How "LGBT" (even adding Q) isn't really inclusive. And what we can do to change it.

So I read, the other day, this great article about a Texas congresswoman who was elected as an “out” lesbian. She recently came out that she is, in fact, pansexual which opened up a whole world of issues and discussions amongst my friends and I. Now, most of my friends are open and welcoming people so there wasn’t any of the arguments about how she shouldn’t be allowed to be in Congress or any of that. We got to discussing the number of people who are excluded from acceptance all too often even in circles where being who you are is more than OK.  

One of my friends said (and I’m paraphrasing): It’s dumb that anyone isn’t ok with this since everyone is on the Kinsey Scale anyways. Of course the conversation spun off into some pretty cool points but I couldn’t help but think about that fact that while she was being “progressive” by even mentioning the Kinsey Scale, she was actually kind of wrong. I mean, where on the Kinsey Scale does pansexual even fall? That’s impossible to plot.

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In fact, where does pansexual fall in the “LGBTQ” system? That system is, at its core, binary, and human gender and sexuality is not. The Kinsey Scale is also a binary system on which most people can’t fit. In defense of the Kinsey Scale it is old and doesn’t seek to define a whole person, but it is referenced an awful lot even not by name.

Why not? Why are you attacking the LGBTQ community, its name, and its unity? I’m not. I’m defending it, protecting it, and seeking to make it more inclusive. If you have already passed your judgment on me and my thoughts, then you can stop reading here. Since reaching an opinion and understanding is the end, if you want to at least see what I have to say, even if you hate it, keep reading.  If you take issue with something that I say, awesome I think disagreement breeds knowledge but before you disagree read the whole thing. 

I like to joke with my friends that gay men and lesbians have nothing in common. It’s in jest of course, but the point is that gay men are always going to be attracted to men and lesbians are always going to be attracted to women (by definition, not identity).  But when we first start to open our minds from the hetero-normative culture we live in the first encounter we are likely to have is with homosexuality. It’s the most accepted, the most shown on TV shows, and the most able to be given some form of “equality” even with the lack of equality currently in this country. That is what gay men and lesbians have in common, they are both homosexual.  By definition they are attracted to their same gender or sex.

Sadly, for most of society it stops there. I think it’s because it’s easier for people to have two things to think about than an infinite number of things to think about. Either/or is easier than any/all. This is where the Kinsey Scale comes in. If you didn’t click on the link above and don’t know what that is, it is basically a scale that says everyone falls somewhere between straight and gay. You might be 100% straight or gay or you might be 60/40, 20/80, 95/5, etc. You choose either/or. You are either straight or you are gay.  Maybe you are somewhere in between these two choices, but you are definitely not something else.  Even bisexuality at its core doesn’t take issue with the scale because you can be attracted to both men and women.

Bisexuality. Just that word alone will bring out some interesting thoughts from people. “why won’t he just choose”, “she’s just on the train to gay-town”, “he’s straight but trying to be progressive”, “she’s just trying to justify being promiscuous”. Whoa. Some of these comments will even come from gay/lesbian people. We have broken down the thought process behind attraction. It is no longer either/or but rather any/all. It is a big concept to grasp, especially if you yourself are only attracted to one sex, and even more so if you have only ever been exposed to single-sex attraction. So what is bisexuality? Why does it get a coveted spot in the initialing of non-heterosexual attraction?

Bisexuality is the third branch of hetero/homosexuality. Hetero, which more or less means “other” and homo which means “same”, bi just means “two”. Bisexuality is attraction to two genders, men and women.  It is a pretty basic concept, it does not mean a need to sleep with everyone all the time. And while it is true that some people may identify as bisexual while they are still figuring it all out, not all bisexual people are on their way to “gay-town”.

Bisexuality got it’s lucky spot because it falls so perfectly into the two-sided system of attraction. Quick recap: L-women attracted to women, G-men attracted to men, B-people attracted to both men and women. 3/5ths of the way through the letters and we haven’t even left the very basic concept of binary gender attraction. And TQ doesn’t really cover the rest.

T is kind of the younger brother of L, G, and B. L, G, and B like to play 3 player games, and T is usually left out. A lot of times L, G, and B get all the way to the party and realize they left T at home.  It’s a sad life for T. I’ve seen protest signs that say “the T is not silenT”. There are a couple reasons I think this happens, but let’s start with a quick introduction to our little friend. T stands for transgendered. It’s weird sort of that it’s even really grouped in with Lesbian, gay, and bisexual because it is not the same. Being that it is not the same it is easy to exclude it, even accidentally. Think of 4 ball players hanging out together: 3 of them play football and one of them plays water polo.  Even if they are all great athletes the water polo player is going to get left out, he does not play football. (I may have just lost half of the gay men readers with that reference…just kidding, sort of)
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Transgendered refers to a person who was born one gender but identifies as the other.  So if a boy goes his whole life feeling like girl, he is transgendered. Yes, it is more complicated than that (I can hear the shrieks) but for the sake of time, I’m boiling it down.  I’m sure I could (and will) write a whole thing just on transgenderedness.  What is important here is what transgender is NOT. Transgender does not refer to a person’s attraction to other people. L,G, and B do.  The even bigger problem is when you realize that “transgender” doesn’t really include very many identities that don’t fit into our gender binary society. For example, the boy we talked about earlier: if he goes his whole life feeling like a girl does that automatically make him transgendered? No. He may feel like a girl but still identify as a boy. Or, he may identify as both or neither genders. But these folks are not included in “transgendered”.

Often times they may identify as gender-queer, two-gendered, or non-gendered. The term transgendered pretty quickly implies that the person has TRANSitioned. You can see, probably, where this implication comes from, being that the prefix “trans” is in both words. Transitioning being switching to  the gender they identify as, either with surgery or with other non-surgical methods. (again, this is very basic and boiled down and I can imagine the number of people twitching in their seats). The point is, the T is LGBT does not include any kind of non-binary gender identities.

Pansexual, which we mentioned earlier, does not get a spot. This is the attraction to people regardless of gender or sex, including transgendered people. What is the difference between this and bisexual?  Pan means all. Of course they are similar and there may be people who identify as bisexual who by definition are more pansexual and the same goes for identifying as pansexual. The difference is that bisexual implies attraction to two genders, while pansexual implies attraction to people without reference to gender.

There are also androphilia and gynephilia.  Androphilia being the attraction to men/masculinity without regard to the gender of the person feeling the attraction and gynephilia being the same concept but attracted to women/femininity.   But we already have “attracted to men and attracted to women” in the initials with lesbian and gay. That is true, but lesbian has an implication of gender and so goes gay. Since they imply you are attracted to your same sex, it automatically implies you are that sex.

There are lots of other identities, some with official labels and some without, I could spend hours listing them. Go to google and type in “sexual orientation” or “gender identity”.  The important point is that only 4 of them are definitively noted. Somebody somewhere noticed that, because they added “Q” to the mix. Q, which stands for Queer, is a pretty encompassing concept.  Queer means “deviating from the expected or normal”.  Of course we could argue for days about what is normal ,and why is anybody deviating, and that is too close to deviant, which is negative. Plus queer used to be used as a negative and mean word. But either 1) everything is normal in which case we need not even have an “LGBTQ” community or groups and their must already be equality for everyone everywhere or 2) we live in a hetero-normative society and people who are not cisgendered and straight need to identify themselves. Unfortunately, it’s still #2 for now. And so queer, by definition, includes L, G, B, T, and everyone that never got tossed in the mix in the first place, and everyone we haven’t even met yet.

All we are doing by saying LGBTQ is elevating the “normal” (LGBT) and lowering those that are outside the outside. If LGB is already being made to be second class citizens and T is being ignored and thus becoming a strange version of third class citizen how far down are the people who don’t fit any of those categories falling?

If the LGBTQ and A for allies community really wants equality, shouldn’t it start with equality by example? I say get rid of the old school LGBT, who needs it? It’s implied in the word queer that you might be cis/gay or lesbian. Everybody gets on equal footing because everybody, not just those outside the already outside, has to define their identity if it comes up. Yeah, it’s harder that way. But it’s one step closer to equality.

Queer pride parade. Queer allies. Queer bar. So much more inclusive!

*This does happen in some inclusive parts of the world (and also some mean parts of the world), that queer is used as an encompassing term. To those who are already doing it inclusively: GO YOU! When you know people who don't fall in the simple categories its easy to use queer just out of necessity