Posts
Ya know, I’m all for inclusiveness, but recently I got an e-mail
that made me want to boycott gay pride day forever.
Which is not to say that I don’t already do that. I haven’t
been to a pride day celebration in over a decade. Pride day used to be fun and
silly and a good reason to dress up funny and paint your face. Then the
corporate world got wind of it and discovered we were willing to spend money—a
lot of money—when we were feeling proud. Now pride day is not a lot different
than a shopping spree at a Westfield mall, without the benefit of air
conditioning.
Pride day used to be entertainment, outdoor dancing and
learning about organizations that assisted the gay and lesbian community. Now
you go to pride day, and you have cell phone companies dragging you to their
booths with Vaudeville hooks while they scream in your ear like circus barkers.
Banks offer you vapid incentives to open accounts or apply for credit cards,
and you have to run from insurance salesmen.
Anyway, about that e-mail. Today I got an invitation to go
to gang up with a bunch of folks at the Los Angeles pride day. I don’t know how
I got on their mailing list, because I’ve only been to Los Angeles once. I saw
the Hollywood sign and got stuck in abysmal traffic, which to me met all the
requirements of the Los Angeles Experience, and I don’t feel the need to go
back. And anyone can tell you that if I’m in a city that is within spittin’
distance to a Disney park, as Los Angeles is to Anaheim, I’m out on the next bus.
Anyway, about that e-mail. It told me to come join my LGBTQQIAAP
sisters and brothers for pride day.
The what? How do
you even pronounce that? I came skidding to a halt at that ridiculous acronym.
I had no idea what it was, so I had to Google it. The Urban Dictionary solved the mystery.
We used to be simple folk. We used to be the gay community.
Then the lesbians wanted their separate piece of the pie, so to speak, and we
became the gay and lesbian community, and that’s how the outside world referred
to us. It was brief, and everyone knew what it meant. Then, for whatever
reason—inclusiveness, I guess— we became the LGBT community. And a long time
after that, someone put a Q on it.
By this time I didn’t even bother to find out what the Q was
for. Turns out it wasn’t Queer, but Questioning, which sounds more like a group
of Jeopardy! contestants. Without
asking anyone, I guessed that these people were questioning their sexual
orientation. But then, what’s the difference between Questioning and Bisexual?
Once you “identify” (a word I’m really starting to hate) as bisexual, I guess
you are no longer questioning. You’re just greedy. Basically you’re saying if
you can find any human who’ll have sex with you, male or female, then you’ll go
ahead and try them out. So why aren’t they called trysexuals?
Anyway, I was wrong about that, because Questioning people
are not questioning their sexual orientation. They are questioning their
gender. Alrighty then. Got it.
So now we have two Q’s now: one for Queer, one for
Questioning. I was called queer too many times as a kid to find that necessary,
so I am removing it from the acronym. So now we’re down to just 8 letters.
The other letters:
I is for Intersex, boys and girls. We no longer use the term
hermaphrodites. Intersex people have the genitals of both sexes. I have enough
trouble locating the one I have, so I’m pretty happy not having other components
in the inventory that I wouldn’t know how to care for. Next!
A is for Asexual, and A is for Allies, who are straight
people. Get out of here, straight people. Thanks for your support, but you have
you own category! Asexual people can be straight as well. You guys beat it, too.
Go back to your all-night video games and programming jobs.
And lastly, there’s P for Pansexual, who are people who
enjoy copulating with Revere Ware.
I have a friend who used to host a Gay Shame party on every
pride day, and I am beginning to warm up to that idea. Can we just stop it with
the acronyms already? I think it’s gotten way out of hand, and no one is going
to remember all the letters unless they write them down on their hand to use later.
At least give us something that spells something. I’d like something catchy and
easy to remember, although not necessarily short. I vote for Sexually Other
Without Having Acronyms that are Tedious, or SO WHAT. I hereby declare us the
SO WHAT community.
I look forward to and will probably eagerly attend next
year’s SO WHAT parade.
And if I decide not to attend, well, so what?
billwiley.blogspot.com by Bill Wiley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
No comments:
Post a Comment