I'm not part of a fuffing community!!

[mauvish]

I am sick to death of being assigned membership of the "LGBTQIA++ community" (have I missed out any letters? I lose count) simply because I am a woman whose partner is also a woman.

I'm not even a member of any "lesbian community". "Community" implies a bunch of people with shared aims, beliefs, characteristics etc. Being in a same-sex relationship doesn't automatically mean that I share any other aims etc with anyone else also in a SSR. I also seem to have missed the mailshot where I got sent my "community card" offering me free lifetime membership, discounts, meetings etc etc etc. Does it exist? No? Oh, tbh I suspected not.

I am ESPECIALLY not a member of any "community" which includes men who like to call themselves lesbians (/scowly face/)

I am surely not the only person who feels like this! Can I instead be part of a community of women who are sick of being told that we are a "community" with a bunch of other people who we don't know and with whom we may not agree?

(1. I have just finished the bottle of wine that we opened at the weekend. Apologies for any wine flavour to this post.
2 My OH rarely swears (I'm the potty mouth round here) but she does say "fuffing" instead. Will this get past the censors?!)

You can say fucking as there are no such censors, here!

Rant away🍷

Forced teaming is always wrong. This one is particularly problematic because it seeks to force team two completely different things - sexuality and ‘gender’. They are not the same, and the LGB bit of the word salad has had to fight for rights which the TQ+ bit has always had. I still don’t understand why they are being portrayed as the same. And you are completely right - people with the same sexuality don’t necessarily have anything more in common than all people with blue eyes do. And they aren’t force teamed into a community.

Was it a big 🍾 of vino? Fair play making it last this long !

I recall Arty Morty making the same points as you. Like there was a sort of gay political community up until the 90s maybe. But much more atomised since then. The net. Dating apps...

Was it a big 🍾 of vino? Fair play making it last this long !

Nah I'm a very cheap date -😅

I 100% agree.

Sometimes it feels like the current campaigns want to make us all into one unisex being which encompasses all gender sexuality etc because that's easier... Blergh.

Whatever happened to individuality???

Our ndn is gay and single, he hates camp blokes and lisping voices that some use. Being gay does not define him he explained to us. Being a good engineer, that is what matters to him.

Phew. You had me going a bit there. I though fuffing might be a new furry "thing".

*wanders away again

Douglas Murray says something like this.
1

I'm none of the above. I have no problem with the LGB groupings. It the TQ who demand I give up my rights for their feelings.

Not sure that lauding pretty basic homophobia is a good move tbh.

He's obviously free to identify however he chooses, to associate with who he chooses etc. But let's not pretend that 'he hates camp blokes and lisping voices' is anything more than basic homophobia.

Campness and gayness are not the same thing. You can be ssa and hate campness.

OP, imagine how the 'Asian community' or other ethnic groups feel.

"Community" is a warm, fuzzy term used/imposed by those outside it, the people who consider themselves tolerant, kind, welcoming and, usually, empathic. It's a subtly othering term, but it's been adopted by some people with the community characteristic for different reasons (usually associated with personal/ego-related reasons, such as making themselves some kind of spokesperson).

There are times when it's genuinely used by people who wish to form a community, but it's still always used to separate themselves.

It's funny how it doesn't work in certain cases: the Conservative or Labour community, the White community, the Edinburgh or Manchester community. If we were to say "the English community" it could only make sense if they were living abroad (the English community in Spain).

The words is a nonsense these days, but it's a helpful signal to indicate the possible motivations of those who use it.

Actually, Op - you may well be behind the times with the acronym.

• “LGBTQQIP2SAA is an acronym that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit (2S), androgynous, and asexual.”

A similar acronym was used by Justin Trudeau recently - 2SLGBTQQIA+
Someone on Twitter told him we didn’t need his Wifi password

I get confused about this sort of thing: a gay man makes a statement about some gay men so the gay man is homophobic: ??? Can he just not like certain gay men?

What? You don’t get the newsletter, attend the quiz nights, go for the club outings? Don’t you pay the cub fees and attend the AGMs?

Shocking…

It does sound like something Google suggests while giving you a virtual pat on the head and assuring you that you won't need to remember it.

Well, there was a need for a community back in the days of more widespread hostility towards gay people - when you'd lose your job, home, family etc if you came out.

The fact that gay people can now live without a 'community' is largely thanks to the work done by those communities to push for legal and social acceptance of gay and lesbian people.

Saying that community is irrelevant is like saying feminism isn't relevant because you're just happy with your ability to vote, work, control reproduction and all the other things that were hard won by previous generations of women.

If some retrograde politician started trying to roll back rights for gay people (happening in Italy) then you'd probably see yourself as part of a community pretty soon op. United we stand, divided we fall.

I get that the trans thing is more complicated, and it's slightly taken over what was a kind of lgb consensus. It makes sense that trans people want a community, even if you disagree with what they should be/are calling for.

I'm a woman and I don't like when some women talk like little girls or literal baby talk, especially in business settings. I think it's to appear less threatening in a patriarchal, misogynistic world. I don't think that makes me a misogynist.

I also know a gay man who sees the "gay voice", vocal fry, baby talk etc as an annoying affectation that he thinks some gay men adopt to seem less threatening to straight men, so it might be a similar thought process rather than internalised self-hating homophobia.

The initial goals of gay rights activism - to have gay people treated the same way as everyone else and recognition that all sorts of people could be gay, including boring ordinary normal people - proved not to be what a lot of activists actually wanted, so they have shifted in the last few years more towards the idea of a super-special "community" strongly associated with certain political views, ways of dressing etc that demands praise and celebration from the rest of society.

What on earth is two-spirit?! The rest I can sort of guess at.

I believe is is sort of made up stuff (fairly recent) that foolish folk have run with. Surely it assumes a belief in a diety?

The poster I was responding to was clearly casting it as a hatred of camp gay men, or gay men who lisp. Because of course the entire point of the post was to imply that the 'good' gays get irritated by the 'bad' gays.

It's no different to someone saying they hate butch women, and claiming it's not homophobic even if raised in a discussion about lesbians.

I think 2 Spirit is a wilful misrepresentation of Polynesian and Native American terms for gay men. To try and imply they have a female soul in a male body and thus trans 'folk' have always existed.

Then evil Europeans came and ended this idyll by forcing everyone to be just male or female. Open to correction!

Well said OP. It's lazy practice by people who don't want to do the real work to create inclusive societies, policies, workplaces etc. to create buckets to chuck people in. "Disabled" and "BAME" (shudder) are the same, although I think that LGBTQIAA+ is definitely the worst.