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Monday Mini: The ABCs of LGBTQ+ · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and welcome to Stefan. Never told
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: your prediction of iHeartRadio, and yes I am solo today.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: We are doing our audiobook recording this week and it's
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: just thrown a real wrench and in everything. But I
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: think it's going to sound really good, y'all. I think
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: it's going to sound really good. And we'll share more
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: about that whole process soon because we had a really
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: amazing team of women working on it. But in the meantime, yes,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be doing this episode by myself. It's
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: a bit of a shorter one and content warning. We
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: are talking about a very very brief, very brief history
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: of kind of LGBTQ, just as like an acronym, and
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  Speaker 1: I know that the history of that can be triggering,
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  Speaker 1: and there has been a lot of damage done by
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  Speaker 1: some of these terms historically, even as we reclaim them.
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  Speaker 1: And also we're going to make this point more at
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  Speaker 1: the end, or I'm going to make this point more
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  Speaker 1: at the end. Not all of this is agreed upon
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: and continues to evolve, So just a note on that,
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  Speaker 1: and also just another note, this is a very Eurocentric,
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  Speaker 1: slash Western history of these terms, and it is missing
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  Speaker 1: a lot, So we'll talk about that a little bit
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  Speaker 1: more at the end as well. So all right. Activist
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: first adopted LGB in the nineteen nineties. Of these words,
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  Speaker 1: lesbian came first. For centuries, people have associated the term
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: with a Greek woman named Sappho from the island of Lesbos,
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  Speaker 1: whose poems often revolved around passionate same sex relationships. The
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: first known instance of the term goes back to the
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: seventeenth century, but in our more modern understanding usage it
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: first came into use after being used in medical text
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  Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties around sexuality and psychology. Women adopted
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: the term and secretly used it to describe themselves. A
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: nineteenth century German lawyer named Karl Heinrich Ulrichs is believed
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  Speaker 1: to have been a gay man and to have been
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  Speaker 1: the first to coin homosexuality, or at least partly, if
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: not the exact word so. In eighteen sixty two he wrote,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: we earnings constitute a special class of human gender. We
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  Speaker 1: are our own gender, a third sex. Earnings here was
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the word he used to describe men attracted to other men.
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  Speaker 1: The word was quickly replaced in eighteen sixty nine by
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  Speaker 1: an Austro Prussian journalist named Kroli Maria kirt Benny. Kirkt
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  Speaker 1: Benny had been in touch with Olrix, and when the
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Prussian government floated the idea of adding language prohibiting sexual
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: activity between men, kurt Benny wrote an anonymous open letter
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  Speaker 1: to the Prussian government calling it shocking nonsense, where he
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: used the term homosexuality, a word he'd first used in
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  Speaker 1: his correspondence with Olris. He also gets the credit for
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: coining heterosexuality meaning people attracted to the opposite gender, and
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: bisexuality people attracted to both genders. And here we must
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: insert an important note as we as a society have
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: come to realize that sexuality and gender a spectrums. Bisexuality
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: has expanded in definition to mean someone attracted to any
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: gender identity, not just men or women, and you can
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: see our two part episode on bisexuality for more on that.
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  Speaker 1: So in this letter, kurt Benny strongly claimed that homosexuality
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  Speaker 1: was something people were born with, and he really pushed
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  Speaker 1: back against the idea that it was something to be
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  Speaker 1: ashamed of or an indication of something wrong in heavy quotes. Eventually,
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  Speaker 1: those in the medical field, especially psychologists, started using these terms,
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  Speaker 1: as did early gay rights groups. The etymology and origins
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: of the word gay are hard to bend down, but
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  Speaker 1: at some point people started using it as a slur.
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  Speaker 1: Sometime in the nineteen sixties, activists started to reclaim it,
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  Speaker 1: with men in particular using it despite rampant homophobia and
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: laws against queer folks. It was a way to protest
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  Speaker 1: and to express their love. The word homophile, meaning saying love,
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  Speaker 1: was also used. Gay grew to encompass same gender love
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: or any non heterosexual love in the nineteen eighties, as
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  Speaker 1: well as gender divergence, and then, as mentioned, LGB came
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: into use in the nineteen nineties as a way to
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: show solidarity, except it was leaving out transfolks. The term
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  Speaker 1: transgender goes back to the nineteen sixties and medical text
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  Speaker 1: and by activists who argued that sex and gender were
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  Speaker 1: not the same thing. However, it wasn't until the two thousands,
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  Speaker 1: when the word had largely replaced other outdated and offensive terms,
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  Speaker 1: that it became more widespread. Then came the Q. Beginning
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  Speaker 1: of the nineteen tens, queer was used as a slur
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  Speaker 1: to other and attack those outside of the heteronormative community,
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  Speaker 1: but also around the nineteen nineties people started to reclaim it.
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  Speaker 1: At the time, it stood not only for queer but
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  Speaker 1: also for questioning. In more recent times, a plus sign
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  Speaker 1: has been added to be more inclusive and intersects a
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  Speaker 1: sexual two spirit, which has a long often ignored history,
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  Speaker 1: have also gotten in the mix, and there have been
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  Speaker 1: a lot of critiques and attempts to make this more
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  Speaker 1: inclusive and discussions around labels in general. It is not
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  Speaker 1: at all agreed on or without its flaws and limits.
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  Speaker 1: A lot of people argue that there's too many labels
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  Speaker 1: and we can't put them in an acronym, or that
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  Speaker 1: things are always changing and this doesn't encompass everything and
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  Speaker 1: everyone and every identity. Others, and sometimes even the same
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  Speaker 1: people argue that it's also important to have something like this.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: But it is something that is a conversation that's ongoing,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: and it's something that Samantha and I have heard from
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: you all about about your thoughts around all of this.
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  Speaker 1: So definitely not finished the conversation around it, and uh,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: definitely very important conversation to be had, But just write
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: in if you have thoughts let us know. Happy pride
• 7:13
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• 7:18
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• 7:26
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• 7:32
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• 7:37
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• 7:40
  Speaker 1: producer Christina, our executive producer Maya, and Dark contributor Joey.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: And thanks to you for listening Stephane never told you
• 7:48
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• 7:51
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• 7:53
  Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah