It used to be just LGB (Lesbian Gay Bisexual). Now the official acronym is LGBTQIA, a veritable alphabet soup of different ways to identify oneself by gender or by sexual orientation. I must admit I had to look up what some of those letters represented, notably the 'QIA' part, and according to my research this rainbow of letters (the new ROY G BIV if you will) stands for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Questioning/Queer Intersex and Asexual. Each term is simultaneously a separate category with specific criteria or no category at all. Conceivably you can apply only one term to your body, your sexual preference or state of mind, no terms at all or maybe even as many as four at a time. And the bevy of new terminology to describe various forms of gender expression or sexual orientation is growing daily. The University California - San Diego has kindly created something of a dictionary of LGBTQIA words for those feeling as confused as I was.
But even as understanding, awareness and compassion for those in the LGBTQIA communities grow for some, the old adage of one step forward and two steps back still applies for others. The importance of this topic skyrocketed after the news that Pfc. Bradley Manning, recently convicted for leaking confidential government information to the press, came out as transgender and asked to be called Chelsea Manning and referred to using female pronouns. Pfc. Manning also requested to be provided with hormone therapy as part of her general medical routine at the prison where she will be held for her 35-year sentence. The prison denied this request, which the ACLU wrote about here.
Chelsea Manning's announcement caused something of a media maelstrom over how to refer to her on the radio, Internet or written publications. Different parties diverged on how to tackle the issue. The Huffington Post was one of the few who chose to shift according to Manning's wishes and refer to her as a her. Many other news sources, including National Public Radio, first announced that they would continue to refer to Private Manning as a 'he' until "Bradley Manning’s desire to have his gender changed actually physically happens" (emphasis ours). Thankfully they've changed their mind.
This whole debacle reminds us that, to some, the most controversial words of all are the good old 'he' and 'she.' Dean Baquet, managing editor of The Times, defended his choice to continue referring to Pfc. Manning as a male by saying that "readers would be totally confused if we turned on a dime overnight and changed the name and gender of a person in the middle of a major running news story."
Yes, maybe there would be some head scratching over the morning paper, but the true issue at hand here is that readers may not be just confused but uncomfortable at hearing someone who was born male referred to as 'her.' NPR's original stance that the wishes of transgender individuals are not valid until they obtain the appropriate genitalia demonstrates institutionalized transphobia, confirms the enormous roadblock that exists for transgender Americans, and underscores how much work will have to be done to overcome it. Nationally, we simply have not yet reached a satisfactory level of understanding about all the letters of the LGBTQIA collection. I must admit I am no different - I did not know what intersex was until I looked it up ten minutes ago. NPR's philosophy that Bradley is not Chelsea until she has obtained all the biological characteristics of a woman exemplifies our attempt as a nation to put transgender individuals into neat conceptual boxes which we are comfortable with.
This sort of 'he'-'she' pigeon-holing may seem innocuous, but just two weeks ago we saw how ignorance can quickly escalate into violence. Islan Nettles, a 21-year-old transgender woman, was killed on Friday August 16th in Harlem, brutally beaten to death only one month after the horrific murder of Diamond Williams, also a transgender woman, in Philadelphia. These listings do not include the thousands of transgender and LGBTQIA Americans who suffer daily from harassment and discrimination, whether in the school, the workplace or walking down the street. How do we stop this? Well, they say education is power and in this case it is undeniably true. With a greater understanding of the LGBTQIA communities, especially starting in schools, we can hopefully eradicate harmful assumptions and eventually ignorance bred violence. Because even if you never remember any of UCSDs 109 words, hopefully you will remember that behind all of the acronyms, names, numbers, hyphens and dashes we are all just people and Chelsea Manning deserves all the respect due from her country.
