LGBT (1991, 1992); London's "Daily Express" & Big Apple Whores (6-25-05)

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jun 28, 2005, at 11:40 AM, Lary Horn wrote:

>> On Jun 28, 2005, at 10:40 AM, Barry Popik wrote:
>>
>>> LGBT
>>> ...
>>> Can anyone beat Grant Barrett's 1991 for LGBT or LGBTQ? Google
>>> Groups seems to take it back to 1992 at best...Why isn't it the
>>> more alphabetically ordered BGLT? Would that be bacon, guava,
>>> lettuce, tomato?
>>
>> there are three questions here: the ordering of initials, in
>> particular whether it's GL or LG; the inclusion of B (always after B
>>
>
> that should read G

yes, of course.

>> and L, i believe); the inclusion of T (always after B, i believe).
>> (Q is an even later addition.)
>
> I agree that the ordering is partly determined on chronological
> grounds.  Bisexuals were afterthoughts historically,
> Transsexual/Transgendered people a still later thought, and so on.  I
> can't think of any initialisms that are ordered alphabetically, if
> Barry was--contrary to my suspicion--asking non-ironically.  I think,
> as Arnold suggests, that it wouldn't be that hard to find GL- as well
> as LG- ordering.  Another consideration is phonology, when acronyms
> are involved, as in GLAD, the Gay & Lesbian Awareness Days at Yale
> (the inaugural was in '82).  I see elsewhere similar events are
> called, or have mutated into, B-GLAD, where the BGL ordering is
> clearly motivated on acronymic rather than alphabetic grounds.
>
> Larry
>
>> GL and LG (as in NOGLSTP, the National Organization of Gay and
>> Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals) certainly go back
>> before 1992.  So do GLB and LGB (as in the Ohio State AGLBFS,  the
>> Association of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Faculty and Staff).  i'm
>> not sure when the ordering of L before G, so as not to put gay men in
>> the position of greatest prominence, started.  the addition of T
>> might actually be since 1992.
>>
>> campus diversity offices and groups would be a good place to look.
>> i'll forward this query to a friend who runs an LGBT office, in the
>> hope that she knows where some of the history might be found.

my informant was off at a conference in beijing, but has now return.
first, her comment:

     From:   Gwendolyn Dean (gd35 at cornell.edu)
     Subject:     Re: LGBT (1991, 1992); London's  "Daily Express" &
Big Apple Whores (6-25-05)
     Date:     July 5, 2005 8:55:05 AM PDT
     To:       zwicky at csli.stanford.edu

This is an interesting question.  IIRC, we were using LGB, in that
order,
in 1990 or so in Atlanta.  I will check with some of the other
directors to
see if they have more information.
-----

and now some responses (reproduced with permission):

Subject: RE: consortium: Question re: History of use of "LGBT"
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 08:03:03 -0700
From: "Sanlo, Ronni" <RSanlo at saonet.ucla.edu>
To: "Gwendolyn Alden Dean" <gd35 at cornell.edu>, <consortium at uoregon.edu>

Hi, all&.my early experience was in 1980 when I was (very briefly)
the e.d. of what is now the Central Florida GLBT Center or something.
It was the Orlando Gay Center then. I added Lesbian and it became the
Orlando Gay and Lesbian Center. (There are folks with earlier
expenses than mine so I am speaking only from what I know personally.
Jim Toy at UM might be a good person to ask as would Barbara
Gittings.)Shortly thereafter, in 1981, I became the e.d./lobbyist for
the Florida Task Force (no labels at all which was both good and bad
at the time) which was patterned after the National Gay Task Force
which later became the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. (The
other national org at the time early 80s - was the Gay Rights
National Lobby which became sort of - the Human Rights Campaign Fund,
then HRC as we know it.) When I went to the University of Michigan in
1994, the office then was the Lesbian and Gay Programs office. I
suspect that with Ann Arbor always on the edge of political
correctness, the word lesbian came first because of the dominance of
gay men. I added bisexual the month I arrive at UM, then added
transgender the following year, in 1995.

As I began publishing, I tried to mix up the letters in my written
work to show a sense of equal importance. Publishers hate that! Every
single one of them changed/changes the lettering for consistency, so
it became LGBT for me as a writer. The Q and the I just seemed to
follow. I wonder how off-kilter the world would become if we started
saying IBGTQL? Just a thought&
-----

From: owner-consortium at lists.uoregon.edu [mailto:owner-
consortium at lists.uoregon.edu] On Behalf Of Gwendolyn Alden Dean
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 6:35 AM
To: consortium at uoregon.edu
Subject: Re: consortium: Question re: History of use of "LGBT"

At 09:22 AM 7/6/2005 -0400, LGBTQ Resources wrote:

... Interesting timing on this question. A colleague of mine here in
Toronto recently commented with great concern the changes he is
seeing in the ordering of the letters. Too frequently we are seeing
the G come before the L which he suspects is our political standards
sliding down the sexist slope. My understanding of the political
history is that Lesbian is placed before Gay in acknowledgement of
the dominance of gay and gay men in our communities, the ongoing
experience of sexism and invisibility and marginalization of Lesbians
and women in the LGBTQ communities.

[reply from GAD:]

Yep, that's why.  My answer whenever I get a question about the order
is that
I always put women first.  Then everyone is quiet.  I think our
political standards
are slipping.

I think we have a good understanding of what the various letters mean
and how
they came to be used and what the issues around order are.  Is anyone
familiar
with usage prior to 1991 or so?
-----

and another:

> Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2005 11:10:36 -0400
> From: Luke Jensen <ljensen at umd.edu>
> Organization: Office of LGBT Equity, University of Maryland
> To: consortium at uoregon.edu
> Subject: Re: consortium: Question re: History of use of "LGBT"
>
> I'm feeling my age in this conversation.  In 1990, when our
> staff/faculty group first formed, the decision was made to put
> those who
> were the most marginalized first, so we were the LESBIAN and gay STAFF
> and faculty association.  As best I can tell, this was not the norm at
> the time amongst these types of organizations (putting lesbians first,
> that is), but was common enough to not be unusual (after all, it was,
> and is, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, for example).
> Ironically, the members voted by secret ballot not to include
> bisexuals.  Transgender people were not on the radar screen of
> those who
> were involved with the organization at that time.  After those who
> argued most vocally to not include bisexuals had moved on and we
> had an
> out and proud well-placed bisexual staffer, the B was added after L
> and
> G.  That was around1994 or '95.  (My poor memory cells!  I did say
> I was
> feeling my age, didn't I?)  Although there was some talk that the
> original reasoning would put B first, there were also arguments about
> how people would find us.  For example, in the telephone directory, we
> had already argued that we needed an entry under "gay" that would send
> individuals to look under "lesbian."  Talk of adding T went on for a
> while, but didn't really happen until this office was formed in 1998.
> At that time, I did a very informal survey and found that institutions
> seemed roughly equally divided between LGBT and GLBT.  Other letters
> sometimes appeared in the titles of some types of organizations, like
> student groups, but were not common at all within an institutional
> context such as the name of an office or center.
>
> My guess is that this pattern played out in the same general way for
> other groups as well.  In particular, the process of "addition"
> explains
> some of the history of ordering, which is then compounded by issues of
> ease of recognition.  Folks all over my campus know what LGBT (and
> GLBT)
> mean immediately, but would not recognize BGLT or some other order
> (which is not to say it would be a bad idea -- a moment of education,
> etc.).  Also, the question persists: for individuals who are newly out
> or recently discovered a non-heterosexual orientation or a gender
> non-conforming identity and were not familiar with current
> terminology,
> where would they look to find us?  In other words, there is a dynamic
> struggle, almost, between making a politcal statement with a title and
> effectively communicating who we are and what we do to those who
> need to
> find us and who are not engaged in such discussions.
>
> Another point to consider is the concept of branding.  For example, my
> understanding is that CLAGS, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at
> CUNY, has determined that it has significant name recognition that
> would
> be lost by changing the title through the addition of other
> identifiers.  Also, the name places the formation of the
> organization at
> a fairly precise moment in history giving it additional weight or
> significance, or so some would argue.  It is also my understanding
> that
> this line of reasoning follows in a general way the decision of the
> NAACP to not change or update its title back in the 1950s and '60s (or
> was it the early '70s?).
-----

and that's what i know now.

arnold