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Ituzzip t1_ixdr9pf wrote

When I heard someone had disarmed the gunman with their bare hands and knocked him out, I have to admit I was looking forward to finding out it was a butch lesbian or a drag queen and being able to point to the tenacity of our community.

Turns out it was a married straight man there with his family. But I’ll take that anyway. LGBTQIAA includes straight allies, and we’ve been consciously including straight allies in our community for decades for a reason. LGBTQ spaces are meant to be inclusive. Even when people make fun of us for having such a long acronym (and we make fun of ourselves for it too), we still do it for a reason.

LGBTQ+ is a community based on many different kinds of experiences. It’s not just the gay community. It’s not just the trans community. It isn’t defined by having only one kind of experience. It’s defined by people with many experiences, with a similar goal of allowing people to be who they are and being there for each other in that. When somebody puts themselves on the line and stands up for us the same way we’d aspire to stand up for ourselves, they are truly part of our community.

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DippityDu t1_ixdwvk7 wrote

Ha, my daughter is openly queer in middle school. She and her friends just say "alphabet" now. And what's funny, the first time I heard her say "alphabet people" or "my alphabet fam" I immediately knew what that meant.

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Ituzzip t1_ixdyixu wrote

Yeah, a lot of people mock LGBT activists for adding letters without seeming to realize that it’s harmless, and we make fun of it too.

LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQIAA+ etc are all sort of interchangeable. There are also about a thousand different pride flags. People keep adding new Pride flags every year. It’s all about self-expression, and not taking things too seriously. If you are not causing harm, violating consent, or excluding someone (which to be fair can be complicated topics), we’re a community that frowns on saying people shouldn’t do what makes them happy.

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utegardloki t1_ixkkmnt wrote

Heh, when I was an "alphabet youth", I briefly made a playful push to rebrand the community as BLT, because (so my reasoning went) you can probably throw a rock and find someone who hates a collection of letters, but you'll be hard pressed to find someone willing to say they "hate BLTs"...

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MFDork t1_ixdzgdw wrote

I’m very proud of what this man did, but Allies are not part of the LGBTQ community. That’s why they’re called “allies”. It’s ok for us to have our own spaces.

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