←
→
eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
Add MemoryShare This Entry

QotD

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:25am on 2004-07-28

"If you're not a man or woman, words like 'gay' or 'lesbian' don't fit you anymore," -- Sam Davis, quoted on SFGate.com

←
→
There are 3 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] juuro.livejournal.com at 12:37pm on 2004-07-28
There was a time I was active in the LTGB politics. One of the most stridently discussed problems was how to make the name of an action or movement, or declaration of this or that, representative of all the non-heteronormative possibilities. The Finnish national union of GLTB associations has a nice solution in their name: Seksuaalinen tasavertaisuus, which translates into Sexual equality.

Next someone will, of course, scream that they are only addressing issues of sexuality and are not sufficiently indicating their attention to gender issues. To reassure the reader let it be said that in Finnish the difference between the terms "sex" and "gender" is not as sharp as in, say, English -- there is some, admittedy.

You may have noticed that I tend to use all permutations of the LBTG labels, and still it worries me that some groups are feeling left out, or are being dissed at not being at the head of the totem pole.
[link] [reply]
 

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] kara-h.livejournal.com at 01:45pm on 2004-07-29
When I was in college, the GLBT org was named 'Harmony' and the feminist org 'Equal', as far as I knew, neither were acronymys. I liked the approach of making the name be something nebulous that pointed to their goals, so no one group/view wound up being emphasized in the name. Not to mention the side benefit someone who needed to be circumspect about being in either group did not wind up saying they were in 'campus GBLTs' or some such.
[link] [parent] [reply]
 

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] juuro.livejournal.com at 02:00pm on 2004-07-29
There are advantages and disadvantages to such naming schemes.

I feel it is a disservice for the stated goals of equal civil rights, whichever disadvantaged group we are talking about, to willingly lower the visibility of the group. A group that has as its goal the acceptance of, say, TBLG people, should work to make it blatantly obvious that the said people are everywhere and act, look, sound, smell, and taste exactly the same as "normal" persons.

Circumspect human rights action sounds a bit doubtful to me.

However, if the goal of a campus LTGB group is to provide a safe social forum, then the circumspect name is quite appropriate. And this goal is not an unimportant one, either. A student coming to a university may well be encountering for the first time a possibility to explore non-heteronormative world. To cast such person right in the middle of a civil rights battle is very likely to be counterproductive. A soft easing into a self-identity is vital, and discretion is necessary in the early stages, at least.
[link] [parent] [reply]

Links

January

SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
1
1
 2
1
 3
1
 4
1
 5
1
 6
1
 7
1
8
1
 9
1
 10
1
 11
1
 12
1
 13
1
 14
1
15
1
 16
1
 17
1
 18
1
 19
1
 20
1
 21
1
22
1
 23
1
 24
 
 25
 
 26
 
 27
 
 28
 
29
 
 30
 
 31