To preface all this, this is my nonbinary bisexual person’s opinion, not speaking for all LGBT+ people by any means

My first question is, why do we have so many terms? I know the answer is somewhat obvious, that everyone has there own preferences, and it may not align with someone else, so to identify themselves, they would get a different label. (kinda like names, if everyone had same names, it would cause confusion) But I also want to ask, Is using a label not somewhat alienating?

Some people like labels, some like to just be themselves. As a cultural difference I’ve noticed Americans like to divide people by different characteristic more, as a general rule, than people from other places.

I am an old school guy, I use they/them/their for people older than me (as a form of honorification), with small children (it is somewhat amusing, and also children like it when they get respeect) and whenever I do not know what gender a person is, or how does that gender prefered to be addressed).

Then great, you’re already doing well!

But this gave me the thought, that why do we not use the same pronouns for everyone (for example they/them), or maybe 2 pairs, one for formal, one informal, or 1 more pair, for singular and plural. Why do pronouns have to depend on gender?

I’m absolutely with you, my person, if it was up to me grammatical gender would be totally abolished.

The second part is sexual prefernces. I do not know much about sex or sexual preferences. I am a young adult, and have not had to know about this for any person that I have met yet. I have never had the interest to know about this for someone, neither have I retained this information. I understand that if you are looking out for partner/s, then you would have to share this, so we would have to use some words for it. But why do we have to keep this as a part of gender. As in, why would I want to share this information with my governments (who do census), or for my visa applications. Should this not just be something personal?

Yes, it shouldn’t be something the government cares about, neither should gender. Ideally they shouldn’t ask at all, but usually there is a ‘prefer not to say’ option.

If a person tells me their gender, how should I react/respond to it? Is my current line of actions appropriate (just address them with their preferd pronouns, and if I do not know that, use they/them; completely ignore the sexual part of it)

If respecting a non-trans person’s gender would be doing the same things, to you, then sure

Another thing that I want to ask is, why do some groups use different acronyms? I remeber hearing about this the first time, and the word used was LGBT. Then I heard LGBTQ, then LGBTQIA+, and today I heard LGBTQ2. I presume that since more people are getting aware, and they are trying to express themselves, they need some newer words, and hence the acronym would keep on evolving, if so, is it not a endless exercise? Am I being insensitive If I use one over other (for quite some time, I have been sticking with lgbtqia+, in hope that + means extensions, as in, others, so hopefully it is less excluding than others, but if that is not the case, please correct me.)

Even LGBT+ feels a bit unwieldy to me, and yes, the + already includes all the others so the extra letters are for sure unnecessary. I’ve heard GSM (gender and sexual minorities) as a shorter acronym that doesn’t single out any specific identities, that might be better. For sure, I don’t like using acronyms with ‘queer’ in them as some people get offended by that word and an inclusive acronym shouldn’t offend people or make them feel ‘othered’ or ‘unusual’ for their natural human variation.

No, this is not normal. Have you considered speaking to a therapist about this? I understand therapists can be expensive, and there’s no real substitute for proper professional help, but I personally found talking to LLMs useful while I was waiting to see a therapist (for an unrelated reason).

No one knows about it and no one will continue to know about it, otherwise, I would share it.

Firefox for Linux and Android

I had a 2 year old account, then lemm.ee shut down and I’m a baby again :(

The point of the paperclip maximiser is that it doesn’t care about you at all, ‘being nice’ to it makes no difference. It just wants to make paperclips, and will destroy you to do so.

As if some private guns would be any sort of fair fight against the full force of the US military anyway

How explosive is the explosion of 1kg black hole?

The sad reality is that although there were some dissenters, the majority of the people in the country supported the Nazis because they actually believed it, they were taken in by the propaganda, which is insidious and ubiquitous. Humans find it easy to hate an out group, forming an in group. Dehumanising others who are different from us is a natural part of human psychology, and it’s an achievement that in the modern world we have achieved a widespread morality which is so accepting - although obviously we still have far to go.