Each letter has its reason for being.

Its Pride month, it’s somewhat hard to miss that that’s the case. Though here in the cold beginnings of a Melbourne winter most of what I am seeing is on the other side of the globe. But no matter, I am living my Pride through the eyes of my LGBTQIA+ friends and allies.

I was talking with one of my friends over the weekend and both of us, we both did it, stumbled over our acronym, and yes, it can feel at times cumbersome, and it can feel a bit like an alphabet soup. But each one of those letters are important, each one of them represent struggle for survival, tolerance, acceptance and celebration.

I try to always ensure to type out or say the full acronym as I know it, and I try to always put a plus sign at the end of it. It is, in my view, utterly important that all of those letters are included, and that the potential for new ones to be added is just as important.

In adopting an acronym as a short hand way of referring to our communties that by its nature has each letter representing a particular minority, then it is an imperative that each of the minorities has a letter. One does not have to look too hard to see that even within our own communities particular elements have been erased and silenced in the narrative.

The erasure of trans women from the stories of Stonewall is a prime example. The lack of acceptance for bi people another. The common dropping of the Q the I and the A yet another example.

It’s a mistake to think that we are just one homogenous group of people thrown together through oppression. Yes, we have been grouped together through oppression, but we aren’t a homogenous group, we are a bunch of groups, that have some things in common, mostly that society has oppressed us, sidelined us, abused us, discounted us, they have labelled us abominations and likened us to being of the devil.

A lot has changed since Stonewall. A lot of progress has been made, and we must celebrate it. As wonderful as it is to celebrate it we must not forget that we have much more to keep striving for. The recent happenings in Chechnya starkly and horrendously remind us.

Each of us, represented by one of those letters in that cumbersome acronym still have struggles to win, acceptance to find, and bigotry to face. We must resist the urge to do away with one part of the acronym, as that, is like doing away with the minorities that part of the acronym represent.

Sure it can be easier to just use a shorthand, I get that, but when we do, we turn down the volume on the parts of the LGBTQIA+ struggles for equality and justice when we do so.

I don’t think this is just my imagination, in recent times, we have seen arguments that fighting the so-called bathroom bills is not central to the LGBTIQA+’s mission.

Let’s stop for just a moment and think about that, because, when you do, what you are saying is, that the safety and rights of transgender and gender divergent people is not as important as an aspect of pursuits for justice under that wonderful rainbow acronym.

Sure, it’s true, the acronym is cumbersome, and it seems to get more cumbersome, but it must be allowed to evolve and we must use it in full, because when we start to abbrevieate it further, how do you decide which minority groups are important enough to be part of it and which are not. And if that becomes a thing, then it’s justice and equality that suffers.

I’m fortunate in a sense, that as a lesbian trans woman, generally, I don’t get cut out of the acronym. Yes there has been erasure and transwashing out of the history of the movement, but generally the shortening includes my identity, my reality.

But what of those that don’t. It is simply not good enough for us to think it’s ok to not make sure that Intersex, Asexual oriented are simply dropped. It’s damn well hard enough for asexual people to get the heteronormative pe0ple to understand that they exist, that their orientation is a thing. Intersex people have suffered greatly and continue to do so at the hands of the medical profession in the name of the gender binary, as long as by parents agreeing and pursuing that agenda.

We can’t we mustn’t forget them. And those that identify as Queer because those other letters in the acronym don’t quite fit, and those that are questioning, they haven’t worked it out yet, but they know, as we all know, that they don’t fit the heteronormative social construct.

Each and every letter in our acronym should stand, should stand with equal weight, and the very acronym itself must continue to be open to growing. And so what if it is cumbersome, and so what if those against us think it is ridiculous — they’re going to think that however we choose to define ourselves.

We must deal with the fact that it can be at times cumbersome and clumsy to say or write our acronym, but deal with it and get on with it we must.