Hello!
I am new here, and new to the LGBT community in general. Around 6-7 weeks ago I realized I was trans(htf do you make it to 30 and not realize?)
In talking to my therapist, they said they(belonging to the community themselves) like to use queer as shorthand since it includes everyone and isn’t an unending acronym that is constantly getting new letters. I also like that and would use it, but being new, I’m not sure how others who’ve been here longer feel.
Are they equivalent?
I don’t like how the acronym keeps changing and accidentally leaving out a letter could be taken as an intentional slight.
It depends on where you’re from and more so what you feel.
If you feel it’s an equivalent substitute, then it is for you and whoever else feels that way.
Personally I was brought up in the UK where queer in reference to LBGT (either as an insult or not) is largely an American loanword and if you asked the majority of people to define it they’d give you something along the lines of nauseas/slightly unwell or peculiar. That said, there are many Brits who identify as queer which is just as fine as people who identify as gay, which can mean either a masculine homosexual or a catch all LGBT+ term in British English but AFAIK is pretty much exclusively the former in the US?