L

L — The L in LGBT+ is for LESBIAN.

LAVENDER SCARE, LAVENDER MENACE — A Cold War purge in the 1950s of queer people (and people suspected to be queer) from public office and public life under the pretense that they were communist sympathizers and posed a security threat. The civil rights activism that occurred in response.

The Lavender Scare was part of a wider culture of homophobia in the US during the second half of the 20th century. Queer people were expelled from public life and public office—they were fired from jobs in politics, the military, and education in coordinated efforts to remove them. They also suffered informal discrimination from employers across sectors. The 1953 Executive Order 10450 which barred homosexuals from working in the federal government remained in effect on paper until 1994; it was replaced with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which prohibited discrimination toward closeted queers but still banned gays, lesbians, and bisexuals from openly working in the military.

The response to the Lavender Scare is considered the start of the LGBT+ civil rights movement. Astronomer Frank Kameny was fired from the US Army Map Service for his homosexuality in 1957, and he picketed the White House in 1965 in one of the first demonstrations for gay rights.

The color lavender is associated with queerness and LGBT+ culture, along with pink and the rainbow.

LGBT+, LGBTQ, LGBTQIAP — Acronym which groups together everyone who is not both cisgender and heterosexual.

The long-form acronym stands for: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Bigender, Transgender, Transsexual, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Agender, Aromantic, and Pansexual. It also implicitly includes: other non-monosexualities (e.g., omnisexuality); genders which fall under the transgender and non-binary umbrella; and sexualities which are on the asexual spectrum. All of these groups have a legitimate claim to queerness, should they choose to self-describe with that label. Other sources offer variations on the acronym’s expanded definition, usually omitting the less commonly known labels.

Contrary to popular misconception, cross-dressers, drag performers, polyamorous people, and kinky people are not LGBT+ on the basis of those identities alone.

The LGBT+ acronym has utility in describing the shared struggles of all non-cis and non-heterosexual people under conditions of cisheteropatriarchy. However, the LGBT+ community (if such a community exists) is not homogenous, and we can’t accurately discuss LGBT+ issues without also talking about classism, racism, fatphobia, ableism, agism, and colonialism.

Frustratingly, the least vulnerable LGBT+ people have become the face of LGBT+ culture and the struggle for LGBT+ rights: wealthy, white, cis gay men and lesbian women. There is minimal representation of bisexuals and other non-monosexuals, trans people, asexuals, and aromantics, which is why some activists joke that the B and T are silent.

LGBT+ has different connotations than queer, and than more specific identity categories (e.g., bisexual). LGBT+ is associated with palatable respectability politics and a neoliberal trickle-down approach to civil rights, whereas queer is associated with more radical left-leaning politics and less “respectable” tactics like direct action. LGBT+ is also preferred by people who feel the violence of queer as a slur; but the violence and negligence of corporate LGBT+ organizations also makes LGBT+ an alienating term for many.

Amusingly, the press has recently taken to calling individuals “LGBT,” as in, “She’s LGBT” rather than referring to the subject’s specific relevant identity. This is likely to be because “LGBT” is a “safe” label to give people: it’s politically correct and broad, which allows some laziness and ignorance about the person you’re talking about. Is she bi or a lesbian? It doesn’t matter, she’s LGBT. It also excuses them from saying the words “lesbian,” “gay,” “bisexual,” and “transgender,” which apparently feel like insults to cishets, because cishets use them as insults. It keeps these specific identities as dirty words. Saying an individual is “LGBT” doesn’t make sense though, because most queer people aren’t all of those things at once. A more correct approach would be “She’s a member of the LGBT community,” which has the same problem of vagueness and additional problems about queerness being portrayed as a monolith—as if we all live in Rainbow Land together as a single community with a hegemonic culture and identical struggles.

LGBT+ RIGHTS — Laws and civil rights affecting LGBT+ people.

LGBT+ rights and activism are focused around marriage equality, hate crime legislation, and anti-discrimination legislation; in other words, assimilation into heteronormativity. It focuses on individual coming out and being “true” to your identity rather than disrupting or removing existing harmful social structures, including the legislator and judiciary.

LGSM — Acronym for LESBIANS AND GAYS SUPPORT THE MINERS and LESBIANS AND GAYS SUPPORT THE MIGRANTS.

LEATHER — A queer subculture with a strong aesthetic.

The leather subculture was born out of World War I. It was an extremely homosocial group of men in uniforms (leather trench coats) experiencing group trauma. At the same time, women were becoming more present in social spaces which were previously only accessible to men. Men wanted their own spaces, so they set up bars and veterans’ clubs. World War II further consolidated the culture, with more men, more uniforms, more homosocial group trauma, and more machinery. Men returned from the war knowing how to spit shine leather and chrome, and work on engines which went very fast; so they started motorcycle clubs and car clubs. Lots of these clubs were based in bars, which were already extremely homosocial. These were bars full of men who were eager to take on the same roles they had in the war, with officers who made sense of things and bossed you around. The masquerade of masculinity, with the leather and uniforms and hierarchy, is appealing because it is familiar.

Leather and tight uniforms are paragons of the first half of 20th-century masculinity. You can see it in the superhero and cowboy comics of the time, which were of course consumed by soldiers. Gay culture was inseparable from leather throughout the 1950s, when queerness was coded. In the 1960s queerness became more overt, and bikers, military uniforms, police uniforms, and cowboys—all archetypes of masculinity—were part of the gay scene.

Dykes on bikes have been around for just as long as men—the leather culture is about masculinity and leather and power relations, not bodies or genitals.

Since the 1970s the Castro clone has kept leather a relevant part of the gay scene, and it continues to represent a rugged, butch, (fetishized) working-class masculinity.

see also: KINK; DADDY; DYKE; CASTRO CLONE

LESBIAN — A woman who is sexually or romantically attracted to women.

Lesbian can mean women who are attracted exclusively to other women, but it is also a broader term for women and femmes who are attracted to other women and femmes. This includes bisexual and pansexual women, asexual women who are romantically attracted to women, and non-binary people who identify with womanhood. All queer women share a culture with lesbians because mainstream distinctions between Sapphic women have been relatively recent, and many of the struggles between queer women surrounding their queerness and their genders are the same.

Some trans men who were lesbians before they claimed a trans identity retain their lesbian identity after they transition. This is especially true for older trans men, who may have spent most of their lives as part of a lesbian community, and may not have access to other queer communities. The blurriness and complexity of queer terminology should be embraced, not policed and erased.

Lesbians have their own culture and subcultures within the larger queer community.

see also: GAY; MISOGYNY; PATRIARCHY; FEMME; WOMAN; SAPPHIC

LESBIANS AND GAYS SUPPORT THE MINERS, LESBIANS AND GAYS SUPPORT THE MIGRANTS (LGSM) — Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners were an activist group of lesbians and gay men who raised money to support the South Wales mining community during the 1984–1985 miners’ strike. The Welsh chapters of the National Union of Miners (NUM) because the first non-LGBT organization to march in the London’s Pride Parade, and in 1985 the alliance saw between the NUM and LGSM contributed to formally committing the Labour Party to a platform of LGBT+ rights. Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants is a modern activist group of queers who campaign in solidarity with migrants in the UK.

Both the historic and the current LGSM groups are founded on the principle of solidarity and shared liberation.