The alphabet soup gets thicker
A Canadian politician has just coined ‘MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+’. Run for the hills.
Around fifteen years ago, I had a stand-up routine in which I would bemoan the ever-expanding initialism for sexual minorities. First it was LGB, then LGBT, then LGBTQI. I ended up increasing it gradually until every letter of the alphabet was represented and had its own assigned meaning. It was more a memory trick than a joke, but it always landed well.
By the time we reached 2016, the routine had been taken over by reality and I never performed it again. The ‘community’ was using variations in earnest that were far more ridiculous than anything I could invent. There was LGBTQ2SIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, two-spirit, intersex and asexual), LGBTQQIP2SAA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit, asexual and ally), and even 2SLGBTQQIA+ (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual and related communities). Who could have predicted that mathematical symbols would eventually intrude?
Not to be outdone, Canadian MP Leah Gazan has coined a new variation, MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+, and the clip has this week gone viral.
It’s the kind of nonsense that seems engineered to appeal to anti-gay reactionaries who already believe that we’re all mentally ill. Of course, very few gay people use this linguistic bilge, and most see it for what it is: the symptom of a generation of activists who have been trained in jargon but not in thought. I hadn’t heard of Gazan before, but editor of Quillette, Jonathan Kay, has explained that she is a fringe figure from a minor party in his home country of Canada. As he points out:
‘She’s not in the government. She regularly calls for dumb things, such as criminalizing anyone who dares talk candidly about the 2021-era unmarked-graves social panic. CBC types treat her as a serious person because she’s indigenous and because she always talks in the tear-drenched idiom of white-settler colonial evilness. But she’s not.’
This is important context for a viral video in which many people will assume that Gazan is a mainstream politician. Yet of course she is just a short step away from the likes of Zack Polanski and Hannah Spencer or any of the Green Party cranks who might very well enjoy significant gains in the next general election here in the UK. Labour has its fair share of gender ideologues too, most notably the MP Nadia Whittome, who surely represents the best possible case for mandatory IQ tests for parliamentarians.
As for MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+, it adds to the rainbow initialism the category of ‘Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls’, which would seem to confirm that victim status is all that is required for eligibility in the alphabet soup. Hence Gazan’s absurd misuse of the term ‘genocide’. This mindset has been ruinous for gay rights, encouraging sexual minorities to feel sorry for themselves and to complain endlessly about anything and nothing. At this point, ‘Pride’ really ought to be rebranded as ‘Pity’.
To give yet another example from Canada, now ground zero for the demolition of gay respectability, last September the chair of the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation considered an ‘emergency motion’ regarding a Harry Potter event in Stanley Park. The resolution was later announced on social media: ‘Apologized to TGD2S community after emotional discussion. Shared some tears. Disavowed JKR. Will undertake concrete actions to rebuild trust.’
It was a triple whammy: childish histrionics, demonisation of J. K. Rowling, and deployment of yet another inelegant initialism. That such people are in positions of authority speaks to the ongoing infantilism of Canadian politics.
Needless to say, very few gay people want anything to do with any of this. It’s profoundly embarrassing, and is partly responsible for the results of numerous polls showing that support for gay rights is declining. Such word games ought to be restricted to the incurable logomachists of higher education, and in particular those of the postmodernist ilk who rely on obscurantism to bypass the need for serious ideas. An advertisement for a lecturing post at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, includes a commitment to the LGBTQIATakatapuiMVPFAFF+ community. Feel free to investigate the meaning of this verbiage if you do not value your limited time on this earth. Personally, my patience has expired.
The unstoppable bloating of the once manageable LGB initialism has followed the same path as that of the pride flag. It started out in 1978 as Gilbert Baker’s design of a rainbow with eight stripes, which was soon whittled down to six. This simple image worked well for decades as a symbol of unity; it was never meant to expand into a hodgepodge of competing identity groups.
Fast forward to today, and that ‘Progress Pride’ monstrosity has become ubiquitous, with its added colours and chevrons and symbols to incorporate additional victim categories. Given that the original flag included everyone by the very nature of its design, there was never any need for these incessant modifications.
The alphabet soup encapsulates the woke obsession with group identity and victimhood. It is a divisive, pointless and ultimately self-defeating strategy which alienates more than it attracts. And while feather-brained ideologues like Gazan will continue their efforts to colonise the political sphere through jargon, the rest of us would be wise to back away and reserve our energy for the adults.
From now on I think I’m just going to shorten it to IBC - the Infantile Bilge Coalition.
It's extremely peculiar to live in a world in which insanity has become mainstream, rather than either marginalized or regarded as something to be treated. If I didn't already identify as a kangaroo, I'd be worried about remaining part of the society of humans.