Depending on who you talk to it stands for Queer or could stand for Questioning. Personally I hate LGBT (the term, not the people) and all the alphabet soup that keeps getting tacked onto it. Not to mention that there's a lot of flak for having Gay and Lesbian as separate terms since both are terms for homosexuality. A better term I've heard and wish people would more widely adopt is SAGA Sexuality And Gender Awareness. Covers everything. Gay? Covered. Bi? Gotcha. Trans? Pull up a chair. Asexual? Come, sit down and could you grab me a soda while you're up? Vegesexual? Weird...but we don't judge. (curious if anyone gets the reference) CISHET Ally? Come on in and could you hit the AC as you go by, it's starting to get a bit warm in here. Queer, Genderfluid, Agendered...you name it it's covered under SAGA. And saga makes it sound like it's an exciting journey of discovery.
That makes more sense to me too. Good point about distinguishing between Gay and Lesbian. I always thought lesbian just meant gay and female. If so then that would also make it redundant. And I don't think it makes sense to say Questioning... You could be questioning if you belong to any identity. And Queer if it means gay is redundant. So it would seem odd to include Q and L before other things like genderfluid, asexual, agendered, etc. And better one inclusive term than an endless stream of added letters.
In my BDSM 101 class, I typically make a semi-joke (semi because it's somewhat true), that in much the same way that the LBG community has adopted other communities around sexuality and gender identity and welcomed them in, so too did the BDSM community with other kinks and fetishes that were not directly under the BDSM original labels. We were just smart and didn't keep adding letter to induce confusion. And yes Skruddge, I know you are my husband and have heard it many times before. This was for the benefit of the greater reading audience. So
Well Queer isn't that redundant under the current evolution of it. Yes back in the day Queer was a term for homosexuals. Hell there was a show that banked on the term, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy". But now it's a term for those who don't feel like they quite fit into the neat pigeon holes that people keep wanting to create. Like a friend of mine who is a lesbian, but married a man. She loves him dearly and he loves her...but they don't have sex with each other. Doesn't quite fit into any of the pigeon holes neatly. Queer (in its evolved definition)...is a better fit. And the endless stream of letters is why I would love to see SAGA gain prevalence and edge out and replace LGBT+. I mean they're up to LGBTQIA2S now. Lesbian, Gay (redundant), Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer/Questioning, Intersex (people who have a discrepancy between internal and external genitalia), Asexual/Agendered, and Two-Spirited (someone who feels both Masculine and Feminine).
Queer is a term that in the community's effort to recover it from a pejorative, has actually taken on a couple of meanings. One is still homosexual. But others are using it to refer to a gender identity not a sexual orientation. So the term itself is up in the air, but the support is not. And I rest my previous post's case!