We’re a product of our environments and the times in which we grew up.
I grew up in an industrial city in Ontario, Canada at a time when smoking was absolutely fine—ashtrays were in every room. Tattoos were scary markings on members of motorcycle gangs and long hair on guys represented something nebulously radical or a complete lack of direction. “Retard” was a common putdown. First Nations people were reduced to caricatures. (I recall it being funny to assume a crossed-legged sitting position and raising a hand to say, “How” while jumping off a diving board.) Polack (derogatory for people who were Polish) and Newfie jokes (about people from Newfoundland) were shared without any thought of a filter. Fat people were mocked. Kids with glasses were made fun of. Same for redheads (like me). Sometimes hateful things were said about Germans, Italians, Jews, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Basically, any group that made themselves noticed as being different and “not like the others” could be disparaged. In an oh-so-white community, race couldn’t be used to rank and hate others so people went with whatever differences stood out.
Pretty much every ridiculed factor mentioned in the preceding paragraph either no longer registers as a negative or is at least no longer something to joke about in most groups. Heck, Newfoundland, formerly abbreviated as “Nfld.,” is now Newfoundland and Labrador (N.L.). Eskimos are Inuit. The Northwest Territories is now smaller after part of it became Nunavut. Change happens. We accept. We adapt.
I’ve often wondered if there will ever come a time when we’ll run out of groups for which to be intolerant, when John Lennon’s “Imagine” will no longer be just that, when our seeming need to sort and assert false superiority will end.
Ah, but I suppose that’s a Woke dream which when you think of that as an expression is inherently paradoxical. If that’s not to be, then I wonder what group will be next on the list to mock. Who will be the new punchline? What kind of discrimination will divide society next?
As I wrote in last week’s blog post and in several others in recent years, the T in LGBTQ is under attack, not just among homophobes but by some who claim to be L, G or B. For them, the community has gotten too big and, I suspect, too hard to keep up with. There are tantrums and then there are people who can’t or won’t cope that drop to the ground, cross-legged, eyes closed, hands over ears.
No more! Make it go away. Make it stop!
The world does not stop. Every generation seeks to define itself differently from the ones before. New looks, new terms and, yes, new identities—or at least newer—seek awareness. Language and the way we exist is supposed to evolve. And yet, there are always groups that fight what seems foreign. “Why can’t THEY just shut up and be more like us?”
History repeats itself, even if the characters change.
I’ve often thought the current resistance to transgender identities and rights is a last frontier for conservatives. With gay marriage and adoption now legal, with antidiscrimination laws protecting queer people in housing and employment, homophobia is losing ground. So politicians and many citizens are going all-in to fight against trans rights. This, in turn, causes alarm for some who identify as L, G or B. Just when things seemed settled—protected, safe-ish—the pushback against trans, pronoun choices and everyone else who identifies as any other rainbow/Pride label threatens lesbians, gays and bisexuals anew. It’s like all these “new” sex and gender identities are mucking things up and, well, hello resentment.
Much of what people do who go out of their way to identify as “LGB” with nothing else allowed to tag along is argue about how lesbians, gays and bisexuals are DIFFERENT from all the other labels. It’s sexual identity versus gender identity, as if those lines can be so clearly delineated. To them it’s clear, long-established labels versus new gobbledygook.
I view their position as conveniently limited and either overtly hateful or implicitly so by means of its intentional efforts to set themselves apart. You can define yourself as narrowly as you want so it’s all about you and you don’t have to advocate for anyone else. Indeed, there has been a backlash against white cisgender gay men based on the fact many gay bars of the past glory days were dominated by them, any racial differences either shunned or fetishized. But it went beyond that. White cisgender gay men was too large a group. There was a sorting system in which “fats and femmes” were funneled out and tops were higher esteemed than bottoms. Basically, gay men, who’d been discriminated against and bullied by straight men, perpetuated the ideals of masculinity even when in spaces free of straight men. We weren’t as “free” as we purported to be when we were in our own bars.
I’ve heard groans of older white gay men. They don’t like the rainbow flag getting “cluttered” with BIPOC and trans representation. No, please go back to being quiet. We see you well enough. You’re equal as long as you’re quiet.
Yeah, I get why that’s a hard sell.
I’ll say it again: terminology will continue to change. It’s expanded the numbers in our “community” to a degree but many in younger generations who might have come out as “gay” or “lesbian” in our day are finding more specific labels better represent them. How is that a bad thing? How is being clearer about your identity an affront to those of us who went with what were the only labels available to us. A younger First Nations person today might identify as gay or lesbian but might find that 2-Spirit better embeds a cultural connotation woven into gender and sexuality.
One of the first “break-off” labels was queer. When I first started hearing it, I was uncomfortable. There was something abrasive about it. It wasn’t the conventional, gym-going, bar-hopping, dance-the-night-away gays who were calling themselves queer. Instead, it seemed to be some of the outliers who didn’t fit the mold as a status gay hottie or as something passable. It seemed to be a more politically active group. People more inclined to align during the AIDS crisis with ACT UP instead of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis or AIDS Project Los Angeles.
“Queer” was antagonistic. It brought on negative attention. It felt like calling yourself a fag. Why embrace a term of hate and repeat it? I wanted to work within systems rather than against or around them. Of course, I grew up repressed and, despite often describing myself as hating or ignoring rules, I was a conformist.
Obviously, I get what “queer” people from thirty-five years ago were doing. I thank them. I don’t see the word as having any negative association whatsoever anymore. I prefer “queer” to “gay,” which was once the all-encompassing term, often consuming lesbians when used in a broader context. Saying “gay” was less of a mouthful than always saying “gay and lesbian” and maybe tagging on “bisexual” when feeling both generous and verbose. But “gay” meant a male-oriented word was the default term in accordance with more general societal practices. In writing classes, I often wrote “he/she” when speaking of a hypothetical person but it was discouraged by instructors. When unknown, it was a he/him world. So, it’s not just the “gay community” that’s become more nuanced.
For many, pansexual better represents sexual orientation than the technically gender-rigid bisexuality. Take your pick. Go for it! To stick to “LGB” and put one’s head in the sand is an obstinate way of saying, “It was good enough for me so…”
Somewhere in that same dinner conversation, I’d expect to also hear any or all of the following sentence starters: “In my day and time…”; “When I was young…”, and “Back in the day.” Yes, things were different. Life twenty years ago is not the same as now. Thirty years ago, perhaps more different. Fifty…you get the point. Some things come back into fashion, but other things just evolve, for better or for worse.
I could go on and on. I love the label “Questioning.” Maybe it feels safer, but it also recognizes there can be an evolution or fluidity in one’s own identity in terms of sexuality and/or gender. Welcome! May some of the older members of the “community” be looked to as mentors instead of scoffers who use words like “rubbish” and “hogwash.”
But trans is still the biggest sticking point. That’s the group that people who put themselves in a “LGB” compound take most offense to. So many straight people they can align with! New mixers to attend! Look at all of us. We are not alone! Maybe “LGB” is itself a nuanced offshoot. The Log Cabin Republicans of old come to mind. If you’re mainstream lesbian, gay or bisexual enough, you can fit right in. Let all the others whose sexual and gender identities are less conforming be damned.
It's the age-old sort of intolerance I saw directed to other groups when I was a kid. Why do you have to be so different?
Not everyone fits so neatly. That’s a foundational aspect of the rainbow symbol and its permutations. I suspect that many of the people who make a conscious decision to refer to LGB instead of LGBT or LGBTQ+ fit more comfortably and, to themselves, more clearly in the L, the G or the B. Sexual orientation was the only issue. They felt 100% cisgender. That’s why they are able to so conveniently say that T is about gender so it doesn’t belong with LGB.
I want to harken Dana Carvey’s Church Lady (a drag character, incidentally) and say, “Well, isn’t that special?!”
For me and for many, sexuality and gender blur together. Rejection has come from both. The kinds of discrimination, the forms of hate, the official planbooks against varied sexual orientation and gender are the same. Freaks. Perverts. Out to get your children.
Gays and lesbians have seen this played out fully for decades. We’ve seen how being more open and fighting back changes minds. Not the minds that are too entrenched. For them, the fighting back itself is mocked. Oh, look at the gays getting all rattled up.
Again, the parallels are many. Why wouldn’t we want to unite? Why wouldn’t we join what some in the “community” may see as a broadened battle? It sickens me that a gay man or a lesbian would think, Well, I got my rights. I’m done. It sickens me more that they might think, Those trans folks and those who are diddling with gender pronouns are bringing us down with them. Yes, that’s happening but the blame goes to the haters on the right. Breeding hate in our “community” is not what I ever expected when politicians and school moms went after transgender people.
“I’m not like them” just doesn’t work for me as a reason to hate.
Again, I chose to come out as gay because I had a man’s body, I was sexually attracted to men and not to women. In truth, I struggled from my earliest years about having been born a boy. Penis? Present. But I never ever felt like a boy. I couldn’t tell anyone and there were no public figures I could look to in order to process my frustration and confusion, but I had a strong sense I’d been born with the wrong body. I felt I was a girl in every way. I felt my life would have been so much easier as a girl. There wasn’t any part of me that aligned with boy thinking, boy feeling, boy being.
If I were a young person today, I would identify as nonbinary or, more likely, trans. I would make the medical decision that I chose, rather than that society expected, to live trans. Hormones, yes. Surgery, I’m not so sure. I’m extremely medically squeamish. I view most medical procedures as invasive, including last week’s blood test. (Didn’t faint—though I have in the past. My anxiety was obvious to both the attendant and myself.) Any change would have had to happen when I was much younger, when my conviction was greater, when I had more time to work through a change in gender identity.
It’s never too late? Oh, for me it is. And I’m okay with that. I did the best I could, getting through my younger decades with what I knew at the time. I’m mulling over pronouns and whether I want to label myself as nonbinary. Those changes make more sense, but I’m still on the fence. What I do know, however, is that gender and sexuality have always been intertwined with me. The LGBTQ+ umbrella makes perfect sense to me. There are spectrums for everything. There are grays between blacks and whites. The grays actually make life clearer than the absolutism of black and white.
So, I’ll restate what I thought was the obvious: LGB with the T.
LGBTQ+. Differences within and among, yes, as it should be, but let’s work on building that community into something authentic and affirming.
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