Enrolling at Parsons College in New York the other day, a friend was asked to state her name, subject and PGPs. Her what? Her preferred gender pronouns. In other words, did she want to be referred to as ‘she’ and ‘her’, or ‘he’ and ‘him’, or ‘it’, or ‘they’, or none of the above, and was she a Mr, Miss, or Mx? If she wasn’t sure, a support group was on hand to help, called the LGBTQIAGNC. There was no need — she said her name was Clare and ‘she’ would do fine. And the rest of the class? ‘No one stated a PGP other than the obvious,’ she reports, ‘although we do have a large LGBT community.’
Your reaction to that story might be to think how marvellously inclusive Parsons is — an institution so evolved that people can live gender-neutral lives without prejudice. Or it may be to ask: what on earth does LGBTQIAGNC stand for? And to wonder whether some people in the gay rights movement haven’t veered off course. As one activist sighed when I asked if he could spell out the acronym, ‘Matthew, there are so many letters now that nobody can keep up.’
A little light googling reveals that it stands for ‘Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual and gender-non-conforming’. Go a little deeper and you discover that there are dozens of different acronyms, and that nobody can agree on what the official one should be. Well, how do you find a name for individuals who are united by being different? Other terms being tacked on to the LGBT movement include ‘questioning’, ‘pansexual’, ‘ally’ or ‘allied’, ‘straight’, ‘leather’ and ‘fetish’, though nobody has found a way of stringing them together to make a snappy word, which I always thought was the point of an acronym.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in