L is gay
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In the last 11 years, this has increased by 4.1 percentage points.
Today, over 20% of Gen Z adults – those between the ages of 18 to 26 – identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, Gallup reports. While sexual identities can and do change over time, bisexuality is its own identity, not just a path to coming out as gay. The “T” was added to include our transgender brothers and sisters in the early 2000s, and “LGBT” was the standard for many years after that.
The “Q” was officially added in 2016, though many people had been using it for years prior.
What Are The New Letters in LGBTQ+?
The new letters in the LGBTQ+ acronym have been added to expand the inclusivity of our community further.
Being an ally means allowing the people in your life to be fully themselves, without fear of judgment, harassment, or danger.
And there’s no way to know someone’s gender or sexual identity by just looking at them, so ask!
You can use gender-neutral pronouns until you know for sure what they’re comfortable with. Here’s a quick rundown of what the other letters mean:
- Queer: Originally meaning “strange” when it was first used in the 16th century, it became a homophobic slur around the turn of the 20th century.
The colors represent:
- Dark orange: gender non-conformity
- Orange: independence
- Light orange: community
- White: unique relationships to womanhood
- Pink: serenity and peace
- Dusty pink: love and sex
- Dark rose: femininity
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Some also take the Q to mean questioning.
In recent years, I and A have been added, meaning intersex and asexual, respectively.
A plus sign is often attached at the acronym's end to include identities that may not fit into the other letters, such as pansexual or Two-Spirit.
What does lesbian mean?
Lesbian refers to a woman who is romantically, physically and/or sexually attracted to other women.
Before this, “gay” was a slur used to harm and degrade men in this community.
The community embraced the word “gay” over words like “homophile” and “homosexual”, because it was a word that didn’t refer explicitly to sexual activity.
In 1983, in a criticized effort to prevent the spread of HIV through blood transfusions, men who have sex with men were banned from donating their blood. The LGBTQIA+ meaning has grown, but we continue to honor the history of those who came before us, including the bisexual people who marched at the first gay rights marches.
Bisexuality can sometimes be misjudged as a “pit stop” on the way to being gay, but it isn’t.
And so, gay men and the trans community took the brunt of the public hysteria.
It got pretty ugly from there, and I’d rather not go into the details. Some nonbinary people, or those whose gender identities are outside of the gender binary of solely male and female, may also identify with this term.
Lesbian women can be attracted to lesbians, bisexual women, pansexual women, among others.
In the decades since, the science around HIV and AIDS has given us much more information about what causes the disease, how it’s passed on, and more crucially, how it can be treated.
But at the time, none of this information was available to anyone. This might include the way you dress, getting prescribed hormone therapy, and/or gender-affirming surgeries.
In 2018, a new flag was created featuring a seven-stripe layout with the color ranging from orange to pink shades. In Spirited Away, a witch makes her employees forget their names to keep them trapped and loyal only to her. Where gay men’s representation was pretty poor, lesbians weren’t represented much at all, and so the G tended to go first in the public imagination as well.
The push towards putting the L first in LGBT began with the AIDS crisis of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
“I remember being so moved by them because gay men hadn’t been too kind to lesbians.
He wrote, “[it] created a level of solidarity between gay men and lesbians that didn’t exist before.”
As lesbians continued to challenge patriarchal structures of power outside and, crucially, within queer spaces, gay men also recognized the role lesbians played in the AIDS crisis.
And so, she decided to create the San Diego Blood Sisters and established an account with the blood bank to designate those with HIV and AIDS as the recipients of the donations.
In July of that year, the Blood Sisters held their first drive. You might have a friend or family who identifies as "lesbian," but were unsure of the exact definition.
The acronym isn’t typically standardized, so some communities may add additional gender or sexual identities, especially if they’re representing a community center or non-profit dedicated to those communities.
What Do The Letters in LGBTQIA+ Stand For?
The “LGBTQIA+” meaning of the letters represents different facets of our community.
The term “lesbian” first appeared in the 1800s to describe a woman who loved women, just as Sappho did.
G: Gay
Gay can be used as an umbrella term to refer to anyone who is attracted to a person of the same gender.
Most frequently, though, “gay” refers to men who are attracted to other men. In the 1970s, the labrys was adopted by the lesbian feminist community as a symbol of empowerment.