Dr. Meg-John Barker, an expert in LGBTQ+ theory, sees something missing from the abbreviation of LGBTQ+. Instead, they proposed a new term for replacement: GSRD, or, Gender, Sexual, and Relationship Diversity. Barker’s intent is not to insinuate anything is inherently wrong with LGBTQ+, but they believe we can do better. GSRD, in turn, is to better serve the queer community as a whole and consistently works to reexamine our foundational knowledge on gender and sexual identity.

It is easy to see that the words used to describe the relationship between sexuality and gender identity were constructed using antiquated ideas. Only in recent decades have we created terminology that addressed lived experiences of many individuals, while the majority of our lexicon remains behind. Barker sees an issue with terms like “lesbian” and “gay” in that they rely on the person’s gender identity in order to be applicable. “Lesbian,” for example, necessitates that the person identifies as a woman and is attracted to other women-identifying people. This definition does not take into account biology, ignoring that people may experience differing attractions based on sex organs as well, regardless of that person’s chosen gender identity.

GSRD also relieves significant pressure from the Q+ in LGBTQ+. As Barker points out, the term has become an alphabet soup and leads to unnecessary confusion and exclusion. In the language of sexuality and gender identity, everything that isn’t perfectly categorized as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transsexual, is automatically lumped together under Q+, indicating an obvious hierarchy of queer identities. At Respark, we agree that we can do better in representing all people, but chose to use “LGBTQ+” because of its widespread understandability.