Here’s how EFF desribes the situation in You Can Help Stop These Bad Internet Bills
“Red alert! For the last six months, EFF, our supporters, and dozens of other groups have been sounding the alarm about several #BadInternetBills that have been put forward in Congress.We’ve made it clear that these bills are terrible ideas, but Congress is now considering packaging them together—possibly into must-pass legislation. I’m asking you to join us, ACLU, Fight for the Future, and other digital rights defenders in a week of action to protect the internet.”
Can the fediverse help? The fediverse has some potential advantages for activism on topics like privacy, digital rights, and LGBTQIA2S+ issues. So it’s worth experimenting, and the July 20-28 week of action on Bad Internet Bills is a great opportunity – to learn, and hopefully to have an impact as well.
Wtf is a “LGBTQIA2S+”?
WHY DOES A FUCKING ACRONYM NEED TO GET LONGER AND LONGER?!? WHY?
I think the A is for asexual… like why tf would someone not interested in sexuality care. At a certain point it’s just someone wanting attention and I think we passed it a few characters ago. Before you, gentle reader, get upset see it for yourself… these come from Google search, obvious joke ones were ignored:
LGBT
LGBTQ
LGBTQ+ <- this is literally all inclusive, no need to go further
LGBTQ2 (“two spirit”… aka furries)
LGBTQIA+ (longest “official” acronym)
LGBTQIA2S+
LGBTQIAAP+
LGBTQIAGNC
LGBTQQIP2SAA
LGBTIQCAPGNGFNBA+
If that doesn’t make it obvious I’ll leave you with a quote from Peter Tatchell:
Yo just so you know two spirit has nothing to do with furries. It usually refers to gender nonconforming traditions in indigenous american communities and has largely come into favor in Canada as part of recent campaigns to recognize tribal communities and their histories. These movements have obviously existed for a long time but the revelations about atrocities committed at residential schools seems to have really pushed them into the mainstream.
Otherwise, I think you’re thinking of “otherkin” who are not generally included under the LGBTQ umbrella, but are frequently brought up to discredit queer progress as a movement.
Even without that it’s not about furries, they’re thinking of therians. Furries just think anthro animals look cute, not that they’re an animal in a human suit.
edit: this wasn’t an intended reply, I was just reading and suddenly here this comment was blank 🤷 didn’t want to leave it blank or delete it so it says “deleted by creator” and then everyone wonders why
Wouldn’t we want to have it as easy to pronounce/write/remember as possible? I feel like even the people involved are not taking this seriously by making it longer and longer. It surely looks like more like a joke that way.
It’s different with nearly anyone you ask too, it’s not like there’s some standardization of the long ones. It’s literally “whatever the fuck I just thought up and you’re intolerant if you don’t respect it” happening. Which brings us right back to it being attention seeking.
Exactly. How can people take them seriously this way? Well, outside their own echo chamber, of course.
This came to a logical problem of naming a coalition by several group names’ initials. And a very loose one at that. I felt the same about the flag updates.
It is a conclusion to what they stand for and why they are created – to get united under one banner to be seen – but at the same time it counters that in how it is disunited in these exact banners, also to be seen and recognized but individually. And a rainbow flag, iirc, wasn’t meant to mean something by each colour in it, lol.
I feel like switching to the name and a flag that don’t include that self-expansion and would just stay the same would be better – but then I catch myself realizing it is nothing other than creating another acronym\flag and asking to be argued by those who promoted these expansion for I deny their effort to gain visibility.
Shit’s a mess.
Instead of people fighting over letters maybe Pride Community.
From poking around, it seems like GSM (Gender and Sexual Minorities) is the general successor to LGBTQ and all assorted acronyms. Obviously not as popular but it at least has everyone baked into it and doesn’t have any charged language, given the ongoing debate over whether queer has been reclaimed as a word or remains a slur.
Though, immediately after discovering it I did see people adding an R to make it GRSM (Gender, Romantic, and Sexual Minorities), which in theory covers every possible member of the LGBTQ+ family.
Yeah, I think that at this point there should just be an established term, not an ever-expanding acronym. Like an actual pronounceable word. Is there one besides “queer”? Similar to something-divergent, for example? Like neurodivergent/neurotypical, which became more well-known in recent years. I kinda like those.
Why not just *
Yeah I dont understand this stuff. Im all for inclusion, diversity, and letting people be who they wanna be.
But come on! Im a dumbass. Dont expect me to remember something like that. Make it easy for the rest of us!
because it’s funny
There’s actually a footnote in the article about that!
I’m using LGBTQIA2S+ as a shorthand for lesbian, gay, gender non-conforming, genderqueer, bi, trans, queer, intersex, asexual, agender, two-sprit, and others who are not straight, cis, and heteronormative. Julia Serrano’s trans, gender, sexuality, and activism glossary has definitions for most of terms, although resources like OACAS Library Guides’ Two-spirit identities page go into a lot more detail. Serrano also discusses the tensions between ever-growing and always incomplete acronyms and more abstract terms like “gender and sexual minorities”. There’s a Mastodon instance called lgbtqia.space, and Indigenous people are often overlooked in the fediverse, so I decided to go with the acronym despite its problems.
I guess it’s less of an issue in text, but LGBTQIA2S+ is way too much to say in conversation, and attempting to use terms that can’t really be spoken feels weird. Just being able to say queer community instead of listing five letters every time the LGBTQ community came up in conversation was a relief, so to see it potentially expanding in the other direction almost feels stressful.
I mean, wasn’t the purpose of LGBTQ for the Q to encompass everyone that’s not heteronormative and not lesbian, gay, bisexual, or trans? Not trying to rag on attempts at representation, but attempting to enumerate every member of a diverse group, as the acronym for the group itself feels doomed to be unwieldy. Being honest, it reads like a product ID at first glance.
It’s tricky. There are asexual, intersex, and two-spirt people who don’t identify as queer so shortening it to LGBTQ can be seen as erasing identities (who are frequently already marginalized in queer communities). I don’t tend to use the full acronym in conversation, and you’re right that it reads like a product ID, but the asexual, intersex, and two-spirt people I know generally appreciate it.
I guess I don’t quite see why they would then be joining the queer community if they feel being under the queer umbrella isn’t accurate. Wouldn’t they be allies, and not members?
I know that membership and support are delicate topics and I don’t want give the impression of pushing against acceptance, but if you want your identity to be represented as a headline letter in the queer community, but also don’t consider yourself queer, what exactly is the intent?
It just seems like at that point switching over to GSM makes a lot more sense than attempting to represent every identity directly, especially when it begs the question of why non-binary, pansexual, and others are excluded in preference to IA2+ folks. Idk, just seems like a fraught topic.
It is very much a fraught topic, so thanks for the very good discussion! Many intersex and asexual people don’t think of themselves as joining the queer community; neither do some trans people, and for that matter some gay, lesbian, and bi people actively dislike the term “queer”. It’s complex! Sometimes it makes sense to highlight specific identities – which is what I did in the post I did on [A (partial) queer, trans, and non-binary history of Mastodon and the fediverse](A (partial) queer, trans, and non-binary history of Mastodon and the fediverse) – but sometimes an umbrella term is more useful, and there really aren’t any great options. It’s a fair point that non-binary, pansexual, and others aren’t included in the acronym … like I said in the post, I with with LGBTQIA2S+ for this one because there’s a Mastodon instance called lgbtqia.space, and Indigenous people are often overlooked in the fediverse so I thought it was important to call out the two-spirit aspect. That said if I had known that 75% of the comments on this post would be about the acronym I might have taken a different path!
Yeah, bit of a shame that the acronym wound up being a lightning rod for engagement instead of, you know, the actual article lol. But despite it being around for at least a year (from when I was poking around), I think this was the first time many people saw that particular acronym. Especially after LGBTQ+ became the definitive inclusive option, albeit not as permanently as I’d imagined.
At any rate, I feel like GSM is at least easy to use as an umbrella and lacks the charged history of queer being a reclaimed word. It might not spread awareness of smaller groups directly, but at least it keeps the focus on topic.
Yeah, I’ve been telling people “good news: 25 comments on the article! bad news: almost all of them were about the acronym”. Oh well, we learn by doing. And as you say, a lot of people saw the acronym for the first time, and at least one person learned that two-spirt doesn’t refer to furries, so there was some useful education … it wasn’t my primary goal here but that’s never a bad thing.
Different terminology makes sense in different contexts – and from different people. For a lot of what I write, I want the resonance of queer’s charged history; other times, it might not make as much sense.
Im indigenous as well, just a German indigenous person…
That “acronym” is nothing but idiotic, the longer it gets the more ridiculous it is.