The discussion on LGBT acronym expansion continues to show differing opinions within LGBT members.
In early February, The Huffington Post made the decision to change the title of the HuffPost Gay Voices column to HuffPost Queer Voices as a way to reclaim the word "queer" as a term of empowerment rather than a slur.
While LGBT has been the more commonly known term to describe people who do not fall into the categories of cisgender or heteronormative, the term “queer” or the expansion of the LGBT acronym to LGBTQ has been debated by younger members of the LGBT community.
Cisgender describes a person who aligns their gender with the sex they were assigned at birth. Heteronormative refers to heterosexuality as the norm.
delfin bautista, the director of Ohio University's LGBT Center, said LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
The term has been historically and traditionally used as a “catch-all for the community and … was seen to be more inclusive than the 'gay movement,' ” bautista, who uses they/them pronouns and the lowercase spelling of their name, said.
One of the alternatives that has been proposed by the public is to elongate the LGBT acronym to include more gender identities and sexual orientations. However, bautista said doing so may cause some misunderstandings to the public.
“There are people who don’t know what LGBT stands for,” bautista said. “There are people who think it’s a sandwich.”
The current term, LGBT, is not universally known or understood to stand for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, so to add even more letters can be confusing, bautista said.
“The problem (with) adding additional letters is that the acronym will become too long and … people won’t necessarily know what these different identities are,” Oliver Stone, a junior studying English and psychology, said.
Sam Haug, a sophomore studying wildlife biology and global studies — war and peace, suggested a plus sign to be added to the end of LGBTQ to become LGBTQ+.
“For something so small, I think it could have a really good impact because it shows that there are more identities,” Haug, who works at the LGBT Center and uses they/them pronouns, said.
Adding letters is a way of showing the complexity of the conversation and “how things are ever changing when it comes to our understanding of sexuality and gender,” they said.
“Queer,” as explained in The Huffington Post article, functions as an umbrella term to include other identities that may fall outside of the conventional LGBT categories, such as asexuality, genderqueer people, intersex people and many other identities.
Loran Marsan, a visiting assistant professor for women’s, gender and sexuality studies, said she identifies as queer but understands there can be a negative reaction toward the term.
“(Queer) is not as well received by older generations of LGBT people because it was hurled as a slur at them as they got beat up in the ’60s and the ’70s,” Marsan said. “They have a different context for that word than people under 40.”
Noah Smoyer, a freshman studying linguistics, said he supports a new alternative term MOGII, which stands for marginalized orientations, gender identities and intersex, to replace the use of LGBT as it has been proposed as a more inclusive and general term.
Smoyer said he supports a new term to be used as “there are no terms in which one can describe themselves as queer (without) having some sort of negative historical connotation or basis.”
While the title of the community may play an important role in influencing how the media and public view treat its members, there are more urgent issues to be discussed, Marsan said.
Marsan said problems regarding trans healthcare for faculty, gender neutral bathrooms and being yelled at or attacked because of one’s sexuality are a few examples of that.
However, respecting a person’s decision about how they name themselves could be a step toward the right direction, Marsan said.
“I think how we name ourselves has an impact on how people in the more general community … understand our needs, our wants and the problems we face,” Marsan said.
Haug said there is no right or wrong answer regarding the acronym as people have different views from one another and different beliefs of what they think would be best for the community.
Words are important as it is one of the ways human beings interact with each other, Smoyer said.
“The words we use to describe ourselves should also be considered as important as any other way that we (choose to) express ourselves,” Smoyer said.
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