The Trans-Train Trolls On

Readers might recall that I caused a bunch of trouble during my year at CU/Boulder for a post here on Power Line about not being able to keep up with the protean gender-identity acronyms (though that was nothing compared to Wesleyan University).

In any case, I’ve been trumped surpassed. The Spectator of London offered up this story a little while back:

Why be LGBT when you can be LGBTIQCAPGNGFNBA?

By Matthew Bell

Enrolling at Parsons College in New York the other day, a friend was asked to state her name, subject and PGPs. Her what? Her preferred gender pronouns. In other words, did she want to be referred to as ‘she’ and ‘her’, or ‘he’ and ‘him’, or ‘it’, or ‘they’, or none of the above, and was she a Mr, Miss, or Mx? If she wasn’t sure, a support group was on hand to help, called the LGBTQIAGNC. There was no need — she said her name was Clare and ‘she’ would do fine. And the rest of the class? ‘No one stated a PGP other than the obvious,’ she reports, ‘although we do have a large LGBT community.’

Your reaction to that story might be to think how marvellously inclusive Parsons is — an institution so evolved that people can live gender-neutral lives without prejudice. Or it may be to ask: what on earth does LGBTQIAGNC stand for? And to wonder whether some people in the gay rights movement haven’t veered off course. As one activist sighed when I asked if he could spell out the acronym, ‘Matthew, there are so many letters now that nobody can keep up.’

A little light googling reveals that it stands for ‘Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual and gender-non-conforming’. Go a little deeper and you discover that there are dozens of different acronyms, and that nobody can agree on what the official one should be. Well, how do you find a name for individuals who are united by being different?

That’s essentially the same question I asked in my original post way back in August 2013, before learning that this is a forbidden question.

But I do wonder if this is all just a huge trolling operation gone wrong—a college prank that got out of hand. Today the Washington Examiner reports today on the Obama Administration’s new transgender care rules that took effect on January 1. This paragraph in particular caught my eye:

The rule, which went into effect Jan. 1, says that doctors can’t refuse to provide medically necessary health services within their scope of practice because of a patient’s gender identity. For instead, a gynecologist couldn’t refuse to perform a cervical Pap test for a transgender man.

The comic possibilities here are nearly endless, which only begins to show what a farce the whole scene has become. For now I’ll just let Monty Python stand in, with their classic scene from a movie that nowadays probably would be banned on many college campuses as hate speech:

Related: My article from June about “The Genderfication of U.S. Politics.”

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses