User blog:Ramensushi56/LGBTQIA+ information for everyone

So, you may have heard of the acronym LGBT. This, simply put, means lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. The first 3 are rather easy to understand but the last one isn’t. Lesbian means women who are attracted to women and gay normally means men who are attracted to men but this term can be used for both genders. Bisexual normally means being attracted to both men and women but recently has been used tipo simply say anyone who is attracted to 2 genders. Those are the first three. Now onto transgender. Soon you'll see why it has its own section.

Transgender means someone whose sense of gender doesn’t correspond with their assigned gender. This is where things get a bit confusing. Transgenderism isn’t really understood very well by some. If your parents seem a little ticked off when you tell them you’re transgender it might just be because they don’t know much about it. Explain it. Tell them the basics, help them do their research and inform them of your chosen name and pronouns. If they still refuse to accept you, don’t let them influence you. If they can’t accept you for who you are then their opinions shouldn’t matter to you and they don’t deserve to be considered by you as family. (Same goes for if you’re any of the other things, a.k.a. lesbian, gay and bisexual. I will talk about other sexual orientations and gender identities but later.) But enough of that. What is transgenderism anyway? Well, it basically means that you are assignd, say, male, but you want to be called by female pronouns and you want a female name. You also may experience gender dysphoria. You wanting to be called female pronouns and wanting a female name happen to be examples. You might want to act like a girl, play with girls, maybe even read girl magazines, et cetera. Same goes for if you’re assigned female but want to be called male pronouns and want a male name. That is some basics about transgenders. Just so y’all know, transgenderism isn’t a mental illness. You should be respected for being who you want to be.

Now, LGBTQIA+ is my preferred acronym for this community (and fake identities and orientations from Tumblr don’t count!) so, yeah. Now you know what the first 4 letters mean. Q means “queer” or "questioning". Questioning means questioning one's gender identity, seuxal orientation, romantic orientation...well, you get it. Queer was originally considered offensive but is slowly being accepted as something people want to be called. It can also be short for “genderqueer”, which is basically non-binary genders and transgender, among others, like genderfluid, agender, bigender, demigender and pangender. (Genderfluid means your sense of gender can change from time to time, agender means you don’t really have any gender in your eyes, bigender means you identify as 2 genders, demigender means you feel like you’re part, say female or part male and pangender means you feel you are all the genders. They/them should be your go-to pronouns in these cases unless you’re genderfluid, demigender or you want to be called he or she.) The I means intersex. This is where you have both male and female genitalia. (Parents, don’t try surgery. These people are rare pearls and should be treated as such! Maybe you should decide on the pronouns with your child, though...) Coming up with pronouns and a name for someone whose intersex can be hard, so decide that with your child. A means asexual/aromantic. That means somebody who happens to be in the asexual spectrum. Asexuals and aromantics don’t really experience attraction but they can get into relationships. Finally, the plus sign basically means things like pansexual (loving all genders, though some say gender doesn’t matter to them), polysexual (loving more than 2 genders, this preferred by some who don’t want to be called pansexual), abrosexual (basically genderfluid but with sexual orientations; it’s in the asexual spectrum), demisexual (those who are demisexual won’t love someone unless they have a close bind with them), androsexual (you are attracted to masculinity in any gender) and gynosexual (you are attracted to feminity in any gender.)

Now this is for parents with LGBTQIA+ children. First of all, don’t get angry. The last thing you need is your child to hate you. Plus, don’t try to kick them out. If you do that, you might never be able to find them and make it up to them. Plus, even if you did find them, they probably wouldn’t forgive you. As for transgender children, call them by their chosen name and pronouns and let them behave like the gender they want to be. If you’re confused about transgenderism have them explain to you. And always choose your child over the rest of the community. If they ostracize you and your child, then maybe you should leave. It could escalate in the future if you don’t leave. If you follow a religion that doesn’t accept the LGBTQIA+ community, then maybe, especially if you practice an Abrahamic religion, you should find a church, synagogue, mosque or temple that accepts the LGBTQIA+ community to be safe. If you have already kicked them out, you should try to find well known LGBT centers where your child could be. If you find them, good! But the bad news is they likely hate you, along with their new friends and the owner may report you for child abuse. So don’t even think of trying. One last thing: conversion therapy is a scam. For those of you who don’t know what that is, conversion therapy is a therapy that tries to make lesbian, gay, bisexual and literally any other sexual orientation that isn’t heterosexual, well, heterosexual. And they try to make transgender children cisgender. These can scam you out of your money and it can harm your child. Trust me, it’s not worth the time. If you’re sending your kid to conversion therapy, stop. It’s ineffective. Undo what those scumbags did and never associate with those people ever again.