In honor of Bisexual Visibility Day and in preparation for the upcoming North Carolina Pride Festival this weekend, I feel compelled to write this:
It’s time to work on being more inclusive.
How could this make any sense? Duke students have been participating in the local pride festival for thirty years, and the LGBTQ community has had a prominent presence on campus, especially in recent years. What could we be doing wrong?
Well, let’s first have a look at the terminology we’re using. Many people have been using the term “gays and lesbians” to describe all people who aren’t straight and gender normative.
The slightly more appropriate and most common term is “LGBT”–which, as you probably know, stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
However, these terms leave out a lot of people. What about asexual, pansexual, questioning, intersex, genderqueer or any of the many other identities that comprise the community “LGBT” is meant to describe?
Of course, this is often addressed by expanding the term to “LGBTQIAP+," which is obviously quite clumsy and unapproachable. A common objection to this term is that it’s “too complicated,” which is true but is often used as an excuse for bigotry and calling everyone in the community “the gays”--but that’s beside the point. What matters is that people are taking shortcuts with terms that have the potential to marginalize or erase other identities. And the meanings within these acronyms are too often misunderstood.
For example, ask a random person on campus what the “A” in LGBTQUIAP+ stands for and the answer you’ll get almost every time is “Ally.” Actually, that isn’t what it stands for.
The “A” does not stand for ally. It stands for “asexual.” This may seem like a matter of semantics to many readers but I must insist that this misconception be thoroughly debunked. The “A” stands for asexual, and it’s actually very important that we use it that way.
Individuals within marginalized communities need representation. It’s the first step to being accepted socially and is a necessary component in order to achieve recognition in the fight for equal rights. Representation is a mode of empowerment and provides a space for gender and sexual expression. When minority groups don’t get representation, they are vulnerable to marginalization, denied validity and lose the ability to feel like part of the queer community as a whole. This is one of the reasons why Duke now has a “Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity” rather than an LGBTQ center.
When we use “A” to mean “Ally,” we are contributing to the erasure of an entire group of people and cementing the power of dominant allies. We are effectively denying their membership to the group in favor of straight allies who don’t really need that representation. Allies are important and wonderful, but they need to remember that participation in the movement for equal rights doesn’t grant them membership into the community for which they are fighting. Taking the “A” inserts allies into a place where they don’t belong.
This is called appropriation, and stopping it is especially important because asexuals are already a disadvantaged group often denied validity because asexuality “isn’t real.” Erasure is a problem faced by many other groups, such as bisexuals, pansexuals and persons who don’t conform to the gender binary. Less recognized identities like these are almost considered mythical--many people simply don’t believe they exist. Bisexuals are “greedy,” asexuals just “haven’t found the right person yet,” and genderqueer individuals are often mistaken as transgender. Getting rid of these misperceptions and prejudices will allow all groups to be recognized for what they are and as valid parts of queer communities.
We need to find a blanket term that applies equally to people of all gender identities and sexualities. While "queer" is an effective term, it has a complicated history of structural violence and marginalization. Although the term has for the most part been reclaimed, not everybody is comfortable with its universal use. So what other terms could possibly be available to us?
I, personally, am a huge fan of the term “MOGAI,” which stands for “marginalized orientations, gender alignments and intersex.” It’s simple, perfectly inclusive and doesn’t really have any negative connotations.
Unfortunately, most people even within the MOGAI community have never heard of this term--so they don’t know to use it. It just doesn’t have the recognition power it needs to be effective. I’d love to get this term into more common usage because it represents so beautifully what activists have been trying to achieve. It’s inclusive, easy to use and can’t be appropriated.
Even if we don’t end up using this particular term, I think it’s important for us to find terminology that achieves more inclusive dialogue other than “LGBT.”
I’m not asking you to go completely out of your way to please everyone. I’m not the politically correct police. I’m certainly not asking you to use “LGBTTTIQQAAP+” in casual conversations. But if you’re planning on attending the festivities on Saturday, please keep all of this in mind as you celebrate Durham Pride, engage in dialogue about equal rights or while you make your posters for the parade. Make an effort to adequately represent all the groups we’re fighting for, not just the most visible ones.
McKenna Ganz is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Tuesday.
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