Stop whining about the goddamned acronym.

[lightningandsnow]

If you think having to type the few extra letters in LGBTQI is worse than having your identity erased, grow up.

I guess DU is showing that they only care about the rights of cisgender gay people, since it's apparently such a chore to mention trans people (or bisexuals).

[saltpoint]

1. But it's a fucking outrage that someone has to type

6 letters.

A fucking outrage, I tell you.

[gateley]

2. Especially that Q!

[saltpoint]

5. Goddam right. You not only have to type the 'Q' but

also hit the Shift key simultaneously.

Next they'll want us to do the laundry as well.

Sheesh.

:hi:

[gateley]

13. If ever a situation called for CAPS LOCK, this is it!

:hi:

[Rabrrrrrr]

15. it starts with shift-q and ends in box turtle marriages

[blondeatlast]

85. FTW. nt

[Uben]

4. Not only that.....

...but who the hell can hit the "Q" key without looking? Ha! Yeah, I'm a pecker!

[saltpoint]

8. Wait... you hit the Q key with your pecker?

I've never tried that.

Well he -- it's the weekend...

[Uben]

18. Yeah, It's prehensile.....

...you should see me climbing trees!

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. And yet I'm sure they're happy to spell out "African-American" or "physically challenged"

or other forms of sensitive-speak that have waaaay more letters.

[rurallib]

6. What do Q and I stand for?

I get so confused anymore.

[lightningandsnow]

7. Queer/Questioning and Intersex.

:hi:

[rurallib]

22. Intersex? ok that one has me stumped

would this be someone transitioning from say female => male?
If so how would that be different from transgender?
Or is it something else?

[myrna minx]

32. Intersex replaces the old term hermaphrodite.

:hi:

[rurallib]

78. thank you.

[myrna minx]

81. You're welcome. I know it gets confusing sometimes.

:hi:

[gateley]

9. Sincere question -- when and where from did the QI appear? It's only been

the past several days I've been aware of it.

And...

why would people be complaining? If a group feels it better represents them, shouldn't we honor that?

[myrna minx]

83. The first time I heard it used was in 2006 at a Lynne Breedlove

stand up comedy show. Lynn, who gives a wonderful, funny, insightful and compelling window into the life of a transgendered person in the USA spoke about the addition of the new letters to the LGBT as trying to broaden the unity of all alternative sexualities. It's by no means set in stone so to speak, because everyone represented by each of those letters are individuals and not everyone agrees (just look at all of the liberals on DU - Ha!) but it's a way to be more inclusive should people choose to join the 'community' at large.

I'm no expert or a spokesperson by any means, I'm just someone who loves and cherishes the wonderful people in my life who represent those letters. :hi:

[sailor65]

10. I've seen a lot of people asking questions

and certainly have some myself, but I haven't seen much in the way of whining. Is this a call out of some specific thread?

I hope you're not confusing ignorance of a very nebulous acronym with "Not caring." I have trouble keeping up with what's current, and I certainly don't know what every potential letter stands for, but that damn sure doesn't mean I don't care about some specific person.

[NoPasaran]

11. It's not an acronym

An acronym is a word formed of the initials of several other words, like NATO or GATT. You can pronounce an acronym.

[sailor65]

14. That's not actually true

a collection of letters does not have to be phonetically viable to be defined as an acronym.

[Enrique]

17. it's an abbreviation

acronyms are a subset of abbreviations, they're the abbreviations you can say like they're words.

[Statistical]

26. No abreviations are shortened words...

SONAR, SCUBA, NATO, and RADAR are acronyms because they are pronounced as a word and not a sequence of letters.
BBC, FBI, ATM, DNA, GOP, LGBT and LBTQI are initialisms because they are pronounced as a sequence of letters.

Abbreviations are neither. Examples of abbreviation are Dr which is short for Doctor. The R isn't a separate word. Mr. Mrs. Prof. St. Ave are other examples.

Dr is an abbreviation.
MD is an initialism (Medical Doctor and is pronounced as a sequence of letters).

[Enrique]

30. they're all abbreviations

acronyms and initialisms are both subsets of abbreviations. There are other abbrevaitions that are neither, such as Dr.

[Statistical]

33. Nope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviations

"In strict analysis, abbreviations should not be confused with contractions or acronyms (including initialisms)"

[JonLP24]

38. I'm honestly not sure either way but...

"Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations that are formed using the initial components in a phrase or name."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym

[Statistical]

41. BURN. You got me and w/ my own link. Double Plus Good.

Yeah it likely is a trivial distinction. I likely am wrong. Still LGBTQI is not an acronym that one I am sure of..... shouldn't have gone reaching w/ abbreviations.

[JonLP24]

43. I understood that

about LGBTQI not an acronym.

Dictionary.com pretty much says the same thing.

a word formed from the initial letters or groups of letters of words in a set phrase or series of words, as Wac from Women's Army Corps, OPEC from Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or loran from long-range navigation

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/acronym

[Sheepshank]

69. So.....

if we create a band new word, LeGBuTQuIe (leg-BUT-Qui) it can be an acronym for LGBTQI. My personal problem is that unless I can somehow put abbreviations into some sort of a word, I'll invariably get them wrong.

[fishwax]

44. "though all three are connoted by the term 'abbreviation' in loose parlance"

[Statistical]

45. Yeah I concede the point. FAIL on me. n/t

[Statistical]

25. Yes it does.

SONAR, SCUBA, NATO, and RADAR are acronyms because they are pronounced as a word and not a sequence of letters.
BBC, FBI, ATM, DNA, GOP LGBT and LBTQI are initialisms because they are pronounced as a sequence of letters

[pipi_k]

28. But it helps when it is

If it spells out an actual word, some of us who can't remember things as well as we used to can remember an actual word.


When the acronym doesn't spell out anything that even looks like a word, and if people it's used to describe are going to have a hissy fit because we forgot the order of the letters or something, then I personally am going to say "fuck it" and just say "Gay". I have a hard enough time remembering what I was supposed to do five minutes ago, let alone letters that don't actually spell something.


In other words, don't keep changing the rules or adding new letters to a group of letters that are hard for older people to remember and then jump around in outrage when we don't do it "right".

[Jamastiene]

57. Only on DU would a totally unrelated topic include

a full fledged Grammar Fight sub-thread.

:rofl:

[blondeatlast]

86. How true!

:rofl:

[Lost4words]

12. I dont understand the Q for queer? How is it different from L or G?

I saw one reference where the Q stood for questioning,.....

[myrna minx]

37. The Q stands for Questioning or sometimes Queer. Queer is an attempt to take back the slur

from bigots and thus disarming the word. See Queer Nation. In reference to entertainment, please note Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Queer as Folk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_Nation


I is for intersex, which replaces the old term hermaphrodite. :hi:

[Renew Deal]

53. Why is hermaphrodite now unacceptable?

Is it too clinical? Is "intersex" designed to confuse?

[JackBeck]

63. Intersex is actually the more clinical term, adopted by researchers in the 20th century.

For more info on why the term hermaphrodite is stigmatizing, read:

http://www.isna.org/faq/hermaphrodite

[myrna minx]

64. Intersex has many dimensions so the old term is arcane and rather limiting.

I am by no means an expert so wiki may be able to help.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

[snooper2]

16. First person to correctly answer what SDP stands for

wins a cookie...

(no googles)

[Enrique]

20. Society of Decorative Painters

no Googles, where's my cookie:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=sdp&form=QBLH&qs=n&sk=&sc=8-3

[11 Bravo]

21. Sarah "Dumbass" Palin?

[treestar]

61. rofl

[Statistical]

27. It has many meanings....

some include

Social Democratic Party
Singapore Democratic Party
Single-Dealer Platform
Service Data Poin
Service delivery platform
Session Description Protocol
Sockets Direct Protocol
SDP Multimedi
Software development process
Service Discovery Protocol
State Domestic Product
Self-development plan
Semidefinite programming
School District of Philadelphia

You said no google but you didn't say no wikipedia.

[wtmusic]

34. With the technicality, for a win

:thumbsup:

[Statistical]

39. I am curious which SDP snooper was refering to though.

[snooper2]

68. Session Description Protocol RFC 2327

:)


Network Working Group M. Handley
Request for Comments: 2327 V. Jacobson
Category: Standards Track ISI/LBNL
April 1998


SDP: Session Description Protocol

Status of this Memo

This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

This document defines the Session Description Protocol, SDP. SDP is
intended for describing multimedia sessions for the purposes of
session announcement, session invitation, and other forms of
multimedia session initiation.

This document is a product of the Multiparty Multimedia Session
Control (MMUSIC) working group of the Internet Engineering Task
Force. Comments are solicited and should be addressed to the working
group's mailing list at [e-mail] and/or the authors.

1. Introduction

On the Internet multicast backbone (Mbone), a session directory tool
is used to advertise multimedia conferences and communicate the
conference addresses and conference tool-specific information
necessary for participation. This document defines a session
description protocol for this purpose, and for general real-time
multimedia session description purposes. This memo does not describe
multicast address allocation or the distribution of SDP messages in
detail. These are described in accompanying memos. SDP is not
intended for negotiation of media encodings.








Handley & Jacobson Standards Track

RFC 2327 SDP April 1998


2. Background

The Mbone is the part of the internet that supports IP multicast, and
thus permits efficient many-to-many communication. It is used
extensively for multimedia conferencing. Such conferences usually
have the property that tight coordination of conference membership is
not necessary; to receive a conference, a user at an Mbone site only
has to know the conference's multicast group address and the UDP
ports for the conference data streams.

Session directories assist the advertisement of conference sessions
and communicate the relevant conference setup information to
prospective participants. SDP is designed to convey such information
to recipients. SDP is purely a format for session description - it
does not incorporate a transport protocol, and is intended to use
different transport protocols as appropriate including the Session
Announcement Protocol <4>, Session Initiation Protocol <11>, Real-
Time Streaming Protocol <12>, electronic mail using the MIME
extensions, and the Hypertext Transport Protocol.

SDP is intended to be general purpose so that it can be used for a
wider range of network environments and applications than just
multicast session directories. However, it is not intended to
support negotiation of session content or media encodings - this is
viewed as outside the scope of session description.

3. Glossary of Terms

The following terms are used in this document, and have specific
meaning within the context of this document.

Conference
A multimedia conference is a set of two or more communicating users
along with the software they are using to communicate.

Session
A multimedia session is a set of multimedia senders and receivers
and the data streams flowing from senders to receivers. A
multimedia conference is an example of a multimedia session.

Session Advertisement
See session announcement.

Session Announcement
A session announcement is a mechanism by which a session
description is conveyed to users in a proactive fashion, i.e., the
session description was not explicitly requested by the user.




Handley & Jacobson Standards Track

RFC 2327 SDP April 1998


Session Description
A well defined format for conveying sufficient information to
discover and participate in a multimedia session.

3.1. Terminology

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

4. SDP Usage

4.1. Multicast Announcements

SDP is a session description protocol for multimedia sessions. A
common mode of usage is for a client to announce a conference session
by periodically multicasting an announcement packet to a well known
multicast address and port using the Session Announcement Protocol
(SAP).

SAP packets are UDP packets with the following format:

|--------------------|
| SAP header |
|--------------------|
| text payload |
|//////////


The header is the Session Announcement Protocol header. SAP is
described in more detail in a companion memo <4>

The text payload is an SDP session description, as described in this
memo. The text payload should be no greater than 1 Kbyte in length.
If announced by SAP, only one session announcement is permitted in a
single packet.

4.2. Email and WWW Announcements

Alternative means of conveying session descriptions include
electronic mail and the World Wide Web. For both email and WWW
distribution, the use of the MIME content type "application/sdp"
should be used. This enables the automatic launching of applications
for participation in the session from the WWW client or mail reader
in a standard manner.






Handley & Jacobson Standards Track

RFC 2327 SDP April 1998


Note that announcements of multicast sessions made only via email or
the World Wide Web (WWW) do not have the property that the receiver
of a session announcement can necessarily receive the session because
the multicast sessions may be restricted in scope, and access to the
WWW server or reception of email is possible outside this scope. SAP
announcements do not suffer from this mismatch.

5. Requirements and Recommendations

The purpose of SDP is to convey information about media streams in
multimedia sessions to allow the recipients of a session description
to participate in the session. SDP is primarily intended for use in
an internetwork, although it is sufficiently general that it can
describe conferences in other network environments.

A multimedia session, for these purposes, is defined as a set of
media streams that exist for some duration of time. Media streams
can be many-to-many. The times during which the session is active
need not be continuous.

Thus far, multicast based sessions on the Internet have differed from
many other forms of conferencing in that anyone receiving the traffic
can join the session (unless the session traffic is encrypted). In
such an environment, SDP serves two primary purposes. It is a means
to communicate the existence of a session, and is a means to convey
sufficient information to enable joining and participating in the
session. In a unicast environment, only the latter purpose is likely
to be relevant.

Thus SDP includes:

o Session name and purpose

o Time(s) the session is active

o The media comprising the session

o Information to receive those media (addresses, ports, formats and
so on)

As resources necessary to participate in a session may be limited,
some additional information may also be desirable:

o Information about the bandwidth to be used by the conference

o Contact information for the person responsible for the session


Much more if you really want to keep reading :P

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2327.txt

[wtmusic]

72. From the MFS (Museum of Fossilized Specifications)?

[snooper2]

74. You would be suprised at the age of protocol specs and various RFC

A lot of research and "thought" is given a long time before vendors and providers "implement"

[wtmusic]

77. Not familiar with that one

but I know the W3C has a boneyard of stillborn specs.

[snooper2]

70. I should have said no intertubes allowed :)

Session Description Protocol is what I was looking for...

Doesn't this look yummy now!

[Touchdown]

80. Secondary DACS Port.

I work for the phone company.:hide:

[xchrom]

19. We're just so damned inconvenient. Nt

[Ian David]

23. We're all ACGT-Americans anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA

[Statistical]

24. You mean stop whining about the initialism.

Acronym is a WORD made up of other words. It can be spoken as a single pronounceable entity not a sequence of letters.

For example:
SONAR, SCUBA, NATO, and RADAR are acronyms because they are pronounced as a word (made up word but a pronounceable entity) and not a sequence of letters.
BBC, FBI, ATM, DNA, GOP LGBT and LGBTQI are initialisms because they are pronounced as a sequence of letters.

Unless you can pronounce LGBTQI as a word it is an initialism.

To the OP you need to also understand that the more verbose the initialism is the more unlikely it becomes used. There is a reason most initialisms (outside of military) are 3-5 characters long.

[pipi_k]

31. Right

and if I can't pronounce it, I won't remember how to spell it, either.

[lunatica]

29. This is not a very inviting thread

No matter what anyone's sexual identity is, if it isn't pedophilia I don't care. I don't see why I have to be so perfect in my use of language to prove to you or anyone that my emphasis is not on sexuality as much as it is on equality for everyone. People's sex lives are frankly uninteresting to me. Call yourself whatever you want. I still believe you should have equal rights.

Should I make it mandatory that everyone call me SWWIHMS? That stand for Straight white woman in her mid sixties.

[lightningandsnow]

35. You believe in equality for everyone,

yet you only refer to "people's sex lives" in a thread about trans inclusion. You don't see how that isn't problematic?

Also, way to throw pedophilia in there.

[wtmusic]

46. Being gay or intersex is being "trans"?

IMO people would be more understanding if you had a clearer understanding yourself. :eyes:

[lightningandsnow]

48. No,

However, it's usually the trans part that people don't seem to give a shit about around here. There is no shortage of concern for cisgender gay people.

[lunatica]

84. You don't know me obviously

And I'm talking about everyone's sex lives. Everyone's. The only reason I put on exception on pedophiles is because of the obvious. Grown people molesting children is sick and should be stopped and punished. Otherwise I don't give a shit about ANYONE'S sex lives.

I care about equal rights for everyone.

Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension

[wtmusic]

40. You're excluding SWWITMSFC

Straight White Women in Their Mid-Sixties from Cleveland

Grow up. (j/k agree)

[seabeyond]

52. lol. l&sfc (lightingandshadow from canada) is damn forceful. gotta give her that

every thread of hers is DEMANDING something from everyone

to be honest.... if i could remember, i would; but shit, i cant remember my kids name. nor the first four letters of the one that has been used, and now to add to more letters?

how about if i just love everyone... and leave it at that

when i blank on my kids name, that works for them.

[WinkyDink]

36. It isn't an acronym; it's a string of unpronounceable letters.

[TonyMontana]

42. You have to admit it's getting a little long

With only one vowel, even, and it's at the end.

[Jamastiene]

59. Keep complaining

and we'll add a few more. :P

[Nihil]

73. Try Welsh sometime ...!

:hide:

[Lyric]

47. Oh come on. Really?

Have you even considered that there might be an alternative explanation? That maybe the problem is that there is no set "official" string of letters, that different people in our OWN community use different variations, and that it's damned confusing for everyone to remember what's supposed to be included and what's not.

For example--your OP is insulting and dismissive to several people in my local campus group (and several people right here at DU), because you neglected to include pansexuals (P) and asexuals (A). Those are both legitimate sexual orientations that are commonly ignored and/or marginalized. Should I just assume that you don't care about their rights just because you didn't include their letters in your acronym? Or should I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that either (1) you didn't KNOW that those were options, or (2) you were just trying to be concise? If I started an OP to call you lazy and immature because you neglected to include pansexuals and asexuals, would you be more likely to listen to me, or would it just make you feel insulted, embarrassed, and upset?

Sometimes our righteous indignation is well-earned by the people we're directing it at, but in this case, I don't agree that it is. Nobody's identity is "erased" just because someone uses a shorter term than you want them to--did you "erase" the identities of pansexuals and asexuals in your OP? Or did you just not think to include them so specifically? Maybe the people you're excoriating are like you, and left off the extra letters for the same reason you did. A little logical thinking can be helpful in situations like this.

It's one thing to say, "I think certain letters should be added to the commonly-used acronym." It's quite another to say, "If you don't add the letters *I* tell you to, then you're immature and lazy." If you insist on proclaiming otherwise, then start using the "A" and the "P", because now that you know about asexuals and pansexuals, ignoring them would make you guilty of the same thing you're lecturing everyone else about. In the meantime--telling everyone who doesn't adhere to your personal viewpoint that they're lazy and they need to "grow up" is really NOT helpful. It's just rude.

[lightningandsnow]

49. Do you really think the oppression of trans people is equal to the erasure of asexuals?

I agree with what you're saying to a point, but....really?

Also, I think there is a problem with transphobia on DU. See the lack of responses on a thread about a trans woman's murder - if it had been a cisgender gay man, I think it would have gotten a lot more attention.

Yeah, I'm crabby today.

[Lyric]

55. I really think that there's no justification for including one and excluding another.

We might say that there are more trans people than asexuals and pansexuals, so it's justified to include trans (which the GLBT initialism *does*) but not justified to include the others. However, that would be a dangerous path to go down, because then we could justify excluding *any* smaller groups--including trans. We really don't want to go there.

As for me, I am not inclined to yell at anyone for using the most commonly-used initialisms and identifiers--GLBT, LGBT, gay, lesbian, trans, etc.--until we manage to come up with one that a solid majority of our community stands behind. We endlessly bicker about this in our campus group. It's tough to decide whether we should be completely inclusive (GLBTIAPQ) or whether we should stay concise in order to avoid having the initialism get too long and complex to easily remember. We also have some members who feel flat-out insulted that "queer" is included at all--people who've had that term thrown at them as a degrading slur for years, and who have too much associative trauma to ever feel comfortable with reclaiming it. That doesn't make them "bad" people. But it does complicate things even more.

I wish we could come up with one single, universally non-offensive term that just means "alternative sexuality". Maybe "altersexual"? "Altsex" and "altsexed" for short? Something that is TRULY all-inclusive, and yet easy to remember?

[Spazito]

87. Well said!

[treestar]

60. +1000

Very impractical and much like an attempt to find a way to smear as many people as possible. And thank you for the P and A information.

[Whisp]

66. excellent post....ty! n/t

[joeybee12]

50. I think it needs a "P" in there somewhere, you know, for Pony...n/t

[Jamastiene]

62. I'm just happy when they are not calling us

the "BLTs."

I've never been much of a BLT type. If I was food, I would most definitely want to be ice cream.

[joeybee12]

67. As a kid I LOVED BLT's...it was like a treat!

I would like to be chocolate, if I were a food.

[Renew Deal]

51. What happened?

Is LGBTQI the new official and accepted spelling? Why is this the latest drama on DU?

[Upton]

54. Why do the letters keep getting changed around?

And I was under the impression for years that the word "queer" was offensive..now you're telling me it's not? No wonder straight folks like myself have trouble keeping track.

[myrna minx]

56. Queer Nation made a point to take back the word so that bigots

no longer had the power of that word. I wouldn't suggest using the word "queer" when addressing a gay person - it's more demonstrating a point to remove a powerful tool from bigots: hurtful slurs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_Nation

The letters get jumbled around so that not one group in the LGBTIQ umbrella is considered 'first' or more important than the others - or so I understand. :hi:

[treestar]

58. Could there be at least a moratorium or grace period on people who

may not have caught on with the recent change and use the old one? Or are you going to just throw them away as homophobic, too?

It really sounds like a real attempt to define as many people as homophobic as possible to maximize victimization, handing the far right on a silver platter that very claim.

And an attempt to burden us with more guilt? What good does that do? It is hard to debate right wingers on the subject.

OK we are all homophobes. Now what do you plan to do?

[Jamastiene]

65. I don't even call myself a lesbian.

I just say I'm gay, even though I'm female. :shrug:

If we are talking about trans people, I prefer to actually type out transgendered person or transsexual. Same with any other topic about any other sexual orientation. It is just easier for me.

[Throd]

71. Your attitude is unrealistic and counterproductive to your cause.

[Stinky The Clown]

75. I don't see any whining. I see people advising they see it as not helpful.

I see NOTHING putting down anyone covered by it. I see people saying the acronym itself is unhelpful. Not the message. The letters.

[Dreamer Tatum]

76. OPs like this are nothing more than craven attempts for street cred.

And I could not give a shit if anyone disagrees.

I don't need an all-inclusive acronym to accept the sexual attitudes or preferences of others. Neither does anyone else.

[Touchdown]

79. What's a cisgender?

:shrug:

BTW: We are all selfish beings to a point. We're human. It's the wiring. As a gay man, I have an interest in what helps me and others like me. I am very happy that what I want can include as many others as possible, but as a human, I am usually thinking of myself when I do it. That doesn't mean I don't have compassion or am slighting Trans people when I say "gay people", it's just the way I talk. If I offend by that line, then it is not my intention. I'll try to do better in the future.:hi:

[TriMera]

82. It means not transgender...

Someone who is comfortable with the gender that they were assigned at birth. It's used in gender studies and anthropology, mostly. Here's the wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender :hi:

[Lucian]

88. I vote to change the acronym to ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

to include everyone.

[Marr]

89. Look, you can use any initials you like, but don't call it bigotry when

other people aren't repeating some jumbled, alphabet soup name. It's unwieldy. It's not memorable. Worst of all, it's shitty marketing.