The National Center for Lesbian Rights defines its mission as: "a national legal organization committed to advancing the civil and human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families through litigation, legislation, policy, and public education." I have no idea when they added men, bisexuals and transgender people - it used to just be focused on lesbian's legal rights. Human Rights Campaign Fund was exclusively gay back when. So was LAMBDA Legal.
I’m old enough to remember the “Gay Parade” in 1977, which included a group called “Dykes on Bikes”—women in black leather sitting on their motorcycles.
LGBA, from Lesbian and Gay Bands of America (1982) to Lesbian and Gay Band Association (2004, due to international expansion), to Pride Bands Alliance (2021). Several member bands also changed their names due to the view that it's wrong for a group to be called the "gay" anything.
SAGE, originally founded as Senior Action in a Gay Environment in 1978 (gotta love it). Became Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders in the early 2000s. In 2016, decided the acronym stands for nothing.
GMHC, from Gay Men's Health Crisis (1983) to now nothing. This one I understand a bit more since they're an AIDS service organization and haven't limited their services to gay men for a long time if ever. But I have my suspicions that the change had to do with the idea that the mention of gay men is especially exclusionary to others.
I never understood why "[ORG NAME]: It doesn't stand for anything!" didn't sound too pathetic to go through with, but I guess the orgs that do it are so high on their own supply they can't hear it.
Thank you for naming and documenting the obliteration of our history and our unique identities as lesbian women and gay men. How can the same people who decry the bastardization of 'Black Lives Matter' into 'All Lives Matter' insist that anything gay or lesbian include trans people? They would probably defend with their lives the rights of Latinas/Latinos to have a space without white oppression, and yet they insist that lesbians allow men into our choirs, festivals, sports competitions and private spaces if those men think they are women, too.
This is information from a friend of mine who attempts to track this on her website at WellnessSociety.org/LGBvsT
• The acronym LGB (to represent lesbian, gay, bisexual) was first used in published research in 1996. (Prior to that, LGB had exclusively served as the acronym, in published research, for lower gastrointestinal tract bleeding and lateral geniculate body.)
• In the mid to late 1990s, male transsexuals created the acronym LGBT as a vehicle to promote the word "transgender." (Transsexuals, namely Frye and Rothblatt, had created the word "transgender" in 1992 because they knew it would be more palatable to society than the word transsexual.)
• In other words, soon after the acronym LGB was created and began to be popularized in mainstream society, T set out to usurp it.
• While LGB did give T some pushback, it was immediately attacked by male transsexuals. For instance, gay activist John Aravosis wrote "How did the T get in LGBT?" (10/08/2007, Salon) and within three days transsexual Susan Stryker's article "T is here to stay" was published (Salon,10/11/2007). (Interestingly, Stryker's rebuttal was removed from the online version of Salon magazine sometime in 2024.)
• In 2000, the LGBT acronym first appeared in published research.
• Since the early 2000s, research has shifted focus from LGB to LGBT (or LGBT+).
• To illustrate, the acronym LGB was used in roughly 180 research articles in 2023 while the acronym LGBT was used in over 475 articles that same year.
In 1998, in one school district in Indiana, the school club was called S.T.A.N.D. – Socially Together and Naturally Diverse. And as far as I know, it still “stands.” (The district administrator who started it when he was a guidance counselor retired two years ago.) The mission has likely morphed over the years, but the name hasn’t. I think it’s a good name/acronym that can adapt with the culture.
Portland State University, where I am enrolled as a post bac student, has a Queer Resource Center (QRC). It acknowledges just two types of people, trans and queer.
Unless my searches were flawed and I missed something, the words "gay" and "lesbian" are absent from the most important of the QRC's web pages, including its home page. That means the QRC does not acknowledge the existence of gay men and lesbians. Here's an example of lesbian and gay invisibility in the text on the QRC's home page:
The Queer Resource Center is located in Smith Memorial Student Union, Suite 458. Students come to our lounge space to socialize, study, ask for information, and relax. We provide resources, including safer sex, trans care, and menstrual supplies. We offer coffee, tea, and snacks, as well as access to our fridge, microwave, and mini food pantry. Come in and borrow from our free library, grab pronoun and identity pins, use our computers, and print - all for free! We encourage mask-wearing as a form of community care and offer masks at our front desk.
Student Support Fund
The Queer and Trans Student Support Fund is a low-barrier fund for transgender and queer students in need of one-time financial support for things like groceries, utility bills, legal name updates, and emergencies. Donations help us sustain our fund so we can continue meeting student needs.
Due to high demand, we sometimes have to close the fund. Email qrc@pdx.edu for up-to-date information.
Volunteer
We have opportunities to volunteer in the center, flyer around campus, help out during events, co-facilitate groups, and serve on our advisory board. We offer training to new volunteers as needed.
Our Purpose
The Queer Resource Center supports queer and trans students at Portland State University to achieve their educational goals through advocacy, community, and celebration. The Queer Resource Center prioritizes a racial justice framework to improve campus climate through education, policy change, and campus-wide organizing.
Our Vision
The Queer Resource Center strives to provide students with the support they need to persist to graduation through increasing equity and access for queer and trans students at Portland State University.
Our Values
The following are the values that the Queer Resource Center holds among our staff and community space:
The most egregious examples of Queer and Trans hegemony are the vision and purpose statements. The QRC's vision and purpose quite literally does not include lesbians or gay men. The QRC says it believes in inclusion as well as respect and community engagement, but that's clearly untrue.
Also, there is nothing nonpartisan about the QRC. It is woke as all get-out. Good luck finding a gay men's board game night there. If you're a trans woman of color, the QRC is the place to be.
It's pretty funny that the original anthropology group You mention here had the initialism "ARGH".
I can't help but wonder whether that was a factor—even if a small one—in the (already quite socially active, as You point out) group's move to the second name that more directly centered the identity politics of the anthropologists themselves.
I'm late to this party, but wanted to add that back in the day, our weekly or monthly gay newspapers used to refer to us as just "G&L" or "L&G". It was simple, just Gays & Lesbians. The first time I ever saw the "B" added was right before the 1993 "March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation". (The AP reported the next morning that 1.2 million people attended. I was fortunate to be one of those people.) In contrast, the 1987 march was called the "Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights." The first march in 1979 was the "National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights". There was no "LGBT" or even a "LGB" prior to this moment.
Anyone can go dig through the archives and collections gathered at the NY LGBT Community Center to see that this is true, however, do note that the Center has altered history by adding "LGBTQ" in the document/archive descriptors of our history where this acronym did not exist.
From the aGLIFF website: 1987: aGLIFF was founded as the Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival and is Austin’s oldest film festival.
2013: aGLIFF made a brief rebrand as Polari to reflect the limitations of being known as a “Gay & Lesbian” festival, but returned to aGLIFF in 2015 to honor its history.
2018: the organization changed its name to All Genders, Lifestyles, and Identities Film Festival to reflect the changing landscape of how queer people identify. [In other-words, the Everybody Film Festival, except G&L who don't identify as Q.]
2019: the Board of Directors selected PRISM as the new name for our marquee annual film festival. The name was chosen to highlight the way our festival can refract a single beam of art into multiple viewpoints, showcasing all the voices in the spectrum of our LGBTQ+ community.
2022: the organization officially becomes known simply as aGLIFF to preserve the equity and rich history of the festival.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights defines its mission as: "a national legal organization committed to advancing the civil and human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families through litigation, legislation, policy, and public education." I have no idea when they added men, bisexuals and transgender people - it used to just be focused on lesbian's legal rights. Human Rights Campaign Fund was exclusively gay back when. So was LAMBDA Legal.
Good idea to document all this. Many local organizations and events have also been overrun. Here's the story of what happened to the SF Dyke March: https://amandakovattana.substack.com/p/the-canceling-of-the-dyke-march
I’m old enough to remember the “Gay Parade” in 1977, which included a group called “Dykes on Bikes”—women in black leather sitting on their motorcycles.
There are rides under the "Dykes on Bikes" banner nowadays, although there aren't a whole lot of actual Female riders left in them.
LGBA, from Lesbian and Gay Bands of America (1982) to Lesbian and Gay Band Association (2004, due to international expansion), to Pride Bands Alliance (2021). Several member bands also changed their names due to the view that it's wrong for a group to be called the "gay" anything.
SAGE, originally founded as Senior Action in a Gay Environment in 1978 (gotta love it). Became Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders in the early 2000s. In 2016, decided the acronym stands for nothing.
GMHC, from Gay Men's Health Crisis (1983) to now nothing. This one I understand a bit more since they're an AIDS service organization and haven't limited their services to gay men for a long time if ever. But I have my suspicions that the change had to do with the idea that the mention of gay men is especially exclusionary to others.
I never understood why "[ORG NAME]: It doesn't stand for anything!" didn't sound too pathetic to go through with, but I guess the orgs that do it are so high on their own supply they can't hear it.
Thank you for naming and documenting the obliteration of our history and our unique identities as lesbian women and gay men. How can the same people who decry the bastardization of 'Black Lives Matter' into 'All Lives Matter' insist that anything gay or lesbian include trans people? They would probably defend with their lives the rights of Latinas/Latinos to have a space without white oppression, and yet they insist that lesbians allow men into our choirs, festivals, sports competitions and private spaces if those men think they are women, too.
In Canada, Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere (E.G.A.L.E.) became just Egale Canada and now advocates for “2SLGBTQI people in Canada”
This is information from a friend of mine who attempts to track this on her website at WellnessSociety.org/LGBvsT
• The acronym LGB (to represent lesbian, gay, bisexual) was first used in published research in 1996. (Prior to that, LGB had exclusively served as the acronym, in published research, for lower gastrointestinal tract bleeding and lateral geniculate body.)
• In the mid to late 1990s, male transsexuals created the acronym LGBT as a vehicle to promote the word "transgender." (Transsexuals, namely Frye and Rothblatt, had created the word "transgender" in 1992 because they knew it would be more palatable to society than the word transsexual.)
• In other words, soon after the acronym LGB was created and began to be popularized in mainstream society, T set out to usurp it.
• While LGB did give T some pushback, it was immediately attacked by male transsexuals. For instance, gay activist John Aravosis wrote "How did the T get in LGBT?" (10/08/2007, Salon) and within three days transsexual Susan Stryker's article "T is here to stay" was published (Salon,10/11/2007). (Interestingly, Stryker's rebuttal was removed from the online version of Salon magazine sometime in 2024.)
• In 2000, the LGBT acronym first appeared in published research.
• Since the early 2000s, research has shifted focus from LGB to LGBT (or LGBT+).
• To illustrate, the acronym LGB was used in roughly 180 research articles in 2023 while the acronym LGBT was used in over 475 articles that same year.
This is a great project. Thank you, Lisa, for taking it on! I can’t think of other orgs beyond those named right now, but will keep my eye out.
In 1998, in one school district in Indiana, the school club was called S.T.A.N.D. – Socially Together and Naturally Diverse. And as far as I know, it still “stands.” (The district administrator who started it when he was a guidance counselor retired two years ago.) The mission has likely morphed over the years, but the name hasn’t. I think it’s a good name/acronym that can adapt with the culture.
Portland State University, where I am enrolled as a post bac student, has a Queer Resource Center (QRC). It acknowledges just two types of people, trans and queer.
Unless my searches were flawed and I missed something, the words "gay" and "lesbian" are absent from the most important of the QRC's web pages, including its home page. That means the QRC does not acknowledge the existence of gay men and lesbians. Here's an example of lesbian and gay invisibility in the text on the QRC's home page:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Space
The Queer Resource Center is located in Smith Memorial Student Union, Suite 458. Students come to our lounge space to socialize, study, ask for information, and relax. We provide resources, including safer sex, trans care, and menstrual supplies. We offer coffee, tea, and snacks, as well as access to our fridge, microwave, and mini food pantry. Come in and borrow from our free library, grab pronoun and identity pins, use our computers, and print - all for free! We encourage mask-wearing as a form of community care and offer masks at our front desk.
Student Support Fund
The Queer and Trans Student Support Fund is a low-barrier fund for transgender and queer students in need of one-time financial support for things like groceries, utility bills, legal name updates, and emergencies. Donations help us sustain our fund so we can continue meeting student needs.
Due to high demand, we sometimes have to close the fund. Email qrc@pdx.edu for up-to-date information.
Volunteer
We have opportunities to volunteer in the center, flyer around campus, help out during events, co-facilitate groups, and serve on our advisory board. We offer training to new volunteers as needed.
Our Purpose
The Queer Resource Center supports queer and trans students at Portland State University to achieve their educational goals through advocacy, community, and celebration. The Queer Resource Center prioritizes a racial justice framework to improve campus climate through education, policy change, and campus-wide organizing.
Our Vision
The Queer Resource Center strives to provide students with the support they need to persist to graduation through increasing equity and access for queer and trans students at Portland State University.
Our Values
The following are the values that the Queer Resource Center holds among our staff and community space:
Accountability & Growth
Consent
Community Engagement & Collaboration
Humility
Inclusion
Respect
Privacy & Confidentiality
Accessibility
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The most egregious examples of Queer and Trans hegemony are the vision and purpose statements. The QRC's vision and purpose quite literally does not include lesbians or gay men. The QRC says it believes in inclusion as well as respect and community engagement, but that's clearly untrue.
Also, there is nothing nonpartisan about the QRC. It is woke as all get-out. Good luck finding a gay men's board game night there. If you're a trans woman of color, the QRC is the place to be.
Here's a link to the QRC's site:https://www.pdx.edu/queer-resource-center/
Was HRC originally for LGB? Ah, I see someone mentions it below, and also Lambda Legal.
It's pretty funny that the original anthropology group You mention here had the initialism "ARGH".
I can't help but wonder whether that was a factor—even if a small one—in the (already quite socially active, as You point out) group's move to the second name that more directly centered the identity politics of the anthropologists themselves.
National Center for Lesbian Rights https://www.nclrights.org/
I'm late to this party, but wanted to add that back in the day, our weekly or monthly gay newspapers used to refer to us as just "G&L" or "L&G". It was simple, just Gays & Lesbians. The first time I ever saw the "B" added was right before the 1993 "March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation". (The AP reported the next morning that 1.2 million people attended. I was fortunate to be one of those people.) In contrast, the 1987 march was called the "Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights." The first march in 1979 was the "National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights". There was no "LGBT" or even a "LGB" prior to this moment.
Anyone can go dig through the archives and collections gathered at the NY LGBT Community Center to see that this is true, however, do note that the Center has altered history by adding "LGBTQ" in the document/archive descriptors of our history where this acronym did not exist.
https://archives.gaycenter.org/
From the aGLIFF website: 1987: aGLIFF was founded as the Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival and is Austin’s oldest film festival.
2013: aGLIFF made a brief rebrand as Polari to reflect the limitations of being known as a “Gay & Lesbian” festival, but returned to aGLIFF in 2015 to honor its history.
2018: the organization changed its name to All Genders, Lifestyles, and Identities Film Festival to reflect the changing landscape of how queer people identify. [In other-words, the Everybody Film Festival, except G&L who don't identify as Q.]
2019: the Board of Directors selected PRISM as the new name for our marquee annual film festival. The name was chosen to highlight the way our festival can refract a single beam of art into multiple viewpoints, showcasing all the voices in the spectrum of our LGBTQ+ community.
2022: the organization officially becomes known simply as aGLIFF to preserve the equity and rich history of the festival.
Just add an “S” and we can be done.
GLAD was originally Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, and morphed into GLBTQ+ Legal Advocates and Defenders.
Point Foundation started off as LGBT, then added Q+.