Does LGBTQ Make You Feel Unheard?

Like tens of millions of other right-thinking Americans, I was greatly heartened by the Supreme Court’s recent decision regarding workplace discrimination against the LGBTQ folk. But I remain bewitched, bothered, and bewildered about what the acronym means. I’m fine up to and including T, but what’s with the Q? One school of thought is that it stands for questioning, while another holds that it stands for queer. Doesn’t B, for bisexual, implicitly welcome those not entirely sure about their eroticism? And don’t those in the queer camp feel adequately acknowledged by L and G?

 If we’re going to stick a Q at the end for homosexuals who wish to express that “queer”, traditionally a vicious pejorative, doesn’t ruffle their feathers even a little — that is, if we’re going to take pains to accommodate both defiant gays and lesbians whose credo is Hit me with your best shot, homophobe and more demure gays and lesbians whose credo is I would much prefer that you don’t use that ugly word in my hearing — shouldn’t we ensure that other subgroups be recognized?

How about LGBTQTwBe, which would acknowledge the gay male subsets twink and bear? But let’s not short-sheet their female counterparts. LGBTQTwBeBuF would ensure that butch and femme lesbians felt, you know, unexcluded?

Too cumbersome, you say? Too reminiscent of high school chemistry? Well, fair enough. But I continue to believe that the maddeningly (and, if you're in the questioning camp, appropriately) ambiguous Q’s got to go. How about, if we’re acknowledging and validating erotic minorities, we replace the Q with K, for kinky? The problem being that Ks are exactly the opposite of (questioning)  Qs, in the sense that we have a very clear sense of what makes us hard or wet. Fetishists, in fact, don’t get fully turned on absent a particular inanimate object, like a high-heeled shoe.

Once added to the fold, it’s entirely conceivable that K people will want to be seen as non-monolithic, in the same way that gays and lesbians who are just fine with “queer” insist on being acknowledged as distinct from the fainter-hearted. This would lead to such subsets as Bo, for bondage, and F, for fetishists. LGBTKBoF, you see. And how long would it be before various different sorts of fetishists started clamoring for, for instance, LGBTKFRhGb, with Rh standing for red hair (the musician Richard Thompson admits to a red hair fetish in his famous song 1952 “Vincent Black Lightning”) and Gb for garter belts?  

Just try to tell me you wouldn’t enjoy hearing a television news anchor, on a day when the Supreme Court has done the right thing again, say, for instance, “Good news for the LGBTQTwBeBuFKFRhGb today…” Just try!