bilingual pride facts
because acronyms are basically impossible in Arabic I was curious what the accepted equivalent of LGBT was. I grew up a clueless straight boy so I didn't know offhand.
turns out it's مجتمع الميم mujtamaa al-meem, literally "meme community" or "meme society"
happy pride everyone
bilingual pride facts
@nasser does that hold up for the current full acronym? LGBTQIA2S+
bilingual pride facts
@nasser (if it does…[X-Files theme begins to play])
bilingual pride facts
@courtney i don't think it does 😭
bilingual pride facts
@nasser is there a word for “queer”?
bilingual pride facts
@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.
bilingual pride facts
@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.
bilingual pride facts
@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...
bilingual pride facts
@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?
bilingual pride facts
bilingual pride facts
bilingual pride facts, india
@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up hearing it as a regional word for trans, but it's actually not since it translates to eunuch which is derogatory & outdated.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)
bilingual pride facts
@nasser this is so entirely delightful, I love it
bilingual pride facts
@nasser that is so cool
bilingual pride facts
@nasser@friend.camp this is beautiful
bilingual pride facts
@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.
bilingual pride facts
@nasser so happy to read this thread, is it okay to follow this account? says it's private but not sure if that's out of date
bilingual pride facts
@rosano sure, go ahead! most of my posts are local only on this account though, so it's quite quiet from the outside.
bilingual pride facts
the Arabic names for the different components of LGBT all start with the letter م meem, the M sound.
lesbian = مثليات mithlayat
gay = مثليون mithlyeen
bisexual = مزدوجي الميول muzdawjay al-muyul
transgender = متحولون/ متحولات الجنس mutahawaleen / mutahawilat al-jins
so the acronym would actually just be مممم MMMM lol. instead, it's the meme society, which is, I think, extremely very good.