If you've ever wanted to know...

[kaberett]

... what happens when you sit me down with a tight deadline, a bad case of fatigue and a glass of wine, here's your answer.

tl;dr I compare identities to flowerpots, alongside other... vivid... metaphors.

Comments

[liv]

Interesting post. You're definitely right that the ever-expanding acronym thing is always going to exclude someone, and it's too fraught to use Queer as a catch-all term for everybody. Punctuation doesn't only break URLs, it's not even easily pronounceable, so asterisks and pluses are very likely to get left out.

It's sort of sad to me that you find LGBTea to be cutesie and excluding. When I was a student, our LGB society, my first ever Queer-friendly space where I learned so much and met people who inspire me and started having an identity rather than just a problem, had recently changed its name to LGBTSoc in order to be more inclusive. There was a gay guy (cis AFAIK) who like me was a young undergrad and very new to the idea of having his identity acknowledged, and he was not out to his family. He went home for his first vacation and his parents overheard him on the phone telling a friend that he'd see them at LGBTSoc next term, and he had to think on his feet so as not to accidentally out himself, and claimed it was a tea-drinking society "Leaves, Granules and Bags Tea Society".

When he came back and told this story to the rest of us in the soc, several people said, ooh, that's the coolest idea ever, let's actually have LGB-Tea. And that group was such a boon to me as a student, we met regularly for tea in people's rooms and made friends and it was low-key and welcoming and comfortable and supportive. Plus it was an alternative to the events run by and for gay men which were mostly about clubbing and drinking and pulling, and to the events run by and for lesbians who were mostly post-grads and very, very political and talked a lot of theory and I was just never queer enough for them. So there was this LGB-Tea which was a place for bi people and people who were still figuring out their their gender and orientation and straight, binary gendered, apolitical trans people (who didn't need to argue their right to exist with radical feminists at every single event ever). Maybe we should have said LGBT-Tea rather than making the pun. But you know, a lot's changed in 15 years, my nostalgia for a space where I could be a not very radical but still not straight cis person isn't the important thing here.

I can see the case for GSM, but it's a bit like BME, it's sort of bureaucratic sounding, it's the generic name for the group of people that one shouldn't discriminate against. I can't imagine claiming "I am a member of a gender or sexual minority" as my identity. But too bureaucratic is definitely less problematic than excluding trans* and not easily labelled Queer people, so I should probably try to get used to it.

[sorrillia]

I tend to find the really-long-acronym solutions (i.e. "QUILTBAG", "FABGLITTER", "LETSGAB" (my high school's relevant club was called that), etc) rather unlikable myself. Among other things, I'm not really convinced that they help with not being exclusionary, because even if your label is included in the list, you start to get the impression that it was just included because it was convenient for spelling out whatever word someone thought sounded cool. (I also happen to particularly dislike "FABGLITTER" because I feel like it imposes a particular stereotyped aesthetic on the whole community.)

[liv]

You're right there. I mean, I understand the impulse to make clever acronyms, which at the very least are more likely to be taken up than unpronounceable alphabet soup. But they're not the answer to inclusion issues.

[kaberett]

[This is thoughtful and thought-provoking and I intend to come back to it probably after tomorrow. Until tomorrow it is all the volcanoes all the time. Thank you for leaving it!]

[liv]

Yay volcanoes! And I'm pleased that you found my comment thoughtful, it was mostly just babbling about my own experiences.

[kaberett]

Okay, so, first off: that post was a touch more... polemical than I actually am on the subject. What can I say? Tight deadline, irritating living situation... ;)

Secondly, I think that Leaves Granules & Bags Tea Society is very funny, and very touching, and well done to him - and, yes, I do understand that having space to just... sit down and have a cup of tea, instead of having a choice of The Scene or nothing, is also really, really important.

But... yeah, I am kinda sad about making the pun where it's not actively claimed by a bunch of trans* people? And mostly it isn't? Sounds like that wasn't necessarily the case for your group, though!

As for GSM, I see it much more as a label for an organisation than as one for an individual IYSWIM? Because it is a broad church - I'd be totally fine to say "I work for the [university of whatever] GSM campaign", but similarly would not claim GSM as a label for myself.

And, yes, it is bureaucratic as all get-out - but to my frustration it's still the best overarching category I've _seen_. So: would love alternatives; at the moment I am still merely trying to raise awareness about it :-)

Hope any of that was coherent ;)

[naath]

I think my identity is too complex and individual (snowflake!) to sum up as "GSM" (or QUILTBAG, or LGBT, or queer, or etc) and if I was talking about me then I'd try to describe my special-uniqueness. But for an umbrella term, to describe everyone who doesn't fit into the straight, cis, (serial) monogamous role it's not possible to have something that feels personal because there's so much diversity that probably the only thing we all have in common is not being a member of the group-in-power (I'm still not sure that being not-cis and not-straight are really very similar sorts of things; except in as much as they are also similar to being not-white or not-male or not-any-other-privileged-group - but it's clear that enough people think they are that I'm outvoted).

My main problem with GSM is that it sounds rude (if you say "jism" rather than "gee-ess-em", I am open to other possibilities); QUILTBAG has the advantage of working as a word. But such considerations are lesser than the consideration of being inclusive.