2/3/19 @ 10 something a.m.
The phone rings and is Fred. Fred is one of my oldest gay friends, in age but not in time known. Hi Fred how’s life treating you? I answered. Oh, just swell Mary! (Mary is not my name but a reference to Mary Queen of Scots; don’t ask is a long story and perhaps the subject for another diary).
So what is the grace of this call? (He hardly ever calls, just sends me messages) Well I just received this email with the acronym LGBTQIA and I was wondering if you knew what the IA stands for? Queen I have no idea! I replied. But hold on I’m curious too.
I went to the computer and Google it. As I was typing “What does IA” the rest of the question came in the drop down list. I clicked on it and what came out was astounding; row after row of questions and answers. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Fred?
Yeess. He replied. (Whenever I say “Fred?” it means that there is a long or incongruous answer coming up)
Do you remember when the term gay was first used to refer to us?
Well, yes I do. I think it was sometime in the sixties, early sixties. That’s when faggot no longer had an effect on us.
And do you remember when the acronym LGBT was first used?
Ok you are making my mind work, however sometime in the 90’s, late 90’s. What is this? I am not senile yet you know! Are you going to tell me or are you going to make me turn my Stone Age computer on? I’ll have my answer by tonight but I’ll have my answer….. By now I was rolling my eyes.
Fred! FRED! I interrupted him. What is it that that you have in your hands now and you are communicating with me?
Really, Mary?
Yes really, Fred, you old queen!
My phone. He answered.
No, I said. It’s your IPhone, which is really, also a mini computer; with an assistant called Siri
Oh go f**k yourself. He replied.
No seriously, I said. If you ask her she would have told you.
(Ok, I know that by now Fred must be getting mad at me so I answered his question.) “I”, Fred, means intersexual and “A”, means asexual.
(Fred) Ok I’m old and know what asexual is but intersexual? WTF is that?
Well, according to Wikipedia “Intersex people are born with any of several variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies".” I answered.
(Fred) Isn’t that the same as hermaphrodite? After a few or more than a few seconds Fred asks “are you there?” yes I answered. It’s just that I ‘m re-reading this. And if I am interpreting this right, it means that is more than the male or female genitalia it’s I guess what makes you identify with one of the sexes. I didn’t go into the many other references I cited above with Fred because I, myself, had to look into it as I had no idea what they meant.
We interchanged a few more insults a la “Boys in the Band” or “Vicious” and agreed on getting together later for a drink or two.
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After going through the many questions and definitions my heart sunk. I was also confused with all of the labels. Then I click on the story Why LGBT initialism keeps growing - Chicago Tribune .
What? So the more initials in the acronym the more inclusive we are? Wait, wait I have to give some context to all of this.
Fred is only a decade or a decade and a half older than me so when neither of us knew immediately what the “I” or the” A” was in the acronym that our generation created, well we were confused. I am 61. You see in Fred’s and my generation the Gay Flag and the acronym LGBT was created to explain, if you will, what up to that point was being just called “gay”. Our parents and elders were confused as to what we were. To them, we were an aberration of nature. We knew better. We knew we were different. We knew that we knew what those differences were and we knew that those differences were not necessarily obvious to others. So we had to come up with a way to explain it. That is how the LGBT acronym came to be.
I personally don’t know who coined the acronym but by the L being in front of the G it must have been a lesbian. Some may clutch their pearls or family jewels at this most chauvinistic sentence; however I stand by it as I would rather face a WWE wrestler in an alley than a butch. And I say this out of experience with scars and all to show for it. So ladies first.
Anyway, whichever way it came about it explained what the gay community was back then. Namely, we were lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual individuals who were like any other human being. It was just that we identified sexually differently. To us in the community, we had known that these differences had been in the annals of history for a very long time. We individually had at one point or another inquired as to what it was that we were feeling. Some of us learned what that was through literature, others through history, others through the sciences and yet others through the good old verbal tradition.
I remember that personally I didn’t like the labels that we were assigning to each other but did recognized the necessity for them at the time. All I wished back then was for others to see me as a normal human being. I saw the labels as a way to separate me from the rest of humanity and I didn’t want that at all. None of the other people in the gay community wanted that either.
To see that today we are assigning even more labels to ourselves it saddens me. It means that my generation and Fred’s did not pass on the hard lessons we learned.
The term “gay” means in the dictionary basically either of two things 1) happy, 2) homosexual. Why do you think we have been called gay all of this time? I tell you why. Because DAMN if I am going to show you that I am suffering while you are deprecating me. I will self deprecate before YOU EVER WILL! I will laugh and smile but I will NEVER cry and give you the satisfaction while you are putting me in the police wagon. That is the real meaning of the term gay as view from my own experience.
I have to confess that I have been out of the gay community for a while. The last time I stepped into a gay bar was back in 2000. Today my drinks are at home or at friends home and I have no idea what the gay scene is. But I’ll bet that the bars don’t have labels at the door. I’ll bet you that they are more homogeneous than in my time; so why the labels?
I leave you with this; just as in the lyrics and intent of the song “Born this Way” by my queen Lady Gaga.(Courtesy bow) Whatever you identify with don’t label yourself with any other label than human; to do so is to separate you from the only kind that we are; HUMAN.
Peace, love to all and love thyself baby.