- LGBT refers to people who are Lesbian (female gay), Gay (male gay), Bisexual, or Transgender. So three non-normative sexual orientations and one gender orientation.
- It was expanded to be LGBTQIA - LGBT plus Questioning (sometimes Queer), Intersex, and Asexual (sometimes Allies) - so another sexual orientation, another gender orientation, and those not sure. But getting to be a mouthful, people in our community started referring to 'rainbow' instead.
- And that was expanded further into LGBTQQ2IA* (LGBT Queer Questioning Two-Spirited Intersex Asexual and Allies) or LGBTTQQIAAP or a variety of other long rambles of letters.
-QUILTBAG - Queer & Questioning, Unidentified or Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender/Transexual, Bisexual, Asexual, Gay & Genderqueer - This acronym has come about only in the last few years, and has been adopted, in part, because it's so much easier to say. It has a friendlier feeling to it and evokes the image of a bunch of pieces stitched together.
- Queer is an umbrella term to mean non-normative people of sexual or gender minorities who are not heterosexual and/or not cisgender. It includes rejection of traditional gender identities and sexual orientations, but is broader and deliberately more ambiguous than the label LGBT... The queer-identified community reject several binaries as being the only options (male/female, gay/straight). The term was used pejoratively against those with non-normative lifestyles in the late 19th century, and later applied specifically to gay men, but beginning in the late 1980s, began to be reclaimed. And recently it has begun to include kinky people under the umbrella, too, as a non-normative sexual orientation.
Other acronyms used:
* GSM - Gender and Sexual Minorities
* GNC - Gender Non-Conforming
* SAGA - Sexuality and Gender Acceptance
https://mic.com/articles/52001/9-gender-and-sexuality-acronyms-you-should-learn#.xequN3Qmt
2. Self - What does it mean to you for someone to identify as Queer? How do you identify? Journal about your queerness.
- When someone identifies as Queer, to me that means that they don't feel comfortable fitting into the boxes society has set up. They aren't a cis-female feminine woman, and they aren't a cis-male masculine man. But they also aren't the flaming gay man or the butch lesbian woman that fits the stereotype of gay/lesbian that our culture has become less uncomfortable with. There are standard societal 'boxes' to check off that are male/female, gay/straight, young/old, feminine/masculine. But some people can check boxes on both sides of the slash, or don't fit either one. 'Queer' means strange or odd, but also means to spoil or ruin. Queer people spoil society's checklists; they swing results in weird directions. They don't fit well into expectations.- We/I identify as Queer (and also as Genderqueer). Because we're a multiple system, there are people in our head that are several different kinds of 'non-hetero-normative'. I identify as a transgender ftm boy who is gay. M is a butch cis-female and straight. Sam is a more feminine cis-female who is heteroflexible. Kiara is very feminine cis-female and not really interested in sex, but is generally drawn to women. Rubi is masculine cis-female and heteroflexible too. So overall we hit all over the gender, sexual attraction, and romantic interest spectrums, as well as age. And I think all the girls are into at least some kink. Really, 'queer' is the about the only short way to describe how we are!
- For me personally... If I weren't part of a system, if it was just me, I would probably do more to transition from female-bodied to living as male as possible. But because other people use the same body, I'll never do any kind of transitioning beyond clothing and such. Regardless, I identify as trangender male. I am also gay; I am only interested in men. So yeah, I could stick with the more established LGBT and cover my personal identity. But I enjoy the rejection of the idea that I have to be boy or girl. Or that I have to be one person instead of many.
3. Create - Make a piece of art (draw, print & color, design on computer, or get more creative!) that expresses your gender identity and/or sexuality.
4. Mentorship - Download and print out the Genderbread Person at http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2015/03/the-gen… (or a more recent version if there is one). Talk with another person (queer or not) about where you fall on each continua in the diagram. Encourage them to talk to you about where they identify and what that means to them.
- I printed out two of them and we both marked ours while we talked about each piece.
- I printed out two of them and we both marked ours while we talked about each piece.
- My gender identity is high on man-ness and very low on woman-ness - I'm a man.
- My gender expression is pretty much in the middle of both, since I have a female body but make an effort to be as masculine as I can, so I appear pretty androgynous. But today at the pumpkin patch two strangers referred to me as male, so I was successful in presenting on the masculine side of androgynous.
- My biological sex is, as far as I know, genetically completely female. But my body does display some male traits, like facial hair growth, so I marked the male side about 25% up from the bottom. My body is female.
- I am sexually attracted to male bodies pretty high on the scale, and women not at all.
- I am romantically attracted like three-quarters to men, and only a tiny bit to women (usually butch lesbian women).
5. Selflessness - Introduce yourself to a person who identifies as queer. Ask them what it means to them to be queer, and listen to their answer. Write a journal entry about their answer and how it made you feel. How is their queer identity different than yours? How can you help validate their experience being queer even though it's not the same as yours?
- My friend explained that she is currently identifying as heteroflexible because she is sexually attracted to women sometimes, but not romantically. And though she identifies very feminine, she likes to cross-dress. And she is also kinky. So she's very different from me, but still queer also. We talked about validation, and mostly it comes down to including her when I'm talking about 'queer folks' or 'my people' and just not treating her like she can't understand my queerness just because she experiences it differently than I do.6. Community - Find a local group or space that has outreach programs and/or safe places for people of various orientations. Visit or look around on their website. What kinds of assistance do they offer?
- The Mark, of course, is a safe place for queer people. But we also looked at Out Central, which is another local organization. They have game nights, a transgender support group, yoga classes, lesbian film nights, and gay, lesbian, and generally queer book clubs. They also have resource links to other organizations, and they promote events like Nashville Pride Weekend and the Gay5K.
7. Benevolence - Donate money or time to support a queer-supporting organization or a helping hotline and write about your feelings or experience doing so.
- Well of course we've donated a lot of time and money to The Mark, which is a very queer-supporting organization. We also donated to OutCentral, and we've joined/donated to the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. These are organizations we feel pretty good about donating to in support of queer issues. The circle of people we are around is very queer-friendly, but that's the exception rather than the rule, and these are all organizations that are aware of and actively following queer issues both locally and on a larger scale, and can influence progress in a way that I as an individual can't.
- Well of course we've donated a lot of time and money to The Mark, which is a very queer-supporting organization. We also donated to OutCentral, and we've joined/donated to the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. These are organizations we feel pretty good about donating to in support of queer issues. The circle of people we are around is very queer-friendly, but that's the exception rather than the rule, and these are all organizations that are aware of and actively following queer issues both locally and on a larger scale, and can influence progress in a way that I as an individual can't.
- So I started by searching the internet for 'best places to live queer', and I loved this opening for one of them: "LGBT best city lists are often pretty predictable: New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Berlin, Provincetown ... you know the drill."
On that list, Amsterdam was #4. Amsterdam's always been mentioned to us as a great place that is very accepting of queer people, kinky people, just very open and tolerant and liberal period. Same-sex marriage has been legal since 2001, and there's a huge annual Pride Festival. One article said "the habitués of Amsterdam’s ‘gays-only’ districts are increasingly joined at the bar by legions of open-minded ‘straights’ looking for a fashionably edgy night on the tiles. In other words, wherever Grindr may take you, you’re more likely to be turned away for wearing the wrong sneakers than for anything as irrelevant as whom you sleep with." I like that 'irrelevant'.
A great place in the U.S. to be queer, aside from the west coast, is New Orleans. It's a town that's known for embracing the weird and the flamboyant, and it has one of the largest African-American LGBT communities in the U.S. Cafe Lafitte is one of the oldest gay bars in the country, and several gay events and organizations have been in operations since the early 1950s. Louisiana was the first state in the Deep South to pass a hate crimes law that covered sexual orientation.
Although Eastern Europe is, generally, a good place to be queer, almost anywhere in Western Europe is certainly terrible. But worse, there are countries where being gay is criminal and where queer people can be legally tortured, chemically castrated, jailed, exiled - and killed. Nigeria and Uganda allow homosexuality to be punished by death by stoning, or up to 14 years in jail. They even have laws punishing people for failing to report people suspected of being gay.
And being in the U.S. doesn't make it safe to be queer. Many towns, especially in the Deep South or in Texas, score terribly on any scale measuring quality of life for queer residents. From the HRC Municipal Equality Index (2014), some of the worst cities:
Southaven, Missisippi
Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Mobile, Alabama
Huntsville, Alabama
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Laredo, Texas
Mesquite, Texas
Lubbock, Texas
Irving, Texas
9. Advocate - Research some bills, laws, or policies that are negatively impacting the Queer population. Then write a letter or email or place a call to your Senator or Congress member or person in power to let them hear your voice and opinion on equal rights.
- MM signed a petition at the ACLU's Tennessee site supporting equal rights for LGBT equality (I can't sign such things as I don't have any individual legal standing). Also she's sending an email to some Senators or Representatives about SB 752/HB 892, which jeopardizes gay marriages in Tennessee (http://www.aclu-tn.org/dont-try-to-jeopardize-tennessee-marriages/).
10. Diligence - Promise to regularly check on the bills or actions that are hurting the Queer population, and to do something about it. Send an email, make a call, go to a protest, write a letter, teach a class. Make it part of your routine, put it on your kaper chart, or just commit it to your schedule.
Patch - https://www.etsy.com/listing/212930020/queer-scout-badge
Alternate patch (rainbow flag) - If using the flag, adjustments can be made to the sheet to promote different terms instead of 'Queer'.
No comments:
Post a Comment