Like A Fridge Tumbling Over The Side Of A Cliff

The LGBTQ community has seen controversy regarding acceptance of different groups (bisexual and transgender individuals have sometimes been marginalized by the larger community), but the term LGBT has been a positive symbol of inclusion and reflects the embrace of different identities and that we’re stronger together and need each other. While there are differences, we all face many of the same challenges from broader society.

In the 1960′s, in wider society the meaning of the word gay transitioned from ‘happy’ or ‘carefree’ to predominantly mean ‘homosexual’ and was an umbrella term that meant anyone who wasn’t cisgender or heterosexual. The community embraced the word ‘gay’ as a mark of pride.

The modern fight for queer rights is considered to have begun with The Stonewall Riots in 1969 and was called the Gay Liberation Movement and the Gay Rights Movement.

The acronym GLB surfaced around this time to also include Lesbian and Bisexual people who felt “gay” wasn’t inclusive of their identities. 

Early in the gay rights movement, gay men were largely the ones running the show and there was a focus on men’s issues. Lesbians were unhappy that gay men dominated the leadership and ignored their needs and the feminist fight. As a result, lesbians tended to focus their attention on the Women’s Rights Movement which was happening at the same time. This dominance by gay men was seen as yet one more example of patriarchy and sexism. 

In the 1970′s, sexism and homophobia existed in more virulent forms and those biases against lesbians also made it hard for them to find their voices within women’s liberation movements. Betty Friedman, the founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), commented that lesbians were a “lavender menace” that threatened the political efficacy of the organization and of feminism and many women felt including lesbians was a detriment.

In the 80s and 90s, a huge portion of gay men were suffering from AIDS while the lesbian community was largely unaffected. Lesbians helped gay men with medical care and were a massive part of the activism surrounding the gay community and AIDS. This willingness to support gay men in their time of need sparked a closer, more supportive relationship between both groups, and the gay community became more receptive to feminist ideals and goals. 

Approaching the 1990′s it was clear that GLB referred to sexual identity and wasn’t inclusive of gender identity and T should be added, especially since trans activist have long been at the forefront of the community’s fight for rights and acceptance, from Stonewall onward. Some argued that T should not be added, but many gay, lesbian and bisexual people pointed out that they also transgress established gender norms and therefore the GLB acronym should include gender identities and they pushed to include T in the acronym. 

GLBT became LGBT as a way to honor the tremendous work the lesbian community did during the AIDS crisis. 

Towards the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s, movements took place to add additional letters to the acronym to recognize Intersex, Asexual, Aromantic, Agender, and others. As the acronym grew to LGBTIQ, LGBTQIA, LGBTQIAA, many complained this was becoming unwieldy and started using a ‘+’ to show LGBT aren’t the only identities in the community and this became more common, whether as LGBT+ or LGBTQ+. 

your memory will carry on.

“Man decays, his corpse is dust. All his kin have perished; But a book makes him remembered through the mouth of its reciter.” - The Immortality of Writers (Papyrus Chester Beatty IV)

1. Challenging the Biden Administration's decisions, even through griping and creating negative discourse around it in social media, can be an effective agent of change.

Because I was 18 and “parentless” we filed paperwork with the school granting me permission to write my own excuse notes. Which, of course, I had a fuckin ball with:

- Ralf was late to class because he was surrounded by panthers

- Please excuse Ralf due to a sudden and fatal illness

- Ralf needs to leave school early because he has a phrenology appointment

...and so on. They couldn’t do anything about it, since there was no rule saying the notes had to be make any goddamn sense, they only had to exist. And be submitted by an ‘authorized parent or guardian’ which, in this case, was me.

One day I showed up late for school and  -- as per standard procedure -- stopped by the attendance office to check in. There was a new employee or temp or something manning the desk that day, and they demanded to see my excuse note.

So I grabbed paper & pen, scrawled “Please excuse Ralf for being late to school”, signed it, and handed it over. She was NOT amused. 

“No honey, it needs to be from your mom,” enunciated slowly like I was mentally damaged.

“I’m authorized to write my own notes,” I replied.

“No you’re not. Sit over there.”

And they made me wait for the Vice Principal to show up, which eventually he did. Who took one look at me and hooked a thumb in my direction.

“What did he do?”

“Forged an excuse note!”

“He’s authorized to write his own notes.”

Fun Fact! SSI will give you back pay for the time between your first denial and eventual approval (which for me was OVER A YEAR) and that seemed really cool until they told me they would be paying be in chunks.

$2,349 dollars every 6 months until they had paid the full back pay amount. Some of you might already see the problem here, but for those who don’t, let me explain.

SSI has this fun rule that if you ever have more the $2000 dollars in any account, you are immediately disqualified for SSI benefits.

And $2,349 dollars is, in fact, more than two grand.

So every six months for a year and a half, I would get my back payment and the same day get a call from SSI asking me why I have more than two thousand dollars in an account, when they literally gave me that money themselves.

Like normal people, they repeat something daily for a couple weeks and it sticks. They might miss a day here or there, but the overall habit is formed.