Gay Gordons Manchester

The Gay Gordons Manchester came to an Out In The City meeting to make a presentation and to demonstrate some dances. Audience participation was encouraged.

They are a group of Scottish Country Dance enthusiasts that felt the Gay Community in Greater Manchester could benefit from something new and different.

It is a great way to exercise, to meet new people and to learn a new skill. It is open to everyone – from complete beginners to the more advanced dancer. The only stipulation is that you are LGBT+ friendly and are willing to dance.

The main dance classes are held in the upstairs bar of The Thompsons Arms, 23 Sackville Street, Manchester starting at 7.45pm every Monday (except Bank Holidays).

A drink around the Gay Village usually follows classes, although not compulsory!!

For more information, please see their website.

Brits believe there are too many LGBT+ people and minorities on TV, alarming survey finds

A new YouGov poll has found that close to half the British public believe LGBT+ people and ethnic minorities are over-represented on TV.

The survey, of 1,000 people found that 44 per cent of the public believe LGBT+ representation on TV did not reflect an accurate view of the UK population.

It also found that 45 per cent of the public felt similarly about ethnic minorities, while only 26 per cent thought they were under-represented.

Shows such as The Last of Us, The White Lotus, Heartstopper and Euphoria have been huge hits in recent years, and all have been praised for their representation of LGBT+ people.

Census data for England and Wales published on 6 January 2023 revealed that at least 1.5 million people (3.2 per cent) identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.

It also found that 262,000 (0.5 per cent) identify with a gender identity different from the sex they were assigned at birth.

Additionally, 18.3 per cent of people in England and Wales see themselves as coming from an ethnic minority.

The YouGov figures show a striking difference compared with surveys in other countries, with France finding that only 19 per cent of its population believed ethnic minorities to be over-represented.

The UK also has a higher percentage of citizens than Italy, France, Spain, Chile and Australia who believe LGBT+ people are over-represented on TV screens. Meanwhile, the survey suggests almost 60 per cent of Britons believe people classified as obese are under-represented in media, while almost half think disabled people are not seen enough on telly.

Celebrate Women’s History Month with Women Who Paved the Way

The roots of Women’s History Month traces its beginning back to the first International Women’s Day in 1911.

For Women’s History Month, we celebrate the accomplishments of women who moved the needle forward for generations to come through their activism, grit, and in many cases by just being unapologetically themselves in the face of sexism and anti-LGBT+ oppression.

These people all helped push toward wider acceptance of LGBT+ people through their contributions to their fields of expertise and through their legacies.

Astronaut Sally Ride

A physicist and astronaut, Sally Ride was the first American woman in space. As a physics student at Stanford, Ride answered a newspaper ad for female astronauts and became one of six women picked. She flew on the space shuttle in 1983 and in 1984, controlling the robotic arm, the tool that places satellites in space.

After she left NASA, Ride taught at the University of California, San Diego. Upon her death in 2012, her obituary revealed that she had been in a relationship with a woman, Tam O’Shaughnessy, for 27 years.

Model, Spy, and Arts Patron Toto Koopman

Born to Indonesian and Dutch parents in 1908, Toto Koopman flew in the face of racist attitudes of the time, embracing her mixed race heritage. The earliest known Vogue cover model, Koopman, who was bisexual, was also an in-house model for Coco Chanel. During World War II she fell in love with a man in the Italian Resistance and helped to carry out espionage missions. Following the war, she met German-born art dealer Erica Brausen. The pair would spend the rest of their lives together. They opened the Hanover Gallery in London, where they showed the work of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Marcel Duchamp, and Henry Moore.

Later in life, Koopman became an archaeologist and went out on several digs.

She died in 1991, having lived a long, rich life.

Playwright Lorraine Hansberry

While Lorraine Hansberry is best known for her critically acclaimed play A Raisin in the Sun, she was also an activist and a writer who contributed to early publications including the lesbian-oriented The Ladder and the gay magazine One. She often tackled the intersection of feminism and LGBT rights, long before many thought to.

She was married to Robert Nemiroff, a marriage that was rumoured to be mostly platonic, but she had affairs with women.

She died of pancreatic cancer when she was just 34.

Philanthropist and Arts Patron Winaretta Singer

Heiress to the Singer sewing machine empire, Winaretta Singer was a lifelong patron of the arts who hosted a salon in Paris from the late 1800s up through 1939, hosting artists including Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Cole Porter, Kurt Weill, Isadora Duncan, Colette, Claude Monet, Jean Cocteau, and Marcel Proust.

Beyond helping to fund the arts with donations to the Paris opera and symphony, she partnered with Marie Curie to send mobile radiology units — in limousines — to the front during World War I.

Singer was married twice to men, once to a European aristocrat with whom she did not consummate the marriage, and again to a prince, Edmond de Polignac, who was reportedly gay. Among her female lovers were painter Romaine Brooks, novelist Violet Trefusis, and composer-conductor Ethyl Smith.

She died in 1943.

Journalist Lorena Hickok

While Lorena Hickok was a renowned journalist of her time, she’s likely best known for her proximity to Eleanor Roosevelt. Wisconsin-born, she began her work as a journalist at her small hometown paper but soon moved up and around, taking a job as society editor for the Milwaukee Sentinel before finding a foothold at the Minneapolis Tribune, where she wrote about sports and politics.

She joined the Associated Press in 1928, but she quit that job five years later when her friendship with Roosevelt had become so close that she felt she could no longer report about President Franklin D Roosevelt and the first lady objectively. In 1940, Hickok was named executive secretary of the Democratic National Committee, and she moved into the White House. Over the years, Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt exchanged many ardent letters.

She died in 1968.

Journalist Edythe Eyde

Also known as Lisa Ben (anagram of Lesbian), Edythe Eyde founded Vice Versa, the first lesbian publication in the US. A secretary at RKO studios in the late ’40s, Eyde produced Vice Versa secretly at work and made copies with carbon paper. She only managed to produce nine issues of the publication, but she joined the lesbian organisation Daughters of Bilitis and contributed to its publication The Ladder as Lisa Ben. Her contribution to LGBT journalism lives on with the Lisa Ben Award for Achievement in Features Coverage from NLGJA, the Association of LGBT+ Journalists.

Born in 1921, Eyde died in 2015.

Nurse Florence Nightingale

Likely the most famous nurse in all of history, Florence Nightingale was working as a nurse in London when she learned of deplorable conditions sick soldiers faced during the Crimean War in the 1850s. At the behest of Secretary of War Sidney Herbert, Nightingale was tasked with forming a team of nurses to help tend to the soldiers in Crimea. She pulled together a team of nearly 40 nurses and set off to Scutari, where she helped vastly improve the sanitary conditions of the infirmary there.

With money bestowed upon her for her heroism during the Crimean War by Queen Victoria, Nightingale founded St Thomas’ Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses.

Having contracted a bacterial infection while in Crimea, by age 38, Nightingale was primarily confined to her home, if not her bed.

Nightingale never married, but she was reportedly completely devoted to various women in her life, including her cousin Marianne Nicholson, about whom she wrote, “I have never loved but one person with passion in my life, and that was her,” according to the book Superstars: Twelve Lesbians Who Changed the World.

Athlete and Professional Golfer Babe Didrikson

Mildred Didrikson, better known as Babe, was a renowned athlete in sports including basketball, track, softball, and tennis. At the 1932 Olympics, she broke records in the javelin, the 80-metre hurdles, and the high jump, earning her two gold medals and a silver.

She later began to focus on professional golf, becoming the first woman to compete in the PGA tournament. She went on to win 14 golf tournaments in 1946 and 1947 and became a founder of the LPGA.

Didrikson married wrestler George Zaharias in 1938. She became very close with and was rumoured to be in a relationship with fellow golfer Betty Dodd. At 45, she died of colon cancer.

Politician Barbara Jordan

There were plenty of firsts with Barbara Jordan, an attorney who’s best known for being the first African-American to be elected to the US House of Representatives from Texas and the first post-Reconstruction African-American state senator.

Another first for Jordan include being the first woman and the first African-American to deliver a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. She authored the first successful minimum wage bill in Texas and she served as Governor for the Day in 1972, becoming the first African-American woman to serve as the chief executive of any of the states. In 1979 she moved away from politics and became a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. President Bill Clinton awarded her the Medal of Freedom in 1994. Two years later Jordan died, and it was revealed in her obituary that she had been in a more than 20-year relationship with her partner, Nancy Earl.

FACT Liverpool

FACT Liverpool is an organisation for the support and exhibition of art, film and digital media. It houses galleries, three cinemas, a café and a bar.

The award winning building was opened in 2003 to provide spaces for people, art and technology to meet in order to nurture artistic practice.

A member of staff gave us a short introductory talk before we viewed the current exhibitions. We enjoyed teas and coffees in the café and later discovered that our group had become the artwork! A local artist, Jim Fleming, was sketching us as we chatted away.

More photos can be seen here.

Great Indecencies

Thursday, 30 March – Saturday, 1 April 2023 – 7.30pm

The Edge Theatre & Arts Centre, Manchester Road, Chorlton, Manchester M21 9JG

Price: £15 / £13 (Concessionary)

Retiring Leonard agreed to help a cute student with their “Queer History” project. Instead, they embark on solving a mystery that has haunted Leonard for a lifetime … if only his memory will serve him correctly. 

Great Indecencies is a darkly comic play with music, that explores LGBTQIA+ memory, and the beginnings of homosexuality’s decriminalisation.  It is the culmination of Legacy of ’67: Initiative Arts Project’s year-long project that captures the real-life accounts of LGBT+ people during the last 50 years, charting the effect of a major change in the law in 1967 and its aftermath.  

Book here.

Eurovision Song Contest – Angel Delight’s Drag Party

Wednesday, 10 May 2023 – 8.00pm – 10.00pm

Manchester Central Library, St Peter’s Square, Manchester M2 5PD

There is a General Admission charge and also a Concessionary charge (60+, students, unwaged, low income)

Join the dream diva, Angel Delight, for an evening of singalongs, card games, bongo bingo, music quizzes and lots of surprises, all with an added Eurovision sparkle!

It’s going to be a night where everyone is a hero! The perfect party to make your Eurovision week go with a boom bang a bang!

Doors open at 7.30pm. Bar will be open all evening.

Register here.

Over 50 Lesbian and Bisexual women worldwide have appeared on postage stamps.

Over 50 lesbian and bisexual women worldwide have appeared on countries’ official postage stamps, elevating the status of women’s history. Here are some examples of those stamps and the stories of those historical figures in honour of Women’s History Month.

Colette (1873 – 1954)

Colette was one of the great French writers, a Nobel Prize in Literature nominee. She engaged in romances with women while married to men and published works with sensuous sapphic themes. She appears on the stamp above in France and just had a stamp released in early 2023 in Monaco. 

Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648 – 1695)

Sister Juana is considered one of the most prolific poets of the Spanish language and lived in Mexico when it was called New Spain. Born into poverty when women were not permitted to get an education, Juana decided to become a nun to provide herself with food and shelter without marrying a man. She used her time in the convent to become one of the most educated women in the world, an advocate for women’s right to education, and wrote poetry – including some steamy pieces to women. 

Greta Garbo (1905 – 1990)

Successful Swedish-American actress Greta Garbo was part of Hollywood’s so-called Sewing Circle, Old Hollywood darlings who were sapphically inclined, often with each other. Besides Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead were members of this unofficial club—and rumoured lovers of Garbo’s. Garbo’s nearly-30-year on-again-off-again lover was Mercedes de Acosta, whose relationship ended when de Acosta sold a tell-all biography about Garbo without her permission when de Acosta was broke. Sweden and the US both released stamps in Garbo’s honour around the centennial of her birth.

Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954)

Famed painter Frida Kahlo is a national hero in Mexico and a worldwide icon for bisexuals. As a disabled, communist woman of colour, Kahlo’s art was classified as surrealism by the white art establishment who didn’t understand her, but she said, “I paint my own reality.” Married to fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera, she often slept with women and men outside of the marriage.

Virgínia Quaresma (1882 – 1973)

Virgínia Quaresma was the first professional female journalist in Portugal and achieved this feat despite intense sexism and being out as a lesbian. She became one of the first women to graduate from the University of Lisbon’s Faculty of Arts in 1903 and used her journalism skills to bring attention to violence against women. She was a leading feminist at the turn of the century, using her access to newspapers to argue for women’s equality. Quaresma eventually settled with her partner, Maria, in Brazil.

“Ma” Rainey (1886 – 1939)

Gertrude “Ma” Rainey from Georgia was known as the “Mother of the Blues” because she was one of the very first to record a song of the genre in 1923 and recorded over 90 more over the next five years, truly helping to found the field. She was open about her bisexuality in her songs and life. The US released a stamp featuring her in 1994 as part of a collection of stamps with blues and jazz singers on them. 

Sally Ride (1951 – 2012)

Sally Ride is on a 2018 US stamp and a 2022 US coin to honour that she was the first American woman to go into space. Her 2012 obituary acknowledged her surviving female partner Tam O’Shaughnessy, making many aware that the trailblazer wasn’t straight for the first time. O’Shaughnessy continues the science education company Sally Ride Science that they had co-founded together, and she accepted Ride’s Presidential Medal of Freedom on Ride’s behalf in 2013.

Sappho (c 610 – c 570 BCE)

Sappho of Lesbos is such a famous lesbian the words lesbian and sapphic are based on her homeland and name. She’s not only honoured for writing about her love of women, but her lyric poetry was so revered that Ancient Greek philosopher Plato called her the Tenth Muse (a nickname also used centuries later for Juana Inés de la Cruz). Greece honoured her with a stamp in 1996.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias (1911 – 1956)

Pic Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias was one of the greatest female athletes the US has ever seen – The Associated Press named her Female Athlete of the Year six times between 1932 and 1954. She excelled in archery, baseball, basketball, billiards, bowling, boxing, diving, golf, roller skating, softball, swimming, and track and field, but pursued golf and track and field the most. She won two gold medals and a silver in track and field at the 1932 Summer Olympics and had a prolific golf career; she won 10 LPGA major championships. While Zaharias was married to professional wrestler George Zaharias, she was in love with professional golfer Betty Dodd and lived with her for the final years of her life.

Friends Of Dorothy X Roman Udalov & Lee Baxter – Super Nature

Friends of Dorothy proudly present their third private art show in an ongoing series, dedicated to featuring some of the best queer artists from northern England.

This time, they are excited to present the work of local creative master, Lee Baxter alongside Roman Udalov, a legendary LA- based creative, whose captivating work transports us to the mysterious plant world of East Hollywood and other Californian dreamscapes.

Udalov’s art provides the perfect counterpoint to Manchester-based creative icon, Lee Baxter, who presents a new series of stunning photographs that capture the beauty of local plant life in and around his native Ancoats.

Witness the magic that happens when two artistic worlds collide in a breathtaking exploration of SUPER NATURE. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to experience a fusion of queer art that celebrates nature in all its glory.

The exhibition will run between Saturday 11 March 2023 to Sunday 2 April 2023 at the Friends of Dorothy Private Gallery in Castlefield, Manchester.

Viewing is available via pre booked tickets only.

Full gallery address details provided on booking tickets here.

State pension age: Waspi women

Waspi women (Women Against State Pension Inequality) are right to take legal action over the state pension age changes as they try to boost their compensation, according to a lawyer representing the group.

“The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), the Government watchdog, has come to the wrong conclusions in part of its report into how 50s-born women were affected by the policy decision”, said John Halford, a partner at law firm Bindmans.

It means the level of compensation recommended by the watchdog could be less than what the women believe they deserve.

Waspi has filed papers for a judicial review against the PHSO’s conclusions, having raised nearly £100,000 to pursue the case.

The PHSO now has a chance to respond. If no decision is made to reconsider what Waspi believes are flawed conclusions in its investigation, Mr Halford is confident the case will proceed to a full trial where a judge will “decide whether the ombudsman’s decision is legally sound or not”.

The state pension ages changes, which raised the retirement age from 60 to 65 in line with men, affected women born in the 50s.

Angela Madden, chair of Waspi, said: “Ensuring the ombudsman reaches correct, rational conclusions is a critical step to achieving a just resolution for women who took critical, life-changing decisions about their retirement in good faith, assuming they could retire at 60.

The mistakes meant many only learned a year or so before their 60th birthday that they had another six years to wait. After seven long years of campaigning, Waspi will not give up the fight for 50s-born women.”

The state pension age for both sexes is now 66, but it will increase to 67 by 2028.

Magnus Hirschfeld

Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) was a German physician and sexologist.

Hirschfeld was educated in philosophy, philology and medicine and was an outspoken advocate for sexual minorities.

Hirschfeld is regarded as one of the most influential sexologists of the twentieth century. He founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee.

Historian Dustin Goltz characterised the committee as having carried out “the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights”.

In this paper, “Die intersexuelle Konstitution” (“The Intersexual Constitution”), published in the Yearbook for Sexual Intermediate Stages 1923, he became the first researcher to distinguish what he called “transsexualism” from transvestism. He described transsexualism as the adoption of the gender role opposite to their sex by men or women who held an unswerving conviction they were assigned to an incorrect sex.

Hirschfeld was targeted by Nazis for being Jewish and gay; in 1933 his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was sacked and had its books burned by Nazis.

Rochdale Pioneers’ Museum

We visited the Rochdale Pioneers’ Museum, which is situated in the historical conservation area of Toad Lane, a short distance from Rochdale town centre.

Before our scheduled visit we went next door to The Baum Pub. It’s small, cosy and with clever use of mirrors, looks a LOT bigger inside. It’s full of character.

Although it took a while for our meals to be served, the food was superb. If you are in the area I would recommend a visit.

The Rochdale Pioneers’ Museum is widely regarded as the home of the worldwide Co-operative movement.

It’s the perfect place to come and see how our ancestors did their shopping. In Toad Lane on 21 December 1844, the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society opened their first little store selling pure, unadulterated food at fair prices and honest weights and measures.

Our guide, Olivia, told us how the Pioneers started a revolution in retailing which has played a significant part in our lives ever since.

The ground floor faithfully recreates the original shop together with its rudimentary furniture and scales. Here the basic needs of daily life such as butter, sugar, flour and oatmeal first went on sale over 150 years ago.

In the display and exhibition area you can learn of the inspiration the Pioneers received from visionaries such as the great social reformer Robert Owen; see how the profits from the shop were returned to the members in the form of a ‘dividend’; and watch the story unfold of the Co-op’s subsequent success.

The Pioneers used the room upstairs to provide members with further education. You can view examples of early advertising, packaging and retailing artefacts. Special displays feature a unique collection of Co-operative postage stamps, commemorative china and plateware and rare dividend coins and commodity tokens.

It was another really enjoyable day out.

More photos can be seen here.

Ewan Forbes: How a transgender man was erased from history

Thanks to Morgan Parr, Just Like Us ambassador, who reflects on Ewan Forbes, a trailblazing trans man whose legacy is often overlooked.

“Like most people who grew up in the UK, my history lessons taught me endless facts about the Tudors, allowed me to list most of the things Oliver Cromwell banned in England, and I can easily tell you the three things Lenin promised Russia in their revolution of 1917.

But a trailblazing trans man who changed the course of trans rights in the UK forever, and whose case was buried for over half a century, didn’t make the cut.

Ewan Forbes was born in 1912 to an aristocratic family in Aberdeenshire. He was assigned female at birth, but knew that he was a boy from as young as 6 years old. He loathed being made to wear dresses being forced to dress up for formal occasions so would do everything in his power to avoid having to do so. His mother supported Ewan’s identity from a very young age and gave him the masculine nickname Benjie as well as homeschooling him instead of sending him to a girls’ boarding school with his sister. This support and advocacy for her son in what was usually an oppressive time would no doubt have instilled in him the confidence to live as his true self.

When Ewan was 15, his mother spoke with doctors in Germany who prescribed him hormones. By 1952, Ewan would re-register his birth, legally changing his name and sex. At the time, self-declaration was the law, and Ewan was able to do so by simply requesting a warrant. He went on to marry his wife Isabella, and they lived happily until 1965.

When Ewan’s father and brother died, he was the next man in line to inherit his family’s aristocratic title. His cousin John took offence to this, and took him to court to question the validity of his gender. Though Ewan was forced through a degrading and humiliating trial, including full-body examinations and a cross-examination of his wife, he eventually won and set a precedent for transgender people in cases of primogeniture inheritance. Ewan’s ordeal feels particularly pertinent to the trans experience of today as many trans people are still quizzed and harassed for the personal details of their transition and body parts they may or may not have.

His story was erased from history for decades, and the case files not be made fully public until 2021 – an eye-watering 53 years after the fact.

LGBT+ stories like Ewan’s are so valuable for young people, and I should not have had to wait until my 20s to stumble across a social media post and learn about the trailblazing man who took a transphobe to court and won.

His story, and the stories of countless other LGBT+ figures in history, serve as strong reminders of why inclusive education in schools is so vital. Children should grow up knowing that LGBT+ people have always existed across all walks of life, stories like Ewan’s teach us to not be afraid to stand up for ourselves and our identities and know that there will always be people to support us.

Young people both in and out of the community should grow up with role models and inspiration from across the rainbow, and know that we have always existed and always will.”

Morgan is an ambassador for Just Like Us, the LGBT+ young people’s charity

EASA Contemporary

The Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester’s Northern Quarter has been relaunched as EASA (East and Southeast Asian) Contemporary. It is a unique art centre dedicated to presenting and platforming art practices that identify with and are informed by East and Southeast Asian cultural experiences.

As a regenerated organisation, they strive to empower artists, curators, academics and cultural practitioners whose work reflects, investigates and is informed by topics pertinent to the EASA community at large.

The inaugural exhibition “Practice Till We Meet” delves into diasporic experiences and the condition of migration. We visited last Thursday after eating at Mackie Mayor.

This is a cosmopolitan food hall in a Grade II listed market building. The former Smithfield meat market was opened in 1858 and originally used as a fresh produce market, but had lain empty since the early 1990’s. It’s a great spot for eating out and the various vendors have meat, vegetarian and vegan options. There is communal seating and it’s a great place to get together, chat and eat.

There is a really great atmosphere and once you have ordered your food, there is table service. More photos can be seen here.

International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day is a global holiday celebrated annually on 8 March as a focal point in the women’s rights movement, bringing attention to issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence and abuse against women.

Look Into Their Eyes

The women you see below grew up when coming out meant risking their health, their jobs, their housing, their families, their friends. To stay safe, many stayed silent for years. Stereotypes and stigma filled the vacuum of silence.  
 
They’ve been whispered about, shouted at, insulted, rejected, isolated.

But here they are, strong and brave.

These women are taking a risk to break the silence — to be seen as they really are. To show you that being openly LGBT+ is profoundly human and courageous. They are unravelling the stigma that was formed without knowing them. They are building a kinder world: a world where being LGBT+ is safe and accepted. 
 
Things have improved, but undercurrents of misunderstandings, assumptions, and discrimination still exist. Thousands still experience discrimination, harassment, and abuse when seeking or living in senior housing. Many fear having adequate support as they age. 
 
We all play a role in building a kinder world for everyone. 

Dictionary.com just added several new LGBTQ+ words

Dictionary.com has added a handful of LGBTQ+ terms to its latest official update, making one of the largest online resources for English just a bit queerer.

Amongst the 313 newly entered words for the website’s winter 2023 update, are pinkwashing, queerbaiting, abrosexual, and multisexual. The update also added 130 new definitions to pre-existing words and 1,140 revised definitions.

In case you don’t know, here are the definitions for each of the LGBTQ+ related words:

pinkwashing: (noun) an instance or practice of acknowledging and promoting the civil liberties of the LGBTQ+ community, but superficially, as a ploy to divert attention from allegiances and activities that are in fact hostile to such liberties.

queerbaiting: (noun, slang) a marketing technique involving intentional homoeroticism or suggestions of LGBTQ+ themes intended to draw in an LGBTQ+ audience, without explicit inclusion of openly LGBTQ+ relationships, characters, or people.

abrosexual: (adjective) noting or relating to a person whose sexual orientation is fluid or fluctuates over time.

multisexual: (adjective) noting or relating to a person who is sexually or romantically attracted to people of more than one gender, used especially as an inclusive term to describe similar, related sexual orientations such as bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, etc.

The website also included a few new words that aren’t exactly LGBTQ+ but are terms or concepts that the queer community may also be familiar with.

cyberflashing: (noun) an act or instance of sending someone unsolicited, unwanted, sexually explicit images or video using digital platforms.

woke: (adjective, disparaging) of or relating to a liberal progressive orthodoxy, especially promoting inclusive policies or ideologies that welcome or embrace ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities.

To use woke in a sentence: “Some haters will probably respond to Dictionary.com’s newly included words by claiming that the online dictionary has become ‘woke.’”

The website wrote of its newly added terms, “Our lexicographers observe it all, documenting language change wherever it’s happening and defining the terms that help us to understand our times,”

“Words that are new to the dictionary are not always new to the language (or even remotely recent),” the site noted, adding that its inclusion of new words isn’t an endorsement of the concepts, but rather a documentation of language as it is used (rather than how they or others want it to be used).

In 2020, the website added LGBTQ+ terms like “ace,” “deadname,” and “ambisextrous.”

All Out Radio Show on ALL fm 4/3/23

The fab All Out Radio Show lives on! Sadly not with the amazing duo Claire and Murry who hung up their headphones last month – we miss you massively!

But, all (Out) is not lost! This week, Queer Nan attempts to keep the homo fires burning, bringing us three gorgeous guests: Norman Goodman and Tony Openshaw, telling us about their LGBTQ+ work around Manchester – especially with Out In The City. And in the second half, the fantastic artist Len Goetzee sends us a truly mind-blowing and moving pre-record, including some of his most recent songs – it’s a MUST to tune into!

Listen in here.