gay = مثليون mithlyoon*

typo in transliteration

@nasser does that hold up for the current full acronym? LGBTQIA2S+

@nasser (if it does…[X-Files theme begins to play])

@courtney i don't think it does 😭

@nasser is there a word for “queer”?

@Moss many of the "correct" arabic words are basically slurs 😬 I've seen كوير kwyr used, though that's just a transliteration and I think people have mixed feelings all about this transliterating western words and by extension western queer culture. أحرار الجنس ahrar al-jins "sexually/gender liberated" also gets used. but I am far from an authority on this stuff.

@nasser i figured that’d be the case, considering half the gays over here still consider queer a slur to some degree. i do like that last one that’s pretty cool.

@nasser @Moss is the use of -Jin related to the supernatural creatures? Curious to know if the lines blur between queer and magical. In india that is certainly the case with trans women (Hijra), but that mythology is fraught in many other ways.

@mohini @Moss
jin جن is the root for magical beings and madness
jins جنس is the root for sex and sexuality

arabic etymology is tricky because the language is so dense there are a lot of false positives. things that seem related but have no real historical connection. in this case though... idk! sex, gender, madness, magic... related ideas...

@nasser @mohini this is fucking cool.
if i may ask a very ignorant question:
you said -jin is magical, is it like the english fae where anything kinda magical falls into the category? i have heard Jin (Jinn?) used to refer specifically to what we call genies. wondering if that’s a western misunderstanding?

@Moss @nasser @mohini djinn are sort of all-purpose spirits including aladdin's wish-giving genie. not a bad analogy with "fae" imo. they are not innately good or evil, it just sort of depends.

@darius @Moss @mohini importantly, they have free will, so I've always interpreted stories where they are bound to an object, like a lamp, and forced to do magic to "grant their masters wishes" as kind of allegories for the arab slave trade, but maybe that's just me overthinking things

@nasser @darius @mohini this is such a fucking cool thread thank you for answering that, i love it. i especially love that almost every culture that acknowledges the queerness of existence usually categorizes us as magical. so fuckin good.

@Moss @darius @mohini jinn are also commonly "shape shifters" and it wouldn't surprise me if that played into an ability to inhabit multiple genders, but I am speculating and projecting my own worldview onto pre-Islamic Arabic culture 😅

@nasser @darius @mohini i love it! i always love to hear how mythology maps onto the real. your theory of captured Djinn being a mythology of colonialism is so valid, this kind of sense-making in cultural stories is found all over the place.
i know i, for one, identify as shape shifter.

@Moss @darius @mohini this is how I have come to understand you, too ♥️

@nasser @Moss some clarification on the term "Hijra" I grew up hearing it as a regional word for trans, but it's actually not since it translates to eunuch which is derogatory & outdated. However, searching this brought up the delightful new term chosen by south Asian trans communities - Kinnar, a magical dancer from Buddhist mythology who is a chimerical bird, horse, human hybrid!
This wikipedia article is a surprisingly decent introduction: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)

@mohini @Moss i love this!

@nasser this is so entirely delightful, I love it

@nasser that is so cool

@nasser@friend.camp this is beautiful

@nasser Another in particular curious fact is the Esperanto name for the LGBT acronym, which is GLAT:

G = Gejoj (gays)
L = Lesbianoj (lesbians)
A = Ambaŭseksemuloj (bisexuals)
T = Transgenruloj (transgender)

"GLATa" means LGBT-ish and can be confused with "glata", which means slick/smooth.

@rosano sure, go ahead! most of my posts are local only on this account though, so it's quite quiet from the outside.