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A comment on this question asks whether the tag is appropriate. I think it is, since the T is usually held to stand for "transgender", but the comment brings another question to mind.

The acronym LGBT has been subject to rather a lot of debate and attempts at revision/expansion, to the extent that there's even a "ha ha only serious" parody version: LGBTQXYZ (perhaps better known in queer activism than in the wider world; I don't see a great Google link for it, anyway).

The "LGBT" variant of the acronym is undoubtedly the most commonly used, but given that there's the potential for dispute, perhaps it would make sense for politics.se to restrict itself to and tags?

One problem with that is how we'd then synonimize , since it's a common enough term that we can expect it to be used as a tag, but can be used to refer to either or both of "gender" and "sexuality".

Any thoughts?

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I've seen QUILTBAG used. It's broader, but still uncommon. I personally like queer. I'd suggest aliasing queer and LGBT as tags. – TRiG Jan 24 at 11:22

2 Answers

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LGBT is a fairly well defined and fairly well recognized term, both in general and as a political constituency. Therefore the tag seems appropriate, since people could either be expected to search or filter on it, which is the main purpose of tags.

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I would furthermore add that the tag "queer" is one that is both self-selected by one part of the LGBT community, and seen as both offensive and derogatory by other sections of the community. To be clear, there is probably a political question to be had about the difference between the "queer" community and the LGBT movement as a whole, but personally I don't think tags are the place to have it. I would recommend that we make "queer" a synonym of lgbt, since at the very least, the "queer" community would be a subset of lgbt issues.

I'll also leave it to @Trig to handle my "scare quotes" :)

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<tongueout> In theory, queer is an umbrella term. In practice, it's a bit messier. It's an insult which has been reclaimed, and, as with many such, many people remain uncomfortable with it. I like it myself because (a) it's not an alphabet soup, and (b) it's all-embracing and doesn't need to be extended the way LGBT does to include asexual, genderqueer, agendered, questioning and other groups (hence the LGBTAQQWTFBBQ you sometimes see; or QUILTBAG, for that mater, which at least has the virtue of being pronounceable). However, its history as an insult is too close for many people. – TRiG Jan 24 at 20:20
As far as gender-specific tags: genderqueer, transgender, intersex and genderfree seems reasonable? – satyrwilder Mar 4 at 10:09

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