Alphabet Soup....

A short little quiz - who knows what the following mean?

• LGBT?
• SRS?
• GRS?

I would speculate that a large majority of those who are reading this probably can identify all of those, but for those that might not be able to, they are in order:

• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender
• Sex Reassignment Surgery, though I've also seen Sex Realignment Surgery and probably a few others.
• Gender Reassignment Surgery is one, but there are others such as Gender Realignment Surgery, Gender Reconstruction Surgery, Genital Reconstruction Surgery, and so on.

Many would refer to the above as Acronyms, but I believe in these cases that they are really Initialisms, but I'm not here to split hairs on acronyms versus initialisms. So what am I here for?  Well it comes down to the initialisms above and quite a few more - do we really need so many of them and even if we do, can't we try and settle on a common meaning for them?  If those of us that these intialisms really carry meaning for can't agree on what they stand for then how in the world do we expect those who they don't carry meaning for to understand them?

Now maybe I'm sheltered, or maybe the people I tend to interact with are sheltered, but in general a good portion of those people I interact with don't know what the term "cis" means.  Frankly, until I was into my own transition I didn't know what it meant.  If the public at large doesn't know (or possibly care) what the term cis means - do we really think that they are going to pay any attention to what GRS means, especially if we as a group cannot agree on that ourselves?

And it's not just those terms above, there are plenty more, here's a sampling:

• GAS / GCS
• AFAB / AMAB
• FAAB / MAAB
• QUITBAG
• LGBTTQQIAAP

And the list goes on and on.  Let's look at the first three sets of terms to start:

• Gender Affirming Surgery / Gender Confirming Surgery, but also Gender Affirmation Surgery / Gender Confirmation Surgery, and probably others.  Really?  Do we need even more terms to describe the process considering we have SRS and GRS.  And truthfully I had to actually look up for GAS stood for as that was one I hadn't seen before I started doing a little research for this post (yes believe it or not I actually do often do that before heading off on a tangent <G>).
• Assigned Female At Birth / Assigned Male At Birth - okay, fine.  But then we have:  Female Assigned At Birth and Male Assigned At Birth...  Really?  Two completely different initialisms for the exact same thing?  It really makes me want to bust out my favorite John McEnroe outburst - the relevant part occurs at about the 15 second mark for those who have never seen/heard it.  Even if we need one set of these, and I'm not saying we do or don't, do we really need two different (albeit similar) versions?

Now lets look at the other two terms, and before I get to them, is there anybody who can tell me exactly what each of these means without looking them up?  I'm sure at least someone can, probably more people than I'd expect, but I'm guessing the vast majority reading this wouldn't be able to identify every one of them:

• First off I would consider QUILTBAG to actually be an acronym, but that aside, can anybody actually agree on exactly what it stands for?   I've seen the Q stand for Queer and/or Questioning, the T I've seen for Transgender and/or Transsexual and/or Two-Spirit, the G I've seen for Gay and/or Genderqueer.    Most of the other letters seem to be more straight forward:  Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, & Bisexual.  You'll notice I've avoided the A and that's because I've seen it generally used for Asexual, but I've also seen it used as Ally which has caused more than a few disagreements.  
• And then we have the elephant of initialisms: LGBTTQQIAAP which my understanding would stand for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Ally, Pansexual.  Again, how many people could have really listed all of those off, simply off of the top of their head?  And even then, I've seen people who cannot agree on those letters - though it's my belief that what I've had listed is probably the most common interpretation.  And even then there are those that say people are still left out.  Really?  How many letters do we need?  How far do we need to segment things?  At what point is enough really enough?

I'm not trying to marginalize anyone's feelings, but I really think that all of these acronyms and initialisms are out of hand.  Maybe I'm wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time, but rather than throwing more labels at ourselves, I'd rather that we had less - ideally none.  Should it matter that I'm a "trans woman" and a "lesbian"?  I don't think it should.  I see myself as a woman and to me it really shouldn't matter beyond that.  Why do I need those other labels?  Personally I can't come up with a good reason for them, all they do in my mind is push me away from where I want to be and who I am.  I don't need/want to be seen as "special" or "different" because I'm a Trans-woman versus a Cis-woman or because I'm in love with a woman versus a man.  I'm just me, and I think if the world as a whole would try and make more of an effort to have a similar viewpoint - well I think it would make things better for us all.

As always, just my opinions - feel free to agree or not.  :)

- M