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Hello, I'm one of those queer people.
For my two cents, I find in conversations it's easiest to refer to it as the "queer community" or "gay community." If I'm feeling an acronym, the first one I reach for is LGBT. And that's me speaking as one of those q+ folks.
Now for me, I prefer to use Queer because it's sort of an umbrella term. For instance, all lesbians are queer, but not all queer people are lesbians. It's also great for people who don't like labels, because it doesn't pigeonhole someone into a specific box.
The term "queer" has a little history behind it too. When I was in middle school, being called queer was like, the ultimate insult. It was used pejoratively, and it felt bad to hear it. Nowadays we're reclaiming the word, and it loses its evilness. That all said, you can call people "queer," but don't call a person "a queer" or else you're being insulting. It's to be used like an adjective, not a noun.
For my money, this is the most inclusive flag without singling out a particular community.
Generally speaking, I don't like an overly verbose acronym. It's part of why I stop at LGBT or LGBTQ instead of going all the way to LGBTQ+, or as my government seems to want to say, LGBTQ2IA+. In my opinion, the effort to make the community more inclusive by adding more sub-communities to the acronym has the opposite effect.
I'm a bi guy and I've never used LGBTQ2IA+ in my life. But I like it when the government does. I like to see them falling over themselves trying to be inclusive. Struggle, bitch, it's about time something was even a tiny bit difficult for those fucks.
I don't think OP needs to do the same, though. Queer community, gay community, LGBT, that all seems fine to me.
I've never seen/heard the 2 before, what is the 2?
The 2 or sometimes characterized 2S refers to the Two-Spirit community.
I'm realizing now this may only be a thing in my part of the world, which may go to show that an overly inclusive acronym is actually divisive.
I would not consider that divisive, I would say I need to do better. But also, we all have life to learn and some knowledge travels faster than others. Please don't change.
"Divisive" might not have been the right word here. I just meant that it can add to the confusion :)
Seconded! Don't change, just because a term used by the North American first nations people is unknown to me, as a Scandinavian, doesn't mean that you shouldn't use it in an everyday context. Just that I probably won't, because ... because what actually? I mean I'm Danish, we colonized Greenland, Iceland, and the Faeroe Islands. As a culture we really wrecked the native Greenlandic culture. I should probably look into how to include the Inuits in the future then.
Writing that sentence I wanted to make sure, that Inuit is the preferred term. And in 5 minutes I learned that there's not just one Greenlandic language, there's actually three. I'm in my 40s, I've lived in Denmark my entire life, and received an average Danish education - WTF? why haven't I learned something as basic as this about my fellow countrymen? Danish is taught in Greenlandic schools, but we can't bother to know that there's three Greenlandic languages?!?
Now I really need to figure out, how to include Greenlanders, like the Two-Spirit community, but in a localized version.
The other question/issue I have with the long abbreviation is does the order of the letters matter? It's currently settled on L->G->B [...] but is that just by tradition or does it signify some other importance [order added? relative size of community? etc]. If you remembered all the characters but couldn't remember the sequence is it disrespectful to list them alphabetically or try to use the typical order and possibly transpose a couple? I would assume there's a process for deciding when to add a designation to the abbreviation, how do things get decided against and what does that mean if you feel there's something that should be included but isn't? You wouldn't want to gatekeep someone's genuinely held identity, but you can't list everything, and if you add a "everything else" then what's the point of a list in the first place other than increased prominence in relation to "everything else"?
It definitely feels like a more conversation-friendly catch-all (such as "queer") is more tenable instead of constantly adding or changing designations to refer to a nebulous collective group. At its core, basically that group is anyone that considers themself not CISHET, and any extra specificity is certainly important for identity and community building but probably not needed in typical conversations/references.
Another thought just occurred to me, how does screen reading assistive tech. deal with seeing
LGBTQ2IA+-- does it just read out every character or will it try to pronounce it like a word? Either would be varying levels of jarring to the user I'd think.Sorry for dropping this kinda stream of consciousness rant on your comment, and I don't consider myself part of the community so it's really not for me to say anyway, but I was glad to see a similar sentiment against the abbreviation reflected throughout this post and particularly from your comment.
I have a couple different opinions on the order of the letters. Normally, I'd say that order doesn't matter because it's a collective, and the order comes from the point that communities merged together. For instance, there were originally alliances of Lesbians and Gays in the 70's, but Trans often wasn't considered its own thing until sometime in the 90's. And since Queer was originally used as a slur, it didn't make sense to add it until even later when sentiment had changed.
So usually what you see happening is more letters getting added on to the end at the point of adoption. However, and I just learned this today, the government of Canada today is now using 2SLGBTQI+ as their official acronym. This breaks convention for a couple of reasons, in that Two-Spirit is represented with '2S', which means that it now has precedence and more symbols than the other communities in the group.
They say this is to represent that the Two Spirit community would be the historically oldest group in the collective. I'm not sure if I really believe that though, since these labels are about human sexuality, and that's been around as long as there have been humans. There was no 'first' sexual or gender minority in my opinion. This feels more like a do-nothing feelgood thing where a government that's failed to do right by its indigenous people pats itself on its back for being inclusive. Which doesn't mean I'm not happy to see it, it just also feels jarring and weird, and I doubt that the acronym will actually see much practical use when people are talking to each other.
Mm, problem is op is a cishet. We can use words like queer and alphabet mafia, but they are...different from the mouth of an outsider (for want of a better word)
I think there are ways OP can use queer respectfully, and there are ways they may accidentally slip into something that can sound homophobic, so, tread with caution. "The queer community" is fine, that reads to me with the same respect as "queer theory" in an academic setting. "The queers" =homophobic (unless you are part of that community and are being ironic), "are you queer?" =also bad, "my queer colleague" =not good unless that is the specific label they identify with, etc.
Alphabet mafia is best left to the Gen Z kids on TikTok, even as one of them queers myself I'd never use that in a serious setting.
Yeah it's a prickly one.
It seems that people disagree with you, based on your votes. I don't get it, I am an outsider, I'm going to stay an outsider. No matter how many black friends I had, I would never consider using the N-word either, because I'm not black, I'm not a member of the community, and I don't know how it is to live your life under those circumstances.
So as OP I can honestly say that I'm not really considering "queer". One thing, as I've already ranted above, is that an English context its history is in a derogatory usage, and shaking that past is difficult, and impossible for me to comfortably pull off. But in a Danish context the word makes no sense. "Trans" and the various permutations of the letters are used in Danish, but "queer" never has been. I believe the closest word would be "bøsse", but that is strictly used to describe homosexual men.
Eh, it's the internet, we're talking about queer matters and I intimated there may be something the cishet can't have. I wouldn't read into the downvotes lol.
Identifying as Queer or using the word Queer can even be contentious among certain circles within the community itself these days, depending on your generation and terf/tumblr exposure. i wouldn't stick my foot in that beartrap if I were in your shoes. Generally referring to it as The Community is good though.
I find that take very problematic. Not because of your opinion on who can or cannot use words like queer, but because you aren't giving a meaningful alternative. What language should an ally use to avoid stepping on someone's toes?
Personally, I think intent is very important in this sort of context, so I don't see issue with words like queer when used earnestly in support. Though I know my experience isn't universal, and I think OP sees that and is trying to be mindful.
They do have options though - lgbt, lgbtqa, lgbtqa+, even 'gay community' are all widely used .
Although i saw an auto-transcriber turn lgbtqa into 'legittabittaque-ah" once, which i feel we all desperately need to add to our lexicon.
Perfect! I assumed those were the alternatives you'd meant, but without saying them I wasn't sure.