Asklemmy

Yeah, you run into so many regional variants as things spread, and varying levels of acceptance of trans issues that it's hard to pin down. It isn't like there's a single authoritative organization that decides what gets included when, so it's mostly terrifying happening as ideas spread organically.

I wanna say the first time I ran across it as a 4 letter initialism was in the Advocate somewhere in the early oughts, but that's memory, and we all know how unreliable human memory is over time. I'm confident that around 2k, LGB was still being used in my general area for rallies. But shit, I'm pretty far out in the boonies; even the closest city isn't exactly cutting edge in terms of social movement.

It's so difficult to track the history of such things partially because there weren't a lot of written accounts and documentation back then. It isn't even that long ago, but it just wasn't something organized enough to generate paperwork. It isn't like trans people were really seen as a separate group by everyone. Look at how long it took the role of trans people in the Stonewall protests to be recognized as trans people in general knowledge. I had actually met some of the people involved, and they never mentioned trans people, just drag queens and gay men.

I'm just now discovering information about things I heard of when they happened because nobody cared. It's a bit crazy to think about how big a change has happened since the 70s in terms of humanity discovering how truly varied we are. It's living history, and I don't think we'll realize how important this era has been because we'll be gone before it settles out and becomes something to look back at with a more objective perspective.