21 July—When I was young, I assumed that people made babies when men and women kissed. With all the kissing going on, I wondered, how come there weren’t lots more babies? But when I saw French and Russian men kissing other men and women kissing other women all over the place, it dawned on me that men kissing men and women kissing women must have been a means of birth control. Then I learned that baby-making wasn’t in fact accomplished by kissing. That was after I had taken my bachelor’s degree.

So what’s my arrested development about? LGBTQIA+, that’s what. Don’t forget the +. Where will it end?

First it was gay and lesbian. Easy enough. Or lesbian and gay, a synecdochical relationship, grammatically and sexually, in which all lesbians are gay but not all gays are lesbian. That’s LG. Then B was added for bisexual, referring to people attracted to others of either gender. Thus, LGB.

Then came T for transgender or transsexual, really also a somewhat synecdochical relationship, with transgender being the broader term describing people who have a gender different from the sex assigned at birth; and transsexual being a more specific term that fits under the transgender umbrella. The politically correct are advised that the use of transsexual can be contentious, wherefore the term shouldn’t be used unless someone specifically asks to be referred to that way. Being politically incorrect, it wouldn’t have occurred to me. So now it’s LGBT.

That takes us to Q for queer. Or, it seems, questioning. Both legitimate. No synecdoche here, so why not make it QQ? Remember when queer covered it all?

I is for intersex. Intersex people are born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.” Reminds me of old-fashioned hermaphrodites, a.k.a. epicenes in the literary world. That’s opposed to bisexual people who may simply have preferences rather than characteristics. So now it’s LGBTQ(Q)I. But human rights? Oh well, if the UN tells us . . .

A? Asexual. Not involving sex or not interested in it. ‘Nuff said. That gives us LGBTQ(Q)IA.

I give up on the plus sign (+). It should be the infinity symbol (∞), which is really just a convenience representing potential or the unquantifiable. Kind of like the concept of the Abrahamic God, if you like. Depending where you look, it may even be 2+ or 2S+, signifying the American Indian (sorry, Native American) Two-Spirit. And on and on and on.

In addition to cisgender (traditional male or female in traditional respects, which still exist, believe it or not), there are, among others, agender, androgyne, bigender, butch, gender expansive, gender fluid, gender outlaw (wow!, refusing to be defined by society), gender queer, masculine of center, omnigender, and polygender.

Omnigender and polygender? Forgive my ignorance, but how many genders are there?