Knowing ourselves
Abigail Maxwell reflects on the recent ‘Knowing Ourselves: Faith and Gender’ gathering in Manchester
I need to spend time with my kind. For a day together we came from Edinburgh and London to Manchester. The gathering was organised by the QLGF, the Quaker LGBT+ Fellowship. We seek to be more inclusive. ‘LGBT’, which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans, can be lengthened by adding further initials, here symbolised by the ‘+’. These include Q for Questioning, because before you come out to the world you have to come out to yourself. A man, for example, told at the gathering of his youthful wondering: ‘Am I bisexual? Could I be gay?’ None of the expansions I have heard include Pansexual, which is different to Bisexual. To include us all, ‘Queer’ is the word I like, as in the academic discipline of Queer Studies, though some have been hurt by that word. At the gathering, for the first time, I heard the acronym SOGI (Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity), but that is not the name of a community.
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