Desultory Musings

Gay:

Used to mean carefree

Then sexually deviant

Then prostitute

Then slut

Then sodomite

And THEN as we know it today but only as a slur

Reclaimed in the seventies

LGBT:

Invented in the nineties

Has faced constant backlash (from both straight, queer, and LGBT folks from being not inclusive enough or too inclusive)

Every year there are pushes to change to acronym

LGBTQ

LGBTQ+

LGBTQ*

LGBTQIA

Mogai

Alphabet soup

Queer:

Used to mean “other”

Became a slang term for “not straight” in the 1400s

Became a slur in the early 1900s

Reclaimed in the 80s.

Sudden push back from within the queer community to have it seen only as a slur in the 2010s, a push that can be traced back to terf ideology.

Is the only term that includes all non cishet people

Homosexual

A medical diagnosis

Used for decades to make queerness into a mental illness

Used as a slur for the latter half of the 20th century

Rejected by the queer community as an acceptable term for a brief period of time in the early 2000s before coming back into fashion.

Only describes the experience of cis gay men and cis lesbians

By some miracle, the doctor explains, they escaped with only minor injuries. Some burns, a few scratches and “several small wounds. We’re not sure what caused them.”

“Wounds?”

“Small holes in your ear lobes. Possibly they were old wounds and unrelated to the accident, but either way, our doctors were able to heal them for you. There’s not even any scarring.”

“Er, not exactly.  It can be redone. though it’s not gonna be fun.  But my people do that to ourselves on purpose.  It’s self-ornamental…  I don’t know the word.  We decorate ourselves with small stones and bits of shaped metal or plastic.”

“Oh!!  I’m sorry, that’s a fairly rare behavior among sapients.  Why, if I may ask?”

“uh.  It…  Looks cool?  I guess?”

Heard some important information on Twitter today, and thought I’d post it here for anyone who may not have heard it. This is actually a thing, devised by human rights organisation called Karma Nirvana.