Contest Winner Announced!
A stunning upset
Cast your mind back, if you are still able, to 2014. The very beginning of The Great Awokening. We ran to some acclaim a Worldwide Contest (well, the internet goes everywhere) to discover the Next Official “Orientation” Letter.
At that time we had only the paltry “LBGT”. Or was it “BGTL”? No. Let’s see. Four letters…4 x 3 x 2….makes twenty four possibilities: Hmmm. Wait! I remember now. Ladies first. It was “LGBT”. Sometimes affixed with “community”, though you rarely saw the ladies “hanging out” with the boys, if you know what I mean, so there was never much of a community.
Anyway. Hard to keep these letters straight. But important. Indeed, there is nothing more important than announcing to strangers what your non-procreative sexual proclivities and tastes are. Everybody needs to know, and they need to know fast. After all, they might be free tonight and you can play Match Letters, as it were.
As you might recall, the “LGBT” was soon expanded to “LBGTQAI”, a completely unpronounceable acronym. It’s hard to believe now, but that “AI” on the end was not, in fact, artificial intelligence, although that is apter than it at first seems, right, gooners? My own memory flags, but I recall the “A” might have been “ally”, which is somebody who enjoys hearing about non-procreative sexual activities, but isn’t too keen on getting in on them. The “I” people, are. I believe “I” meant “Inquisitive” or “Inquiring”—or something like that.
Don’t forget, it wasn’t long after letters started gluing themselves to the acronym that the jealousy hit. Hard. Those who were only interested in the dull old-fashioned procreative sexual, or sex-like, activities didn’t get a letter. No “N” for “normal.” But all know you are nobody in our culture unless you are a Victim. So here’s where the Normals got really clever.
They started announcing their pronouns!
Brilliant. Everybody got to pretend to be special. This was especially big among academics, who let no intellectual fad pass. Soon all (interminable) meetings began with bearded skinny-fat men saying, “I’m Steve. He-him. PhD.”
To avoid confusion, all should know that “PhD” is not an “orientation” or “gender”, but a credential. Which is only slightly less important than the other two designators.
Well, back in 2014, we didn’t know what new letters we’d get. There was a lot of excitement and uncertainty. Many proposals were made. It was a lot of fun. I wrote:
What will be the next letter? Until recently, smart money was a second B for “bestiality.” Letters do not have to be unique; but if they did, then Z for “zoophile”, their preferred term. In Sweden and Germany, “Here, boy!” carries a different connotation than Stateside. But bestiality, while legal in those countries, is under fire from animal “rights” activists who are concerned about emotional scars on the Fluffies of the world.
S for “self”? Let’s don’t shake hands on it. Consider O for “object, inanimate.” Or K for “pedophiles” (K=kiddies), saving P for “polygamists”. N for “necrophiliacs”? Looking to Japan, R for “robot”?
Not to brag, but you can see how close I was here. The “O” was almost immediately correct, too, because right around then we learned about “objectophiles”, which are those who give us good reason to wear plastic gloves when going to thrift shops.
As impressive as this is, I don’t declare myself or anybody from the old days the Victor. That honor goes to….drumroll:
Leah Gazan, a politician and Member of Parliament in the Great White (past tense) North!
She waddled up to a microphone last week to tell us how angry she was that Canada’s proposed new budget did not include sufficient funds in the fight (they are always using military metaphors) against “the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+” people.
MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+.
She rattled off the new acronym like it was a song, like she uses it ten times daily, which she probably does.
The “+” is coders lingo, incidentally; it’s a placeholder for future letters. It means “add them here”. It indicates the work to make everybody a “sexual minority” is not yet done.
Somehow the first letter in MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ stands for “Murdered.” I do not jest nor joke. Murdered, and not in euphemism, either; it means made dead-dead. Judges rule this M can’t count for “Necrophilia” (which again might be “N” at some future date) because all letters are for those possessing the “orientation”.
And this naturally means that Murdered people are enjoying some strange (necessarily) non-procreative sex-like activity in the Great Beyond. Just what that was, Gazan did not say. But ghosts are a definite possibility.
Let’s all give a great big hand to Miss (or is it Mrs?) Gazan!
Bonus: In Iceland, BDSM is an official sexual “orientation”.
Here are the various ways to support this work:
Hmm, I think I will make BLTs for dinner tonight.
My wife has a cousin whose husband was sought out to do bookkeeping @ Gallaudet University because he is a conservative & even the people that run the place admit that as long as capitalism holds sway, they can't manage it. But what I found most interesting is that he says they maintain that simply communicating with your voice, id est, speaking, is oppressing the deaf...
I think the conundrum of talking=fascism hoists the woke on the delightful dilemma: Either they must agree that a class of people who insist they are oppressed are simply nuts (which opens the doors to considering this about other groups), or they have to shut up forever. Either outcome seems like a step in the right direction to me.