Q Toon: Citius, Altius, Fortius – Alternatus

Okay, I'll admit that I don't know of any of this year's Olympic athletes who are openly transgender, two-spirit, or polyamorous.

But hear me out.

Once upon a time, the word "gay" was put forth as a catch-all term for all non-heterosexual persons. But it was put forth by male homosexuals, so female homosexuals decided that they deserved a separate designation and labeled themselves "lesbians." Bisexuals then realized that they had been excluded, and the term "lesbigay" was born. (Thank goodness that nobody has felt a need for separate words for male and female bisexuals. Yet.) 

But that left transgender persons out of the community, so "lesbigay" was ditched in favor of the "LGBT" acronym. The acronym has become longer and longer with each non-heteronormative interest that didn't see itself in what was previously there. Since nobody can remember what letters are in there any more, or what order has been agreed upon, most of us use "LGBTQ+." 

The "+" is the equivalent of when the Professor and Mary Ann were just "and the rest."

We're seeing the same thing happen to the Pride flag. For years, it consisted of six stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple (a pink stripe atop the original version quickly disappeared). Then somebody decided that those colors excluded people of color, so black, brown and tan chevrons were added on the hoist end. 

More chevrons for "and the rest" interests are still getting shoehorned in (mostly for groups that also have their own distinct pride flags). We hadn't followed the North American Vexillological Association's principles of flag design to begin with, anyway; but we will have to stop the proliferation of chevrons before the center yellow and green stripes get covered over entirely.

I'm certainly not advocating for closing off the gay liberation movement to any of these subgroups. Whoopi Goldberg tried something similar in a discussion of racism recently, to her regret.

What got her in trouble was the current move to define racism as something that applies only to white people's attitudes toward people of color — in spite of the fact that the Nazis (and they weren't alone) held that "inferior races" included Jews, Roma, Slavs, Italians, Irish, and on and on, even before you got to measuring skin tones. As any geneticist will tell you, "race" is strictly a social construct. Even standing a Swede next to a Hutu, "race" has no biological meaning.

So also with sexuality. If society decides to come up with words to describe people whose sexual orientation is toward bleached hair, or brown eyes, or a Korean accent, I suppose we'll have to add them to the ever-expanding LGBTQIA2XYZIEIO alphabet. Along with the chubby chasers, furries, latexophiles, hermits, kilt fetishists, people whose tastes include both oysters and snails, and your weird cousin Kyle.

It's all a social construct. And construction season is never really over.

Let's just sit back and enjoy the games, okay?