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Queer doesnt exist, its just a made up word with no meaning or utility.
Trans isnt a sexual orientation so it doesnt belong along side other orientations.
Therefore from now on I think im going to just refer to it as "LGB" which ill use for discussions about orientation. It might make sense to do "LGBP" to include pansexuals/poly people, as that too describes orientation.
Then maybe "TICN" for gender expression (Trans, Intersex, Crossdresser, and Nonbinary).
I think ill just start dropping these in conversations and use each distinctly different. The LGBTQ+ designation never really made much sense.
Then again maybe jsut "non-cis" and "non-straight" might just be more straight forward. But less likely to engage in useful conversation.
@freemo Ooof, you should be careful with that, LGB is mostly used by transphobes who want to divide the movement. LGBTQ+ (or any of the other commonly used acronyms) are in a non-insignificant way a descriptor of a political movement/group that has shared political interests, it’s not a coincidence that a lot of the activism was done by all these people together, that they have common symbols etc. Other than the political connection there is also the fact that gender and sexual attraction are pretty strongly connected for most people, so it even makes sense to lump them together from a purely categorization perspective.
If you dislike the acronym then “gender and sexual minorities” is a pretty neutral way of referring to the group, although if you try to split them it gets blurry. I personally like “queer” as a descriptor, but it cannot be used for the whole group, since some members find it offensive.
Oh, and being intersex isn’t in any way about gender expression, and being trans and being a crossdresser are about gender expression in quite different ways.
> Ooof, you should be careful with that, LGB is mostly used by transphobes who want to divide the movement.
I think you know by now I judge an idea by its own merit, not its association with any one group or not.
> non-insignificant way a descriptor of a political movement/group that has shared political interests,
I have no problem combining the acronyms when the context makes sense to do so . If I am speaking of something that actually has combined relevance to both I can always say LGBP+TICN and then otherwise leave them seperate when i am talking specifically about orientation vs gender.
> Other than the political connection there is also the fact that gender and sexual attraction are pretty strongly connected for most people, so it even makes sense to lump them together from a purely categorization perspective.
Sure, plenty of times the two groups make sense to talk about collectively, just as often it makes sense to talk about one or the other. Ultimately which of the two, or both, that might be used will depend on context. As it should.
> If you dislike the acronym then “gender and sexual minorities” is a pretty neutral way of referring to the group,
Its not that I dislike the acronym per se. Itis that it 1) includes terms which have no useful meaning (queer) and really have no relevance in most context and 2) it is so generalized as to be less useful than being able to have the means properly categorized in a semantic way.
So the quote you offer simply doesnt address number 2 and defeats the purpose.
> Oh, and being intersex isn’t in any way about gender expression
Absolutely is for **much** of intersexed conditions, though you are right sometimes it is sex and not gender.
For example Androgen Insensitivity Syndrom is an intersex condition that directly effects your bodies expression of gender. By contrast Klinefelter syndrom effects both how your gender is expressed (effects yoru genitals, body, body hair, height, etc) and yoru sex (dna).
The only real difference is that intersex is clearly not a choice WRT to gender expression whereas the other ones are choices in gender expersssion.
> and being trans and being a crossdresser are about gender expression in quite different ways.
Very different for sure, but still gender expression all the same. Obviously again we go back to context, if we are talking about gender in such a way that the distinction between these groups is needed, then that can be expressed on a case by case basis, as it should be.
> I think I’ve spotted the confusion here. All the terms under the LGBTQ+ umbrella are mostly about personal identity, so what people call themselves and want to be called. This is the context in which “queer” very much makes sense, either for people who haven’t yet figured out the details, but know they don’t fit the cisheteronormative default, or for those who did not end up fitting into any of the other boxes fully (plus some political meaning, but that’s kinda separate).
As I said earlier I really dont care what language someone else wants to use. I see no use in my lexicon to have a term that encompases all forms of identity across wildly different categories of gender, sex, sexual orientation, and sexual cardinality. If someone has use for such a word salad of terms and finds it useful they are welcomet o use it.
I on the other hand do have a use for terms with utility for me. Having a term fo sexual orientations that are inclusive, and another for gender expressions has use in conversation, so i will make that distinction, i dont need or expect anyone to emulate me.
> If you want to be specific and precise when referring to a group then there are almost always better terms – at least in medical, law, and social contexts, I cannot think of any other relevant ones. The specific division you advocate for here is extremely rarely appropriate anyway – you almost always want to refer to a strict subgroup of one of the groups you described, or to a group that encompasses people from both groups.
If you know a better word that coverts LGBP (all sexual orientations), or one that covers TINC then by all means let me know.
Yes there are more specific terms but all medical and technical terms I can think of are highly specific and do not cover the umbrella my own terms intend to, again happy to hear alternatives.
> The specific division you advocate for here is extremely rarely appropriate anyway
I literally cant think of **any** situation where it is inappropriate, at least not one where the use of the term itself is what is inappropriate (obviously someone can say an inappropriate thing that has that in it)
> you almost always want to refer to a strict subgroup of one of the groups you described
Obviously we do have specific terms for when we are talking about a specific subgroup... but it seems quite bizare to me that you would think talking about all sexual orientations collectively is somehow inappropriate, that makes no sense but maybe im missing something here.
> or to a group that encompasses people from both groups.
As described earlier combining the groups is to be expected when appropriate.
> You seem to be somewhat confused about the gender/sex distinction. In this context “sex” does not refer to just genes
No not confused, I know very well how sex is often misused and misunderstood. I am using sex in its appropriate way here and distinct from gender,this is how scientists, medical professions, and anyone trying to be precise will use it. Yes in casual language we tends to use sex to also mean gender (or some aspects of it) but that has lead to many problems and language I specifically try to avoid due to its problematic nature.
Sex strictly refers to genes. then gender is broken down into primary and secondar where we talk about genitals, breaast, facial hair, etc.. then we have gender **expression** which also includes behavioral and physical aspects.
In short, no doubt some people use sex to include gender, though we have clear distinctions and need to use them even in casual conversation as it will resolve most of the conflicts I see and go a long way to helping the LGBP+NICT community.
> Thus being intersex is purely about sex, regardless of the specific syndrome.
You are just making a semantic distinction here. Yes if you use a version of the word sex that is less descript you can of course come to that conslusion. Since I am using more technically accurate terminology then no, it doesnt work out that way.
On second thought you may be right re: gender. I could have swore just a few years back i had this debate and agreed with your definition but then was shown quite clearly the definition of gender I described here. I went to search for it again but cant find it and mostly find definitions that agree with you and my earlier (what i thought was now invalidated) understanding of the definition... So now im nto so sure, probably going to have to refine taht part entirely.
I literally cant think of any situation where it is inappropriate
I didn’t mean “appropriate” in the sense of “not a faux pas“, but rather “fitting the situation”. My point was that when you want to talk about some specific topic you’ll (almost?) never actually be interested purely in one of the groups you described. If you are talking about sexual attraction in general you almost surely don’t want to exclude heterosexual people, if you are talking about some aspect of gender (whether expression, identity or roles) you probably want to include cis people, but mentioning intersex people might not be relevant, crossdressers are relevant for gender expression, but much less for gender identity or arguably even roles etc. If you can think of an example of an actual specific discussion in which you would refer to exactly just one or the other of the groups you defined that might be useful – any examples that come to mind to me either are so specific that they apply to a subgroup, or include part of the other group, or include cis/hetero people as well. In the latter case using “non-cis/hetero” (as you suggested in the OP) within that discussion if you explicitly want to exclude them from a point is much more natural than trying to enumerate all the other options (also see below).
This isn’t very surprizing, because LGBTQ+ emerged as a political grouping, not a taxonomy. Even grouping e.g. gays and lesbians together mostly makes sense in the context of politics or sociology, as far as sexual behaviour goes they are literally separate. So trying to use it as a starting point for making a taxonomy gets you weird results.
LGBP (all sexual orientations)
I have to object here, you are definitely missing at least a couple, even if you wanted to just refer to marginalized sexual orientations (otherwise “straight” is a pretty glaring omission 
). The obvious missing one is asexual, but there are a couple more, perhaps the next most popular being demisexual. Also, pansexual is only arguably different from bisexual – there’s Discourse™ about this, but it’s hard to find a specific set of definitions about the difference that people would actually agree about. There is a similar problem with your gender grouping, although what exactly is missing there depends on whether this grouping is trying to be about gender expression exclusively, or also about gender identity, it isn’t quite clear to me what you intended.
@freemo I think I’ve spotted the confusion here. All the terms under the LGBTQ+ umbrella are mostly about personal identity, so what people call themselves and want to be called. This is the context in which “queer” very much makes sense, either for people who haven’t yet figured out the details, but know they don’t fit the cisheteronormative default, or for those who did not end up fitting into any of the other boxes fully (plus some political meaning, but that’s kinda separate).
If you want to be specific and precise when referring to a group then there are almost always better terms – at least in medical, law, and social contexts, I cannot think of any other relevant ones. The specific division you advocate for here is extremely rarely appropriate anyway – you almost always want to refer to a strict subgroup of one of the groups you described, or to a group that encompasses people from both groups.
Having said that, while I can argue that the division you propose is bad on purely practical grounds, I have to also point out that categorizing humans has an extremely fraught history to say it lightly, so ignoring the political implications of any proposed categorization is, in my opinion, extremely unwise.
You seem to be somewhat confused about the gender/sex distinction. In this context “sex” does not refer to just genes, but general biology, including hormones and the phenotype, while gender expression (I have to specify the second part here, since “gender” can, confusingly, refer to at least two other concepts that are very relevant to the discussion, but fortunately not to the distinction here) refers to social indications of gender (behaviour, dress, etc). Thus being intersex is purely about sex, regardless of the specific syndrome. Some people have argued this is a reason why they shouldn’t be included under the LGBTQ+ term at all, but it turns out that their interests politically align with the group often enough that they usually are.