Because the fight for LGBTQIA... rights is not just a gay rights issue.

The more I read articles about LGBT issues, or LGBTQIA... issues the more I think we need to separate the T, and Q, I, A, from LGB.  Yes, we've all been persecuted, legally and socially. Yes, we still don't have full equality and the situation worldwide is still atrocious.  But lumping the TQIA with LGB when they're such different things doesn't come without problems.

So many times the headline will use an acronym such as LGBT but the article will consistently speak of "gay rights" which is an unintended exclusion of heterosexual transgender people and of all the other people under that LGBTQIA... umbrella who are not gay.

Perhaps we need to stop speaking of gay rights and gay equality and gay anything else unless the issues only surround gay people.  Otherwise, just speak of rights and equality.  I fully support gay rights.  But the issues surrounding trans rights can be very different and so often end up being sidelined and forgotten in what is a praiseworthy celebration of the varieties of human sexuality.

I just read an article on four big companies and their stance on equal rights.  Hey, I'm glad big companies want equality.  But while the headline is LGBT, the article is "the fight for gay rights", "gay parade".  (Can we please, please stop talking of gay pride parades?)  And the T has naff all do to with "gay" because it is a gender issue, not a sexuality issue.  Just like cisgender people, a transgender person may be straight, or L, G, B or have any other sexuality and trans people, especially straight trans people, get lost under the crush of gay, gay, gay.  And intersex people get even more forgotten and lost in the lumping it all together and just talking gay, gay, gay.  Heck, even bisexual people can get lost and forgotten in the crush and that is part of that variety of human sexuality.

So can we agree not to speak of gay rights unless we're actually talking just about gay rights?