January comes only once every year

[Verbivore]

Jan 29, 2022 9:56:48 GMT Little Jack Horner said:

I have just come across this abbreviation in invitation to attend an online webinar. We have talked before about these “alphabetic“ abbreviations so I thought people might be interested to see this one. I’m afraid it doesn’t mean anything very much to me. Can anyone help?  2SLGBTQIA+.

LJH:

2SLGBTQIA+ = Two Spirit / 2S, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer / Questioning, Intersex, Androgynous / Asexual (+ anything else relevant that one might wish to include).

The ‘2S’ part is for two-spirit. That term is used in some cultures (especially native North American peoples and some Pasifika) to describe a person with both a feminine and a masculine spirit living in the same body and can apply to sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or spiritual identity. (Such people were/are often regarded as shamans or had other special roles within their tribes / cultures.)

Those two-spirit people have been recognised and so called in their cultures for a long time before Europeans / academics arrived on the scene with alphabet-long initialisms. Two-spirit has been culturally appropriated, rightly or wrongly, to expand the 'inclusive' alphabet soup that is, as far as I’m concerned, adequately covered by queer (though queer is rejected by some such folk).

Another variant I’ve seen is LGBTQ2S+ (merely a different ordering of the components, though missing the I and A).

A few years ago I encountered another new sexuality-related term: thruple. It was coined by some folk after the equal-marriage laws were passed to describe long-term / permanent 3-way relationships. I have neighbours who comprise a thruple.

It's a queer world – or perhaps these days it's a 2SLGBTQIA+ world.

[Little Jack Horner]

Thank you. I don’t really understand why people find it necessary to “identify“ with any particular sexual or gender orientation, let alone take “pride” in it. I have never felt the need to identify as heterosexual – but of course, my gender has never resulted in my being targeted or harassed. Perhaps that is the reason.

[Verbivore]

Jan 29, 2022 21:17:59 GMT Little Jack Horner said:

Thank you. I don’t really understand why people find it necessary to “identify“ with any particular sexual or gender orientation, let alone take “pride” in it. I have never felt the need to identify as heterosexual – but of course, my gender has never resulted in my being targeted or harassed. Perhaps that is the reason.

Nail. Hammer. Hit.

Among the reasons for declaring one's sexual identity and pride in it are the historical facts of our invisibility and shaming. "If we don't talk about them, they might go away. If we shame them, they might conform, or at least hide and so not embarrass us." It's part of the movement to subvert the dominant paradigm, as numerous '70s bumper stickers incited.

[Twoddle]

"If we don't talk about them, they might go away. If we shame them, they might conform, or at least hide and so not embarrass us."

Any chance of left-handers being added to the ever-growing abbreviation? Perhaps another S for Sinistral?

[Verbivore]

Jan 29, 2022 23:05:08 GMT Twoddle said:

"If we don't talk about them, they might go away. If we shame them, they might conform, or at least hide and so not embarrass us."

Any chance of left-handers being added to the ever-growing abbreviation? Perhaps another S for Sinistral?

Why not, Twod! The B and A could also be expanded to include bidextrous and ambidextrous. ;-)

[Dave Miller]

I’m beginning to get very annoyed at this alphabet soup stuff.

OK, so I’m gay, and I like, where relevant, not to hide that. In that sense, and in the sense that such people have been marginalised/discredited/maltreated in the past, I share something with, say, a
lesbian or a transexual. I don’t otherwise share much at all. I am me, they are they.

Assembling a long string of letters to gather together “people who have non-standard sexual construction or preference” emphasises a division between these people and the rest of society. I prefer to lessen such division; to regard any and everyone as part of society.

[Verbivore]

Jan 31, 2022 7:08:19 GMT Dave Miller said:

I’m beginning to get very annoyed at this alphabet soup stuff. […]

Dave: I became annoyed with it once it expanded beyond two letters (and an ampersand): G&L. I got even more annoyed with it when militant lesbians insisted on placing their letter first in the list in order to redress some imagined wrong such as 'men have always oppressed us and taken the lead in everything, so we're going to put ourselves first'.

It was when I was running the local chapter of PFLAG that I became over-familiar with the ever-expanding initialism when everyone and his/her/its cat/dog/monkey wanted in on it. It has become self-parodying.

In the 1980s and '90s when we men were trying damn hard to be inclusive, the lesbians didn't want, for need of a better term, a bar of us gay men so they formed their own separatist groups to keep themselves 'pure' and 'free of men's oppression'. Then when the men's operations, including AIDS councils and social groups, were successful and raking in the dollars, suddenly the lesbians wanted back in the 'inclusive' club we men had founded: they saw the pot of gold and raided it – under, of course, the banner of "we're all queer in this together". 

Then they excluded us, spent the money, and left things bankrupted and broken!

Me bitter? Nah – just pissed off at the hypocrisy and double dealing.

And the alphabet soup.