A community for sharing those miniature epiphanies you have that highlight the oddities within the familiar.
I've started just using the term queer as an umbrella term. Some of the older people in the community don't love that term because they lived in a time when it was considered a slur, but it's pretty rare. It's just really convenient because it includes everyone under one simple term.
Also, yes, I have noticed a lot of lesbians have started referring to themselves as gay. It's all evolving, and I agree that queer is better than continually adding letters. to LGBTQIA2S+.
It has to to with the history. The queer community hasn't always been as connected as it is today, and with identity being connected to these terms it's more unifying to be inclusive for gay men and lesbian women, two historically separate communities doing separate acts of activism existing in tandem.
It's LGBTQIA+ because it encompasses each subset of whatever that person feels they fit into. Someone who is intersex isn't inherently gay. Someone who is asexual isn't gay at all. Someone who is questioning doesn't know what gay they may be if they are at all.
Q+ would just be queer+ which doesn't necessarily dignify the history and its significance in how queer people are more accepted in society because of the riots and protests.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans people all fought and died so that younger queers could stand a chance at being accepted for who they are today. It seems only right to continue to honor that despite something as petty as it being "unoptimal".
Queer rolls off the tongue a lot better than LGBT. Though I have heard it pronounced like 'el gibbity' and I fully approve.
GSRM. Gender, sexual, romanic minority. Concise and inclusive.
I’m sorry if it’s not my place to say this, and I don’t wish to offend anyone,
Coulda picked a better headline then.
But for real though it's all a social construct anyway, and the definitions and perceptions will change. I think right now there's not a lot of agreement when it comes to individual identities, but most people will know what LGBTQ+ means as opposed to "GPT" for Gay, Pan, and Trans, which I just made up now.