why is it "LGBT"?

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isn't "lesbian" and "gay" the same thing? i think it the "L" and "G" should be combined into an "H" for "HBT" (homosexual, bisexual, transgender)

I'm a man. I'm gay, but I'm not a lesbian. So no, it's not the same. Probably has historical roots, as the gay rights movement originally didn't include women as much. Many countries had laws that prohibited gay sex between men, but not between women. Laws were made by men, and they couldn't even imagine women being homosexual. The more people became aware of difference, the longer the string got:

Gay community
Gay and lesbian community
GLB = gay, lesbian and bisexual
LGBT = lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (not sure why G and L were switched at this point [feminism? political correctness?])
LGBTI = lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex
LGBTIQ (or LGBTQI) = lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer
LGBTQIA = lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual
LGBTQIAP = lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and pansexual
LGBTQIAP+

Just FYI, many people in the LGBT community do not like the word homosexual for several reasons. Partly because of how it is often used by those outside of the community and partly because of its history as a medical term/psychiatric term (i.e. it was used to say being gay was some sort of illness). Personally I don't have a problem with it, but depending on how you use it and to whom, it can be offensive.

For example, if you ask someone "are you a homosexual," that is slightly offensive, and is a cue to someone that you are probably not LGBT-friendly.

I thought that the Q was Questioning. Also, I think the L and B should be changed to H as well, mostly because just about the entire alphabet is going into this acronym, and I think it should be shorter if possible.

In my view, homosexual and gay are not interchangeable terms.

Homosexual refers only to sexual orientation, and applies equally to the out and proud and to the closet cases. But the man (or woman) who hides behind a cover marriage, and acts to repress equality rights for gay and lesbian people hardly merits being called gay. To me, at a minimum, gay implies living within the context of one's sexual orientation.

homoromantic then

Possibly the Acronym order is the order when each where first documented in science or something... May explain some debate why it should be GLBT instead of LGBT.

Well, just a small detail I'm seeing that's perhaps untrue...

Should be this, but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue easily (or the mind).

It can be either Queer or Questioning.. I've been to things where they've had LGBTQIQ ... confusing right??

I like QUILTBAG. Easy to remember, and inclusive of asexuals and the intersexed folks. I don't think the U actually stands for anything.

I like "Q" for "Queer", because that adds a lot of things that are atypical in some way, without adding another half-dozen letters.

Also "A". We need the "A", if only for allies, but asexuals claim it, too.

I really like GSM, which stands for gender and sexual minorities. It's the one all-inclusive abbreviation to rule them all There is also MSGI, minority sexual and gender identities. But GSM appears to be catching on nowadays, and I love that it works in multiple languages (e.g., "geschlechtliche und sexuelle Minderheiten" in German, or "gender- en seksuele minderheden" in Dutch).

Never heard of GSM. I'm sure there are more people who belong to a sexual minority than to a gender minority, so why does G come first? That is, unless you count women as a gender minority group because of their ongoing discrimination in many countries. But then GSM covers around 60% of the population and reaches far into heterosexual territory.

Googling either GSM or MSGI doesn't return any results that have the meaning you claim. So these terms do not seem to be widely used.

Googling "gender and sexual minorities" yields 872,000 results. Like I said, the term is finally catching on nowadays. I never claimed that it was already extremely widespread. If that were the case, there wouldn't be threads all over the internet where people are debating whether it should be LGBTQIA or GLBTQQAI or whatever. These letter piles are growing increasingly cumbersome, people can't agree on the order of the initials, and they're always going to exclude some small minority that shouldn't be excluded (such as agender people, autosexuals, polysexuals, trigender individuals etc.) GSM solves this problem once and for all.

As for why the G stands first, why do lesbians come first in most variations of LGBTetc.? Aren't there more gays than lesbians, and probably even more bisexuals? Are lesbians more important than gay men? And why do trans* people stand last in both LGBT and GLBT, for that matter? Can't they come first for once in their lives, instead of being tacked on as an afterthought? The latter might have been one of the considerations that went into the GSM initialism. Another might be that the word sexual still sounds "dirty" to some people and might evoke negative connotations such as sexual harrassment, sexual predator, sexual dysfunction etc., so you want to lead and set the tone with a word that has a more positive connotative range of meaning.

Obviously, I was talking about the abbreviations GSM and MSGI, which return no first-page results. If you google gender and sexual minorities you get only sexual minority results. You have to put "gender and sexual minorities" in quotation marks to get the results you claim. And as everyone knows who uses Google frequently these numbers can be vastly inflated by the algorithm.



I'm not convinced that every small minority needs to be grouped together with gays and lesbians in the first place. Remember this started off as gay rights. I have never heard of, for example, asexuals being discriminated against in their civil rights. Even bisexuals don't face the same discrimination unless they're in a same-sex relationship. The Q, whether queer or questioning, is nearly meaningless. Intersex isn't about sexual orientation and intersex people don't benefit from being lumped in with sexual minorities that are still discriminated against in many countries. We're doing a distinct disservice to children born intersex.



I agree. As a gay man, I have no inherent connection to transgender people. So why can these groups not be separate? I certainly would object to any group accronym that makes my rights as a gay man secondary to those of gender minorities that I never asked to be grouped with in the first place.

Your last argument is basically to hide the gay rights agenda behind a more acceptable gender rights agenda. Are we going back into the closet now? Or are we pushed there by some academics who are not comfortable with gay rights?

@Aspendos:

The main reason for grouping us together is strength in numbers.

Sexuality and gender are unrelated, however, all gender and sexuality minority groups are a small minority recieving strong discrimination and fighting strongly for equal rights.

Would you rather be the 1% on your own in a heterosexual society, or have 10-15% of the world behind your back is the question.

From what I can tell Transgender and Bisexual people often find the time to support Homosexuals in their activism.

Asexuals do not recieve discrimination legally, but socially is occurs more often.