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

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.

@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 @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 😅