Pride

Letters keep being added to the LGB acronym and it’s getting very complicated, says Ellis O’Hanlon

Things used to be simple. There were straight people, and there were gay people. In addition, as long as you lived in one of the trendier parts of Dublin, you might even now and again see one of those fellas that swung both ways. Fair play to them. Live and let live.

Now it’s impossible to keep up.

First they added a T to the LGB acronym to be more inclusive of transgender people, in a warm, welcoming “if you’re Irish, come into the parlour” kind of way. That was grand. As everyone’s granny used to say back in the day, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Then came the Qs.

The first Q stood for ‘queer’. Queer was meant to stand for all those people who didn’t necessarily identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, but who felt all the same that their sexuality wasn’t adequately described by those other terms. Between the sheets, they might have been doing what you’d expect gay, lesbian or bisexual people to be doing. They just didn’t like the term. No bother there, either. It’s a free country. Call yourself what you want.

The problem was when straight people began to feel left out and demanded their right to be called queer, too. These people were generally straighter than O’Connell Street. When it came to relationships, they were strictly boy/girl, girl/boy, with no variation whatsoever. But that was too boring all of a sudden, so they stamped their feet and demanded the right to be queer, too. After all, they sometimes dyed their hair funny colours. That was a bit queer, right?

The real queers were far too polite to say: “Actually, no, you’re not. You’re straight. Stop trying to appropriate other people’s lives.” As a result, the straight-queers quickly lost the run of themselves. Before you knew it, they decided that even queer identity wasn’t loose enough to encompass all the things they were — or, rather, all the things they weren’t — so LGBTQ was forced to adopt another Q, this time for ‘questioning’. This was for people who weren’t quite sure that they were, or who felt that the other labels didn’t fit what they were all about. It seems crazy to me. Everybody’s ‘questioning’ something in their lives, even if it’s just why they should keep getting out of bed in the morning and face a world that has lost its collective marbles.

Once that made it past the LGBTQ bouncers into the club, all bets were off. Now it’s up to LBGTQQIAP2.

The A stands for Asexual. That’s right. The range of sexual identities now has to find a place for people who don’t feel sexual attraction to others at all. That’s like saying restaurants need to cater more for people who aren’t hungry.

The real queers were far too polite to say: “Actually, no, you’re not. You’re straight. Stop trying to appropriate other people’s lives.”

As a result, the straight-queers quickly lost the run of themselves

The P stands for pansexual, which apparently means being attracted to people regardless of their gender identity, which, when you think about it for more than three-and-a-half seconds, is just a fancy-schmancy way of saying bisexual, really.

And what’s that you say? The 2? That stands for ‘two spirit’. Don’t ask. Trust me, you don’t want to know.

It’s a term which refers to very specific aspects of Native American culture, but which some self-absorbed, entitled white people have decided they’d quite like grabbing a piece of too, because it sounds, like, really cool. Now campaigners are telling kids in school that there are a hundred ‘or more’ genders.

The official list now includes: ‘affectogender’, which means having a gender which changes according to your mood swings; ‘mirrorgender’, which means having a gender that reflects your surroundings.

The worst part of all this is that you’re not even allowed to laugh anymore at this collective descent into genderbending insanity, or the easily affronted folk will immediately accuse you of being offensive.

Hurting someone else’s feelings has become the ultimate thought crime, which is why it’s now even considered abusive to snigger when someone tells you that they’re polyamorous. That means having sexual relationships with multiple people at the same time.

In my day, we used to call that something else. Now it’s a whole sexual identity, apparently.

Admit it, things were much simpler when everybody was just straight or gay, with a sprinkling of variety in the middle for those who were mainly interested in hurling but who sometimes liked to indulge in a bit of camogie at the weekend, or vice versa.

It’s certainly made Pride much more complicated than it used to be. Once upon a time, gay people would march through town, causing fainting in a small gaggle of God-botherers, but most people would see the rainbow flag and think, ah sure, it brings a bit of colour to the place, so it does, and it’s not as if they’re harming anybody. These days, it practically feels as if you have to pass an exam in being right-on before being allowed to say anything, while there are so many identities being represented that there’ll soon be more people on the march than in the crowd.

Since when did the question of who you sleep with become such an ill-tempered and humourless battle zone, especially when most people these days could best described by the initial N. They’re the ones who go to bed every night with Netflix. It’s a lifelong relationship, and there’s never any end to the variety.

Don’t knock it.