Please stop using the term 2SLGBTQIA+ or whatever twisted variation you have of the acronym. I find it as lazy and crude as the term BAME. Start treating us as individuals - we are not one people and have nothing in common with each other than our shared humanity.
Most troubling to me is that no one is clear who the + represents or what letters like Q and A mean. Queer or Questioning? Aromantic, asexual, agender or autogynephilia? How can you possibly speak to shared issues or concerns if you cannot define the group you are referring to?
“Grouping all minorities together as a monolith (or even treating one minority as a monolith) dehumanises its members, and leads to bad policy, where we group disparate people together.”
We have seen these bad policies. It is time to rise. We can and will fight this.
Thank you SO much. It's enraging because it erases Lesbians and we were added without being asked, with no caring that T is one of worst enemies. I joke that they might as well add KKK because some of these people literally want to kill Lesbians, have said it out loud, and have done it.
Plus we are falsely associated with "pedophiles"/child molesters, pornographers, etc. in this mess. And that association has serious consequences for those of us who are not that.
Those of us who are Butch or very obviously Lesbian are more in danger. A woman doctor refused me a strep test (my fever was 103 degrees and climbing and I had white spots at the back of my throat), while smirking and asking if I had AIDS. Even though Lesbians are the least likely to have HIV or other STDs, we are included with gay men. If I hadn't been so sick and afraid, I would have thought to tell her she was far more likely to have AIDS, since, as a het woman, she had sex with men.
It slays me whenever I hear middle aged male pundits use the expression "LGBTQ rights" with a straight face on their mainstream cable news shows. They've been covering politics, including lawmaking and civil rights, since before most of their listeners were born. The terms "skeptical" and "hard-nosed" don't begin to do justice to their ability to sniff out political bullshit. Hence, I would give anything to hear them explain what they think "queer rights" might be.
Freedom to marry? Not bloody likely. The right to serve openly in the military? LOLOL How would one even articulate a queer's protected status within a civil rights framework? It couldn't be sexual orientation, since that implies a lasting commitment to a fixed form of sexuality, something that's doubly anathema to queers. Gender identity? That's not really their bag except insofar as the relentless policing of other people's adherence to trans orthodoxy is concerned.
The fact is that the civil rights model only works if the members of a protected class share an immutable characteristic. See if you can spot the thing that doesn't belong: race, color, ethnicity, national origin and queer. The only exception is religion because, well, religion always gets to be special. While queer theory and its adherents share certain qualities with religion and the faithful, respectively, it's unlikely that any queer activist would have the commitment to a fixed set of ideas and work ethic necessary to follow in L. Ron Hubbard's footsteps and establish a Church of Queer.
I’ve been saying it for some time:
Please stop using the term 2SLGBTQIA+ or whatever twisted variation you have of the acronym. I find it as lazy and crude as the term BAME. Start treating us as individuals - we are not one people and have nothing in common with each other than our shared humanity.
Most troubling to me is that no one is clear who the + represents or what letters like Q and A mean. Queer or Questioning? Aromantic, asexual, agender or autogynephilia? How can you possibly speak to shared issues or concerns if you cannot define the group you are referring to?
“Grouping all minorities together as a monolith (or even treating one minority as a monolith) dehumanises its members, and leads to bad policy, where we group disparate people together.”
We have seen these bad policies. It is time to rise. We can and will fight this.
Thank you SO much. It's enraging because it erases Lesbians and we were added without being asked, with no caring that T is one of worst enemies. I joke that they might as well add KKK because some of these people literally want to kill Lesbians, have said it out loud, and have done it.
Plus we are falsely associated with "pedophiles"/child molesters, pornographers, etc. in this mess. And that association has serious consequences for those of us who are not that.
Those of us who are Butch or very obviously Lesbian are more in danger. A woman doctor refused me a strep test (my fever was 103 degrees and climbing and I had white spots at the back of my throat), while smirking and asking if I had AIDS. Even though Lesbians are the least likely to have HIV or other STDs, we are included with gay men. If I hadn't been so sick and afraid, I would have thought to tell her she was far more likely to have AIDS, since, as a het woman, she had sex with men.
I agree, Butch lesbians are more in danger. This has always been the case.
Appreciate you, Eva! Thanks for this!
It slays me whenever I hear middle aged male pundits use the expression "LGBTQ rights" with a straight face on their mainstream cable news shows. They've been covering politics, including lawmaking and civil rights, since before most of their listeners were born. The terms "skeptical" and "hard-nosed" don't begin to do justice to their ability to sniff out political bullshit. Hence, I would give anything to hear them explain what they think "queer rights" might be.
Freedom to marry? Not bloody likely. The right to serve openly in the military? LOLOL How would one even articulate a queer's protected status within a civil rights framework? It couldn't be sexual orientation, since that implies a lasting commitment to a fixed form of sexuality, something that's doubly anathema to queers. Gender identity? That's not really their bag except insofar as the relentless policing of other people's adherence to trans orthodoxy is concerned.
The fact is that the civil rights model only works if the members of a protected class share an immutable characteristic. See if you can spot the thing that doesn't belong: race, color, ethnicity, national origin and queer. The only exception is religion because, well, religion always gets to be special. While queer theory and its adherents share certain qualities with religion and the faithful, respectively, it's unlikely that any queer activist would have the commitment to a fixed set of ideas and work ethic necessary to follow in L. Ron Hubbard's footsteps and establish a Church of Queer.
We should all be reposting this article across social media.