What does LGBTQIA+ mean? The alphabet soup explained
In this blog we will discuss the letters LGBTQIA +, what do they stand for, why are they in that order and what exactly does that QIA mean?
Letters
The L stands for Lesbian, the G for Gay, the B stands for Bisexual and the T stands for Trans, the Q stands for Queer the I stands for Intersex (we will come back to that later), the A stands for Asexual and the + for everything else.
Colors
The colors of the Progress Pride Flag stand for Red: life, Orange: healing, Yellow: sunlight, Green: nature, Indigo: serenity & Violet: spirit
Right next to these colors came a triangle of the intersex flag (the yellow triangle with the purple circle inside) and white, baby pink, baby blue (for trans representation), brown and black stripes (for representation for both the people of color and the people who have suffered and/or survived through HIV/AIDS and the stigma that still exists around the virus).
The history of the letters LGBTQIA+
The order of the letters LGBTQIA+ only came after the AIDS crisis when many lesbians were helping gay men who had the virus themselves. Before the AIDS epidemic, many lesbians (including lesbian youth!) also participated in civil rights movements, policy work, and advocated for housing equality, parental rights, and sexual and reproductive health rights and many of them worked in healthcare ans social work too. These backgrounds made it possible that lesbians could take both medical and hospice care for the men and educate everyone else on the subject. A couple examples of how they did this is organizing blood drives and protests, but there were a lot of ways lesbians helped the gay community during the AIDS crisis. That’s why from 1988 onwards the L is in the front.
Since the last three letters are not always mentioned, we will give them some extra attention. Queer may be used by people as a specific identity, but it is often considered an umbrella term for anyone who is non-cisgender or heterosexual. It started as a slur, but a wide group within the community have reclaimed the word as a positive umbrella term. Intersex is a term to describe individuals who are born with variations of sex characteristics that do not fit with binary definitions of male or female bodies. Asexual means that someone rather does not want sex at all in a relationship or they might want to avoid it as much as possible. It is important to remember that both sexuality and gender is a spectrum, so that also applies to asexuality.
In today’s blog we learned about the letters of LGBTQIA+, what they stand for (especially QIA) and why they are in that order. Also check out our TikTok!