The Lone ‘G’: Claiming sexuality without claiming community

Growing up, I didn’t really know any gay men (at least not any that were out yet). The first time I did meet an openly gay man I was seventeen. Though we did end up dating, it was only for a couple of months. To say that he had much influence over my life would be a stretch. I enjoyed watching the TV show ‘Will and Grace’ when I was sixteen, and while Will seemed like the kind of guy I would like to be as a gay man, he was still only a fictional character in a TV show.

Having no one to introduce me to popular LGBT media, culture, or anything meant I didn’t have anyone to tell me what it “meant to be gay,” and looking back now, I couldn’t be happier about that. Having the stoic personality that I’ve always had (though, admittedly, to a lesser extent when I was younger), I believed in making the best of my situation. No one could tell me what it meant to be gay, so I got the amazing opportunity to decide for myself… at least, that’s what I thought.

Looking back now, I understand that I wasn’t determining what it meant to be gay, but rather what it meant to be me. My sexuality is a very small part of a much larger person. I love rock music of all kinds. I am passionate about writing. And, according to people on the left, I have a lot of “conservative” views. These are just a few of the many things that I’m more likely to share with people than my sexual orientation, and that’s not because I’m ashamed of being gay, because I’m not. I’m actually glad to be gay because, while it’s not the most important thing about me, it has shaped a human experience that’s far different from so many others.

I joined a gay/straight alliance when I was an eighteen-year-old freshman in college, and I was amazed at the number of LGBT people that were there. I had never seen so many. Granted, it was less than ten, but for me, any number above three was still a lot.

The experiences I had in this group were fun and memorable and I am glad that I had them. However, I could never shake this feeling of being different, and that feeling followed me to every LGBTQ+ event I went to. By my junior year of college, I really didn’t even hang out all that much with LGBTQ+ people or go to any LGBTQ+ events because I just felt too different. That “differentness,” as I would come to realize, were my values.

As the LGBTQ+ community continued on its woke path, my values started separating me more and more from the mob-mentality. I always held my individuality as one of my biggest prizes. Being the only openly gay kid in a rural high school, I had to champion my differences, because I had noticed something in my teen years. The more confidence that I had in myself as a person—as an individual—the more I intimidated bullies who were only ever brave enough to bully others when they were in their friend groups. These groups were made up of people who were terrified to be themselves, and when I realized this, my individuality became a powerful weapon. I like thinking outside the box. I like doing things my way. I like taking old ideas and expanding on them and looking at them in new and intriguing ways. Yet, the LGBTQ+ community that I once knew, the one where people said, “Don’t stereotype me, I am my own person,” ceased saying this in favor of saying something much worse.

If you have heard about the LGBTQ+ community, chances are you have heard some of its many variations with its ever-expanding acronym. In an article by Matthew Bell, titled, “Why be LGBT when you can be LGBTIQCAPGNGFNBA? The story of an escalating acronym,” Bell interviews gay rights activist Peter Tatchell who said,

“It’s great to be inclusive, but the new alphabet soup is a confusing and alienating mess—made even worse when people get into spats over missing initials or the inclusion of initials they disagree with. The longest I’ve ever seen is LGBTIQCAPGNGFNBA. This is absurd. It makes us a laughingstock and devalues serious issues around sexuality and gender.”

In case you don’t want to count, that acronym is 16 letters long, and there are now acronyms that have numbers in them as well. In a paper titled, ‘LGBT? LGBTQ+? LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM? Or just: QUEER!’ by Dennis Scheller-Boltz, there is a breakdown of a fifteen-letter version of the acronym.

The acronym:

LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM:      Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Flexual, Asexual, Genderf*ck, Polyamorous/Pansexual, Bondage, Dominance, Sadism, Masochism

In a more recent article by John Casey, titled, “Is the LGBTQ+ Community Undergoing Reconstruction?” Casey lamented that he’s not really sure what the community means anymore as more and more sexualities, genders, and now even non-White races (seriously) are being added onto the flag and acronym.

Casey’s article goes on to talk about certain issues of importance that are splintering LGBT people from the rest of the people in the community such as cancel culture, banning police from Pride in NYC and the disbanding of Boston Pride due to lack of race representation. He finishes the article with a series of questions with obvious answers—obvious if you’re not brainwashed by far-left rhetoric, but we’ll get into that soon.

On top of all this, I have also seen acronyms that contain POC for People of Color, F for Fetish, K for Kink, L for Leather, S for Straight, and A for Ally. Add to those the above mentioned letters BDSM (Bondage, Dominance, Sadism, and Masochism) and you get a bunch of words that could all easily be applied to a straight, cisgender person. But why is this a problem?

The acronym LGBT has been in use since the 1990s—before just being LGB. Adding the T was a big deal, because it took the acronym from people who identified as a sexuality different than heterosexual to including people of genders that are not cis as well. This here is kind of my point. There is always a “catch” to being a part of a group. Whether that catch means you must do something like read a certain book for a book club. Whether that catch is a monetary payment you must pay every year. Or whether you are a specific group of people, which is what the LGBTQ+ community had been for so long. The catch to be a part of the LGBT community was you were not a cisgender straight person. You could be an ally, but it was understood that you were not really a part of the community as being LGBT was a unique experience exclusive to us.

So, there’s still a group, and thus, there is still a catch, but now that straight cisgender people can be considered a part of the community, the catch has to change, and it did.

The new catch is a political identity that you must agree with, but not just any political identity—a socialist one. I do want to be clear, just because almost everyone who claims to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community seem to hold up socialist and/or communist values and ideas does not necessarily mean that all of them are socialists/communists. Some are just useful idiots for socialists/communists. This doesn’t mean that they’re idiots either, they could, in fact, be rather smart, but they’re hardcore ignorant on the workings of socialism, capitalism, and communism, and are probably easily manipulated emotionally.