yet — but I •also• appreciate the specific enumeration of identities in “LGBTQIA+,” even if that enumeration is sort of laborious.
My brother, a math teacher, often talks with his students about the importance of examples, counterexamples, and non-examples. It's not enough just to have a theorem, even if you have a proof! Mathematicians think about specific cases, and ground their thinking in them even when they've found suitable generalizations (or •think• they have; cf Fourier’s heat equation blowing up calculus and forcing the development of Real Analysis). A similar principle applies here.
@inthehands I agree that the alphabet-soup enumeration is useful, but my point is that as a popular term its disadvantages outweigh its advantages. It just sounds elite and effete and academic and pompous and silly, and it's way too hard to deploy in political arguments.
"We're here, we're ell gee bee tee queue eye eh plus, get used to it!" just doesn't have that same ring, now, does it? ;-)
Not that it matters, it's too late now; this is just an academic argument about academic terms. Nice chatting with you.
@possibledog
Yeah, “LGBTQIA+” clearly is not good chant material. The detailed enumeration has its place; so do the catchy single words. Many important tools in the kit!
Nice chatting with you too.