Timeline for Was "L" placed at the beginning of the LGBT acronym because of the AIDS crisis?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
22 events
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| Apr 22, 2023 at 12:05 | history | edited | Laurel | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Apr 22, 2023 at 1:37 | history | edited | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Apr 21, 2023 at 20:13 | comment | added | DavePhD | @thelawnet and a 1987 issue of Nummo News refers to "LGB Awareness Week", also in reference to U. Mass. archive.org/details/nummonews1986unse/page/n33/mode/… | |
| Apr 21, 2023 at 16:15 | comment | added | DavePhD | @thelawnet actually, the April 1989 Valley Women's Voice uses "GLB" at least 3 times, including saying that U. Mass. has "GLB Awareness Week" April 7-14. archive.org/stream/valley-womens-voice-1989-05/… I can't verify them using LGB prior to 1991, but the archive is incomplete and the digitization is poor. | |
| Apr 21, 2023 at 15:51 | comment | added | DavePhD | @thelawnet It's hard to say what was first. The 1992 Oxford Dictionary of Abbreviations says that "GLB" now means "gay, lesbian, bisexual", replacing the older meaning of Girls Life Brigade and that "LGB" means local governing board (with no mention of a gay meaning). OED says that the August 1985 newsletter Valley Woman's Voice used "L.G.B.", while their earliest example of GLB is not as old as the example in my answer. | |
| Apr 21, 2023 at 14:52 | comment | added | thelawnet | none of these answers are really satisfactory because they fail to identify what the original acronym was, e.g., from 'gay and lesbian' was it LGB, GBL, GLB, or was it the use with 'T' that made the acronym popular, after which it's easy to add ever more letters | |
| Apr 21, 2023 at 12:30 | comment | added | DavePhD | @Zeus When the youtuber with 1.58 million subscribers writes "To be honest, the reason I do it is because lesbians really face a double whammy of discrimination - first for being a woman, and secondly for being gay. So I put the "L" first in the acronym to recognize that." despite constant criticism from his fan base, that's not rationalization of what already happened. | |
| Apr 21, 2023 at 8:03 | comment | added | Zeus | All of these explanations are mere rationalisations of what already had happened. Besides, the claim of greater hardship of L compared to G is also questionable: historically, in most jurisdictions, male homosexuality (buggery) was criminalised (and plenty of men were sent to prison), while female wasn't. | |
| Apr 20, 2023 at 23:35 | history | edited | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Apr 20, 2023 at 12:44 | history | edited | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Apr 20, 2023 at 10:34 | comment | added | IMSoP | @Avery We're not questioning the type of evidence, we're questioning the content of the evidence. The answer says "The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists credits Obama for solidifying the change", but the quoted text gives no such credit; it uses Obama as evidence that the change has already happened. At the time you accepted the answer, that was the only quote included, which says nothing at all about why the change was made. Subsequent edits have added more relevant details, but that quote, and its misinterpretation, remains. | |
| Apr 20, 2023 at 0:37 | history | edited | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Apr 20, 2023 at 0:30 | history | edited | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Apr 20, 2023 at 0:18 | comment | added | Captain Giraffe | @Avery the internet is a scary place. | |
| Apr 19, 2023 at 16:54 | comment | added | Avery | I actually specified the type of evidence I would find acceptable in the question | |
| Apr 19, 2023 at 16:04 | history | edited | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Apr 19, 2023 at 15:56 | history | edited | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Apr 19, 2023 at 14:51 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | I find it odd that this was marked as the accepted answer. It’s certainly an interesting data point, but it doesn’t address the main claim in the question at all (viz., that the shift to L-initial happened because of the AIDS pandemic two decades before Obama’s presidency). | |
| Apr 19, 2023 at 13:10 | comment | added | Nuclear Hoagie | The article references one statement released by Obama that uses the term LGBT, which the author took as an indicator that it had become the preferred term. It does not go so far as to credit Obama for popularizing the term, his use of it was merely an indicator that it had become popularized. This article was published 4 days after the statement, clearly the author could not have known potential future effects of Obama's statement merely days after it was made. The article does not argue that the use of LGBT became solidified due to (and just days after) Obama's statement. | |
| Apr 19, 2023 at 13:07 | comment | added | IMSoP | This seems to be saying that Obama recognised the shift, and was one of many people around that time making the change. He's being congratulated for adopting the term, not credited with originating it. The quoted text doesn't say anything about why the shift was happening. | |
| Apr 19, 2023 at 2:27 | vote | accept | Avery | ||
| Apr 19, 2023 at 1:27 | history | answered | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 4.0 |