Could "LGBT" one day become "GSD"? A London-based advocacy group certainly hopes so.
Pink Therapy director Dominic Davies and fellow therapist Pamela Gawler-Wright suggested GSD, or "Gender and Sexual Diversities," as a more inclusive community term in a new video posted on the group's Facebook page.
In the clip, Davies noted that the term LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) still excluded "a whole batch of people who didn't feel able to go to mainstream counseling organizations and also wouldn't necessarily be welcome at LGBT counseling organizations," including asexual people and those in otherwise non-traditional relationships, such as swingers.
Added Gawler-Wright: "Now we're allowing more of a spectrum...people need wider language, people need better language to have that conversation ... We exist at this time in a different way of thinking collectively and inclusively."
Officials on the group's Facebook page echoed those sentiments. "The point we're trying to make is not that our community shouldn't be called LGBT, it' that actually our community is SO much BIGGER than simply LGBT," they noted.
I don't know about you, but I don't think that Gender and Sexual Diversities describes me. I identify as gay, not queer or any other term. I am gay. For most of the word gay's life in English, its primary meaning was "joyful", "carefree", "bright and showy", and the word was very commonly used with this meaning in speech and literature. I also think that describes me as well as the modern interpretation which of course means a homosexual man.
What do you think? Should we change 'LGBT' to 'GSD'?
6 comments:
I agree with you on this one. I am "GSD" but i feel kind of uneasy to be in the same category as swingers. Sorry for being judgemental but there are just so many ways for being gay.
Year ago, I think I was watching Kathy Griffith listing the alphabet LGBTQI, I said to my friend that it would be better to just say Non Straight People. I think before we get rid of LGBT or change to GSD, we won't need the labels at all.
I saw this yesterday, and wondered the same as everyone who has commented so far. I understand that labels are a PITA, but I doubt they're actually going away. I don't care for GSD, however, because I think the Pink Therapy people are lumping true CHOICES (swinging) in with things that simply ARE (my sexuality). Now that I am working with an GLBTQ (Q for Questioning, and when you're 14-20, there are plenty of questions) youth group, I can see why the labels are there, it's a part of self-identity. But to add things that have nothing to do with intrinsic characteristics in with GLBT orientations isn't for me.
Peace <3
Jay
GSD sounds too much like a gastric disorder (such as GERD) and sounds rather unpleasant. I don't know why we all (GLBT OR LBGT OR LGBT, etc.) have to be lumped together anyway. I like GAY just fine.
America seems to have an obsession with labeling people. We're so focused on demographics, and categorizing how people are different from each other, we forget that we are all individual human beings with a right to our own identities. I don't want to be a GSD. I'm a gay man. I fought hard internal battles to embrace and then reveal my gayness and I've earned that wonderful term, gay man. Let swingers be swingers, lesbians be lesbians, etc. Let's not be in some sort of uber-demographic that lets corporate America launch ad campaigns targeting us as the hip new minority to exploit economically.
I really don't care which term is used, but I'd wish we could pick just one and stick to it. It gets annoying when we seem to switch terms every couple of years.
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