Recently all over the place (including on NPR), I am hearing this acronym LBGTQ, meaning lesbian, bisexual, gay, transexual, and either queer or questioning, depending on the site you choose. I hadn't heard it before the last month or so, though my husband says I should have. Is it a relatively new acronym? Is it used in other English-speaking countries besides the U.S., do you know?

LBGT is common enough but I've never heard it with the Q on the end, and it doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense with either of the suggested meanings.

In my very recent experience with the acronym (or abbreviation really), queer seems to be the more common. For example, on the NPR report, they clarified the meaning for the listeners, and they said "q" was for "queer." On the other hand, I'd understand "questioning" a lot more than "queer," unless I don't understand the definition of "queer." I thought it synonymous with "gay." "Questioning," on the other hand has a specific meaning to me in that some people "question" their sexual identity, and I see that different from being "bisexual."

Actually, you stopped a little short...

The full acronym is LGBTQIA. And it covers at least 52 permutations, at least per UC Davis.

http://lgbcenter.ucdavis.edu/l...ion/lgbtqia-glossary

I wonder if they are planning to add an LBTQIAFAQ page.

quote:

AAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHHHHHH

An Automatic And Audacious Attempt At A Resolution Regarding Relevant References, Going Great Guns, Heard However Hostily…

quote:

AAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHHHHHH

AAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHHHHHHWTF

I had to look up the I and A, which mean intersex and ally.

So much to learn in so little time.

Now there is a hot new word out there: Flexisexual. It seems to be used only for women who are bisexual.

quote:

Psychologist Dr Cecelia D’Felice said: ‘Women are often more open to these experiences when they reach their 40s and are more confident with their sexuality. If an opportunity presents itself they may think “why not”, particularly if they have come out of a long relationship.’

Yet it also says:

quote:

It refers to people who have a sexual preference but refuse to be bound by it.

Here they say "people" and not "women."

Does it refer only to women?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

I've never heard it with the Q or the QIA either. It is now the all-purpose acronym, the Heintz 57 of sexuality.

WM

From the U.C. Davis site:

quote:

GENDER: A social construct used to classify a person as a man, woman, or some other identity. Fundamentally different from the sex one is assigned at birth.

I would have thought the word "gender" applied only to the sex one is assigned at birth!

Wordmatic

wordmatic:

Aristotle is no more ("To say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is the truth...")

Nowadays it is fashionable to escape the strictures of "facts." That opens up all sorts of possibilities.

What matters about the world is not what "is," but rather how you feel about it, and how you "self-identify."

Ok?

I would have thought the word "gender" applied only to the sex one is assigned at birth!

That is how some people use the word. The word has had an interesting history. The word is first and foremost a grammatical term. The first edition of the OED does not even give the definition of 'sex'. It probably started out as a euphemism for biological sex sometime at the end of the 19th or beginning of the 20th century. In Latin (from which the word came via French), the word genus, generis, means 'race, kind', cf. Greek γενος (genos), Sanskrit janas. Over the past 30 or 40 years, the term has come to mean 'sexual identity' and is used to distinguish between biological sex and the sexual identity of a person. I view it as a useful distinction along the lines of how the (biological) term race has become outmoded or changed. Race and gender, for me, are both social constructs. Social acts which are classified in one cultural as masculine are seen as feminine or effete in others. (For example, straight young men holding hands while walking in India; emigrants here learn quickly to avoid this behavior.) So, I do not find that sexual identity (gender) really has a one-to-one correspondence with (biological) sex.

Getting back to the grammatical term. In some languages words have gender (these days often called noun class). There is nothing about the word aqua in Latin that is inherently feminine, yet, when classical grammarians were assigning terms to the different kinds (i.e., genera) of nouns, they came up with masculine, feminine, and neuter. It's not even really that the endings -a and -us are masculine and feminine in Latin: e.g., agricola 'farmer' is masculine, pontus 'sea' is feminine, and genus is neuter. There is some correlation between nouns which signify animals which have biological sex, but many more that signify objects or concepts without biological sex.

quote:

Race and gender, for me, are both social constructs.

Yes, I agree, z. Gender is fairly clear, but race always confuses me. Is it color of skin? White/Black. No because we don't go any further with that. Is it religion? Jewish can sometimes be a race, but not Catholic. Is it your country? American or Chinese or French? Sometimes. On our surveys we have a selection for Pacific Islanders or Hawaiian (which is also American, right?), but then also White. Interesting, there's also a selection for Black or African American. Then there is one for Hispanic origin and Asian. These categories are all mixed up, but they're common ones used in surveys.

The ones used in surveys here are pretty dumb. "White" is, for example divided into "White:British", "White:Irish" and "White:Other"; Asian people are separated into Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi but there are no categories at all for Arabic or Middle Eastern people. The thing that you need to remember is that these categories have nothing at all to do with reality. They are politically motivated and politically devised to suit the current agendas of our Government policy makers.

quote:

"White:British", "White:Irish" and "White:Other";

That's amazing. I've not seen those categories at all. Our surveys all just say either "White" or "Caucasian."

In England I guess I'd be White:Other. Maybe not. I have ancestors from England and Ireland, as well as Norway, Germany, Holland, Scotland. So What would I say? All of the above?

See what I mean about this confusion?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

That shows what zm said earler: race and gender are social constructs. If you go back far enough, most people will have some 'foreign blood'. The majority of white people in this country are descended from British stock, but many will have immigrant parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, or whatever. Take a child of immigrant parents who fled from Nazi Germany, say, and became naturalised British citizens. Is that child "White - British" or "White - Other"?

A child whose parents came here from the West Indies would be categorised as "Black - Caribbean", but since his ancestors were slaves brought from Africa shouldn't he appear as "Black - African"? The whole system is a nonsense.

Here's the full list. I think you'll agree that it's ridiculous for all sorts of reasons.

Asian or Asian British: Bangladeshi
Asian or Asian British: Indian
Asian or Asian British: Pakistani
Asian or Asian British: Other
Black or Black British: African
Black or Black British: Caribbean
Black or Black British: Other
Chinese
Mixed White and Asian
Mixed White and Black African
Mixed White and Black Caribbean
Mixed: Other
White: British
White: Irish
White: Other
Other (Please State)

There is an especially ridiculous issue in the US, arising from the set-asides and other results of affirmative actions.

US African-Americans have protested when recent immigrants from Jamaica, for example, and Tanzania, are called "African-Americans."

The US African-Americans have demanded the recent immigrants forgo the hyphen, and be styled merely as "African Americans," thereby not using up the set-asides etc. due to the "African-Americans" proper...

When I registered for enrollment as an undergraduate student at university, I filled out one optional form for some kind of benefits with an Other category of Italo-American. The form clicked somewhere in the bureaucratic machine and I had my "non-refundable" registration fee (US$50) paid back to me. I also got included into the category of Latino/Hispanic/whatever, and for the rest of my time studying would get periodic invitation for events usually written in Spanish. These days I tend to put down Other: Ligurian, because most of my ancestors came from that ancient province on the Italian Riviera. As for the multiplying categories, at one point some forms began to allow for multiple choice statements of "race". So Tiger Woods would be African-American and Asian (Thai), etc.

quote:

Originally posted by Robert Arvanitis:
wordmatic:
Nowadays it is fashionable to escape the strictures of "facts." That opens up all sorts of possibilities.

What matters about the world is not what "is," but rather how you feel about it, and how you "self-identify."

Ok?

No, I don't think so! But then, I was never very fashionable, myself.

Wordmatic

Glad to see that Wordmatic remains fact-based.

Perhaps he, like I, can recall a time when reality did not require further adjectives...

I do get that race and ethnicity are social constructs for all of the reasons stated above. We had a similar discussion at the time of the 2010 U.S. census. It's pretty amusing to see the ethnic subcategories listed on our census forms. The British survey forms are similarly amusing, in that they completely ignore the existence of Japanese and Korean Asians while splitting other categories of Asian into multiple subcategories.

I had not looked into the history of the term "gender," so thought of it as synonymous only with "sex." I still think of it as a synonym for an individual's biological sex, but can now see your point about its also being a social construct, Z. The U.C. Davis site threw me, I think, with its exhaustive list of variations.

WM

The reason we see this multiplication of subgroups is "identity politics." Politicos love divide & conquer - easier to bribe, ethnic rivalries etc.

Yet natural assimilation makes it ever harder to exploit such tactics. See for example: http://www.deseretnews.com/art...n-race-outdated.html

quote:

I still think of it as a synonym for an individual's biological sex, but can now see your point about its also being a social construct, Z.

I see it that way, but I suppose some would be pissed. Still, it's a lot easier to designate (except for the few sex-change people) than race. That's impossible! When I saw Bob's list, I was shocked!

P.S. Robert, our dear Wordmatic is, by virtue of gender designations, female.

The lack of a separate full category for, say, Japanese and Koreans doesn't mean that they are ignored. Rather, it reflects the ethnic make up of the UK, where the large majority of Asians come from the Indian subcontinent as a legacy of the British Raj. Under the "Asian: Other" category is a host of subcategories, including "Asian: Japanese" and "Asian: Korean".

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
Under the "Asian: Other" category is a host of subcategories, including "Asian: Japanese" and "Asian: Korean".

Not on any standard government forms there aren't. the categories that people filling them in can choose from are exactly as I listed them. Maybe somebody somewhere goes through the "other" category and subdivides them but as I say, it isn't on the form.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
[QUOTE]P.S. Robert, our dear Wordmatic is, by virtue of gender designations, female.

Ah Kalleh, thank you and noted.

But what REALLY matters is how Wordmatic FEELS about it...

Well, arnie, if it's so easy, what would I check? Shu said since I don't live in England I'd have to check English Other. But he also said that people will put what they think they are. If that's the case, and I suppose it is, there goes the reliability of the survey results.

Kalleh:

Because of the intrusiveness of government, the distortions of various preference schemes and political exploitation of identity politics, many in the recent US census checked "other" and then wrote in "American."

Kalleh,

I don't know of an "English: Other" category. There's a "White: Other" category that you could use, with a subcategory "White: USA".

arnie, where is this list of subcategories? I have never seen it on any form and if the people filling in the forms aren't given a copy of it, how can they fill it in?

Sorry, arnie. I meant White:Other, and not English Other. However, I do have British blood so I suppose I could legitimately choose White:British ...or I also have Irish ancestors, so I could choose White:Irish.

Just to be clear...I am not only criticizing England's categories. The U.S. has similar ambiguous ones.

Kalleh:

Politicos prefer to say that the group-identity categories are not so much "ambiguous," as they are "flexible."

Unlike mathematics, where "mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive" is a virtue, a good hack knows the value of wiggle room.

For example, Tiger Woods' category can vary, depending on whether he is winning tournaments or cheating on his wife.

Bob,

I imagine it depends on who's asking. Schools use the list I'm talking about, but I imagine people who don't need the data in such detail simply use the top-level categories.

Certainly all the paperwork used by our college uses only the top level categories.

quote:

Unlike mathematics, where "mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive" is a virtue, a good hack knows the value of wiggle room.

Yes. That's why my daughter's White friend, whose parents were from South Africa originally though had moved here long ago, was legitimately able to categorize herself as African-American on college applications. It gave her an edge.

quote:

P.S. Robert, our dear Wordmatic is, by virtue of gender designations, female.

Ah Kalleh, thank you and noted.

But what REALLY matters is how Wordmatic FEELS about it...[/QUOTE]

Ha! I just saw this! Robert, I also feel female, so there is no confusion about me, in my mind.

WordGirlMatic

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
The lack of a separate full category for, say, Japanese and Koreans doesn't mean that they are ignored. Rather, it reflects the ethnic make up of the UK, where the large majority of Asians come from the Indian subcontinent as a legacy of the British Raj. Under the "Asian: Other" category is a host of subcategories, including "Asian: Japanese" and "Asian: Korean".

Good to know.

WM

There's an informative post on Arnold Zwicky's blog about LGBTQ and similar instances of alphabet soup.

Very interesting, arnie. I tend to agree with those who don't like the initialisms. After all, as one person indicated, it can degenerate, as with the FDF!

FDF?

* Fédération Djiboutienne de Football, the governing body of football (soccer) in Djibouti
* Finnish Defence Forces, the agency responsible for defence of Finland
* Food and Drink Federation, an organisation that represents and advises UK food and drink manufacturers
* Forms Data Format, a file format defined in Portable Document Format (PDF) specification
* Fédéralistes Démocrates Francophones (formerly known as Front Démocratique des Francophones), a French-speaking Belgian political party
* Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport (IATA code), the international airport of Martinique in the French West Indies
* FDF Telecinco, a Spanish television channel

From arnie's link:

quote:

Arne Adolfsen, tired of the whole business, mischievously suggested that the only name that would get his vote is FDF: Fags and Dykes and Friends. (I am myself comfortable with fag and dyke, but some people are horrified by them, and others use the terms only for queers who are seen to be gender-discordant in their behavior — effeminate gays and butch lesbians.)

I have to say, I am one who is uncomfortable with "fag" and "dyke."