‘LGBTI’ is not the new black. Bring back gay I say

‘LGBTI’ is not the new black. Bring back gay I say

IT was in the heady 80s, as a fresh-faced 21-year-old, when I first stumbled across the famous Sydney drag queen Larnie at her haunt, the Observer Hotel, in The Rocks. There, on a small raised stage at the back of the pub, was a plump, middle-aged drag dressed like Shirley Temple and singing with a truck driver’s voice, Animal Crackers.  But her version was an X-rated one with the lyrics changed to: “terminal herpes in my soup.”

Years later, Larnie, suddenly dropped dead in the middle of her act, but her ghost would appear in my imagination when I attended a queer media talk titled Something Queer Happened on the way to the Newsroom. Speakers included the editor of the Star Observer, Elias Jahshan; Monique Schafter, a reporter for the 7.30 Report, Patrick Abboud, a reporter and presenter on SBS2, who was also, shortly, co-hosting Mardi Gras 2014; Senthorun Raj, an academic; and Morgan Carpenter, who happened to mention being an intersex person.

With such a stellar line up of queer talent I was expecting an exciting discussion filled with lots of interesting anecdotes about what it was like to work as a professional in the alternative media. But shortly after introductions the speakers got bogged down on how we define our media. And it all had to do with one seemingly harmless little acronym: LGBTI.

Now lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex (LGBTI) has been adopted by what was traditionally called the gay media to describe all people who are part of our community.  30 years ago the correct title was the gay. Then it became queer. And now it’s a long acronym. But since when did LGBTI become the new black? The last time I checked, queer was the catch-all. Since the 90s, activists decided that even though gay men make up most of the queer population (if we can believe Kinsey and all the other official statistical studies of the last 100 years), it would be more politically correct to put lesbians first, even though they should be second in percentage value, gays second, and then the other tiny percentages should be added incrementally to form an acronym that even the panel members admitted was a mouthful and that their straight colleagues in the mainstream media struggled with.

Panel members also mentioned that the awkward acronym was not a stable entity but in constant threat of changing. Facebook was mentioned as having introduced a mind boggling 58 genders and one journalist suggested that A for asexual could be added to the mix and that Q was also a possible extra. At this point in the discussion I turned to my friend, Greg, and he gave me the same frustrated and bewildered look of “what the?” Like him, I hadn’t turned up on a weekday evening to listen to experts have an academic discussion about the alphabet.

I had to wait until seven minutes prior to the end of the discussion for things to get really interesting when the floor was finally thrown open to the, by now frustrated, audience. A tall, tranny(**) leapt up to introduce herself as a writer and performer. With frizzy red hair, glasses, a very short dark pink skirt with matching dark pink jacket and high heels with roses she stood out. She described how she had been called a poofter at school but was now a lesbian. She also posed the rhetorical question: “why do straight men sit next to me on the bus and ask me to suck their dicks?”

Finally, there was one audience member who had a criticism of the political correctness of acronyms. It was posed by a handsome older man with white hair and dressed in black leather pants, called Paul Paech, a writer and activist in the 70s who mentioned he had written about the murder of Dr Duncan. His comment was: “The alphabet soup of LQBTI is misguided. Social media is the great fragmenter of the hegemony of patriarchy.  Instead of fighting the politics of identity why not fight sexuality?”

But his statement was also a bit vague and prompted Patrick Abboud to ask: “what’s the question?” Which leads back to my reminiscence of Larnie, The Rocks drag queen. I’m sure that she would have stood up in the middle of this event and said something like, “don’t be bloody stupid. I’m not an LGBTI entertainer or whatever else you want to call me.  And I’m not playing for the LGBTI crowd.  I’m a gay man in a dress putting on a show for whoever wants to watch. Stop wasting your time on this crap.”  Good imaginary advice surely for any future talk that seeks to engage its audience without frustrating them with an alphabet soup – ‘terminal’ or not.

(**) – The Star Observer does not endorse the use of this word. It is strictly the view of the author of this piece.

Paul Purcell is a Sydney-based freelance writer who has previously written for the Star Observer. 

A rebuttal piece by Miles Heffernan will be published tomorrow at 6pm.

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10 responses to “‘LGBTI’ is not the new black. Bring back gay I say”

  1. By using a term which represents just the “majority” we are, to an extent, keeping the status quo…and if we always did that we’d still be called faggots and getting arrested just for being.

  2. I think the author needs to check their stats. With Australian studies finding self-identified gay men at between 1.6% and 2.7%… (lower than many estimates of Transgender prevalence which range from 3% to over 8% and comparable to some Intersex estimates!) while people with some same sex attraction who don’t identify as gay or lesbian are between 8% and 20% there’s plenty of sources of statistics which do not support the claim that the majority of the queer population are gay men!

  3. Now, this is CRAZY but why not just be humans?

    This whole label carrying on is a joke. We’re all people, it amuses me that some can’t just accept that being gay isn’t special and doesn’t need a label

  4. Yes, yes, yes at last. Some sane discussion regarding the absurdity of the use of that hideous alphabet soup monika “LGTBIIQ”. I have long railed against that term, refusing to identify myself under it. My primary reason is because I believe that by labelling, we are in fact excluding everyone who doesn’t fit under that label. Originally it was just LGTB, but now one often sees that extended to LGTBIIQ. How many more initials are you lot going to add before you include everyone? My personal preference is one I recently heard during the Mardi Gras telecast when a participant described himself as a “Rainbow Person”. That’s exactly what I aspire to be – a human being first and foremost, who welcomes everyone ‘under the rainbow’ to share and participate in my world in a non-judgemental or discriminatory manner. Peace, happiness and mung beans to you all.

  5. One of the main problems with “bringing back the gay” is actually two-fold: on the first hand, it excludes gender diverse, trans* and sexually diverse individuals (especially once you admit that gay men have a tendency to dominate queer spaces and politics and that the “tiny percentages” are frequently marginalised and have trouble having our voices heard), and it’s simultaneously eliminates the validity of those identities by lumping them up under one category. It also touches on the issue of drawing too close a connection between trans* and gay individuals (such as the trans* woman who’s told her gender identity is just the result of her internalised homophobia/ trans* man who’ve been told he’s folding to the patriarchy/ hating his “fellow women”, and of course non-binary folks). You also run into different issues when you lump the experiences of these groups in together so completely like that, especially if you intend for this to be headed up by gays — in a very general sense, the different groups have different issues and needs. Medical access and care is a greater issue for many of the trans* people I know than the LGB people, for example, where as marriage “equality” is of greater importance to people in same-sex relationships.

    I have more to say about this, but this is reaching rant-like proportions, so I guess I will just leave it … Except to add that you shouldn’t say tr*nny. That word is not yours and it’s inappropriate for you to use it here, particularly in reference to a specific person. I’m not gay — if I was describing you, would it be okay if I called you “the faggot in the sweater?” You couldn’t have shown her the tiniest bit of respect and called her something less offensive?

  6. I have never got why I is added; intersex people have nothing to do with different sexual orientation. And anything other than LGBT is ridiculous. I have never been comfortable with the term queer either.

  7. “activists decided that even though gay men make up most of the queer population (if we can believe Kinsey and all the other official statistical studies of the last 100 years), it would be more politically correct to put lesbians first, even though they should be second in percentage value, gays second, and then the other tiny percentages should be added incrementally to form an acronym that even the panel members admitted was a mouthful and that their straight colleagues in the mainstream media struggled with.”

    Who writes this sexist, queerphobic, transphobic shit? Why is it in a queer publication? Why should a Liberal cardholder, Miles Heffernan, be given space when a whole bevy of non-male have been maligned?

    No doubt the conservative editors will defend this as “free speech”- but if I want to read the opinions of people who want to reinforce queerphobia, I can read it in the Tele.

    Paul, perhaps it’s worth asking a lesbian about the sexism and patriarchy that exists in gay male dominated spaces? About gay male misogyny so overwhelming that it once forced lesbians to frequently organise separately? Clearly, this small point of solidarity with the struggles of lesbians is political correctness gone mad, they should learn their fucking place.

    So we should use the term “gay” to refer to queer people collectively, because men are the majority (an utterly unsubstantiated point- what about bi men and the vast number of people who don’t align to the gender binary?) and basically just pretend every other queer person doesn’t exist, or that the existence of gay men is worthy of some privileged recognition? Can’t conservative gay men see the irony when they call for the privileging of the majority simply because it’s the majority, and yet exist as a minority because the majority heterosexual orientation is privileged because it’s the majority?

    As for the publication of this article with the word ‘tranny’, it’s no different from referring to a person as a ‘faggot’. What a fucking disgrace.

  8. Look, I get why “Gay” is too narrow for many. What about adopting something relatively simple like Orientation+Gender Diverse (OGDs.. Yes, I’m tempted to call us GODs, but you know where that would go.. likewise DOGs..gulp.. I avoid “Sexuality” because it too readily associates us in the popular mind with our genitals in a way that other groups don’t have to be. “Orientation” is a broader term than just who+when we fuck). OGDs is an acronym, but it wouldn’t need to continually expand to refer specifically to everybody, as they’d be included by definition. And it avoids “queer” which, like it or not, is a definitional marginaliser and/or trauma-trigger for too many. Just my thoughts.

  9. What about straight ‘Maskers’ who need a sense of community as well? LGBTIM? We should create a new word for all non-straights. How about ‘Multisexual’ – it’s like ‘Multicultural’ but targetted towards gender and sexual preference.