With the support of same sex marriage becoming more and more popular in the United States, more confusion about these topics may hinder acceptance. If you’re the parent of a gay, bisexual or queer child and are confused about the terminology, this blog post is for you.
Here is a listing of various terms to help you understand the state of language usage when it comes to these issues.
Sexuality: refers to who one is romantically/sexually attracted to
Straight/heterosexual: one who is attracted to the opposite sex
LGBTQ+:
L (Lesbian): a woman who is attracted to other women
G (Gay): a man/woman who is attracted to other men/women, respectively
B (Bisexual): someone who is attracted to both men and women
T (Transgender): a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex. (“Transgender” is not a sexuality. Please refer to last week’s blog, “He Said, She Said, They Said: A Look at Gender,” for more information on transgender terminology).
Q (Queer or Questioning):
“Queer” is an umbrella term for someone in the LGBTQ community. Formerly used as a derogatory word for a gay person, it is now a self-described term for someone who is in the LGBTQ community.
“Questioning” refers to someone who is questioning their sexuality.
‘+’ is included to recognize the many sexualities that the acronym LGBTQ does not contain.
Some other acronyms you might see following LGBTQ+ are…
I (intersex): someone born with genitals or autonomy that is not distinctly male or female. Previously called “hermaphrodite.” (“Intersex” is not a sexuality. Please refer to last week’s blog, “He Said, She Said, They Said: A Look at Gender,” for more information on transgender terminology).
A (asexual): someone who does not experience sexual attraction
More sexualities not covered by the LGBTQ+ acronym
Pansexual: someone who is attracted to others regardless of gender identity
Polyamorous: someone who engages in consensual non-monogamy
And many more! Use Google if you’re unsure about a term.
Reclaimed Words
Reclaimed words are words/terms that were/are used to be derogatory against the LGBTQ+ community, and have since been “reclaimed” by the community. Unless someone in the LGBTQ+ community has invited you to say these words, do not use them:
Queer
Previously a derogatory term for a gay person, queer is now used by the community as an umbrella term for someone who is not straight.
Dyke
A lesbian who presents as masculine. Often used derogatorily, it has also been reclaimed by some lesbians as a positive self-identity term.
Butch
One who identifies themselves as masculine in all parts of life. Sometimes used derogatorily to refer to lesbians, but is also claimed as a positive self-identity term.
Faggot
Derogatory term referring to a gay person or someone perceived as gay. Also has been reclaimed by some gay people as a positive self-identity term
Homosexual
An outdated clinical term for a gay person. This medical term is considered stigmatizing based on its history as a category of mental illness. Use gay or lesbian instead.
Topics of gender and sexuality can be confusing. They are both fluid, and on a spectrum, ever changing based on personal preference and societal expectations. When in doubt, be patient, use Google, and if the LGBTQ+ person in your life is willing to share, ask questions. You don’t have to know it all, but as long as you’re open minded, you’re headed in the right direction.
Bio: Sydney Spilko is the social media intern at North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center. She recently graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Psychology.
I cannot recall precisely how I was feeling or what my state of mind was during my late teens and early 20s, when my life revolved around school, work and relationships. The word that jumps to mind is uncertainty, which is a more formal way of saying that a lot was up in the air.
Maybe a clue to how I was feeling can be found on my bookshelf. I saved very few books from that era, some 50 years ago. One that I did keep is entitled “Loneliness and Love” by Clark E. Moustakas. I recall that the author didn’t present loneliness as a disease but rather a universal condition.
Was I lonely at the time? I’m not sure, as there are different kinds of loneliness. I had close relationships and absorbing work. I didn’t suffer for a lack of company, although I did live alone for several years. As Moustakas wrote: “There are many, many kinds of loneliness, but each experience is unique and each represents a different moment in life.”
Did my late teens and early adult years in the 1960s and ’70s offer me a different moment than young people today?
In an essay that was published last month in the Los Angeles Times, Varun Soni, dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, spoke to the changing nature of questions that his students raised over the course of his 11 years there. As he recalled, a decade ago they used to ask, “How should I live?” Today, he says, they are more likely to ask, “Why should I live?”
“Where they used to talk about hope and meaning, now they grapple with hopelessness and meaninglessness,” says Soni. “Every year, it seems, I encounter more stress, anxiety and depression, and more students in crisis on campus.” Among the most frequent questions students ask today, he says, is “How do I make friends?”
A recent study by Cigna revealed that loneliness is at epidemic levels in America, with nearly half of Americans reporting sometimes or always feeling alone or left out; one in four saying they rarely or never feel as though there are people who really understand them; and about half feeling they have meaningful interactions with a friend or family on a daily basis.
Cigna found that the loneliest generation was not older Americans, as one might guess, but rather young adults between the ages of 18 and 22.
To address this, USC offers various campus activities aimed at advancing connection and a sense of belonging, including yoga classes, friendship courses, meditation retreats and campfire conversations, to name just a few.
I don’t remember activities like this being offered when I attended school, but there were intramural sports, clubs and volunteer initiatives that offered the same opportunities for connection and belonging.
But there is more to it, according to Soni. He says that this generation has become increasingly disaffiliated with organized religion and the comfort and community it provides. They’ve also been exposed to active shooter trainings and school lockdown drills for most of their lives. This combination has contributed to “a crippling sense of anxiety and alienation.”
The only equivalency I can think of in the ’60s and early ’70s was the Vietnam War, which generated widespread protests across U.S. college campuses, and the tragedy of the 1970 Ohio National Guard shooting of 13 unarmed Kent State University students who were protesting the bombing of Cambodia. Four died. It was a time of anxiety. However, widespread dissent and organized protests seemed to galvanize young people and guard against alienation.
Moustakas wrote, “In loneliness, some compelling, essential aspect of life is challenged, threatened, altered, denied.” This rings true in our increasingly divided nation. For today’s youth and young adults, there are compelling challenges that cannot be solved by attending yoga or meditation classes, although I highly recommend participation in enriching programs such as these.
The universal challenges we face today are as compelling as at any time in my life. Active participation in civic affairs that address a host of issues such as climate change or common sense gun reform is one way to prevent the loneliness of hopelessness and despair.
Andrew Malekoff is the Executive Director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which provides comprehensive mental health services for children from birth through 24 and their families. To find out more, call (516) 626-1971 or visit www.northshorechildguidance.org.
Garden City resident Paul Vitale was named to the Board of Directors of the North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center.
As an Executive Vice President at The Toy Association, Paul Vitale spends his days hard at work—not, as you might think, playing with the latest game or gadget! His role is of a more serious nature as he oversees the finance and operations of this leading toy industry trade association that represents businesses that design, manufacture, distribute and sell toys for kids of all ages.
The health and wellbeing of kids and their families is a prime focus of Vitale’s life. The Garden City resident recently was named President of the Board of Directors for North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, whose mission is to provide mental health services to children and families throughout Nassau County.
Although new to the role of President, Vitale has been part of the Guidance Center’s Board for more than two decades. “There are a myriad of challenging issues facing children and teens,” he says, “but help from the Guidance Center can have a lasting effect on them and the people around them, which benefits the entire community.”
Vitale says that in today’s culture, kids face more pressures than ever before. “A lot of the same issues exist—bullying, alcohol and drug abuse, depression and anxiety—that have been around for many years, but the constant, 24/7 access to social media has made it even harder on young people,” he says. “The need for help is so great, and that’s why having a community-based agency like the Guidance Center that doesn’t turn anyone away for inability to pay is such a blessing.”
The Guidance Center’s broad array of innovative mental health and substance use services makes the organization unique, Vitale notes. “The breadth of programming is really remarkable, with programs for kids from birth to 24. We have therapists and psychiatrists in three Nassau B.O.C.E.S. schools; there’s a wilderness program for teens; and there’s even a program to help mothers who are experiencing postpartum depression. It’s such an impressive array of services and a real treasure for Long Island.”
One crucial time that stands out in his mind is the period after 9-11, when so many children and families on Long Island were traumatized. “The attacks of 9-11 impacted so many Long Islanders, and the Guidance Center’s response was such a huge help in the bereavement process,” he says.
Community and family life are at the top of Vitale’s priority list. He has been happily married to his wife Marie for 37 years, and together they have three children and two grandchildren.
“We’ve lived in Garden City for 29 years and raised our kids here,” he says. “It’s a very close knit community, and I’m proud to be a part of it.”
According to Nancy Lane, who was Guidance Center Board President until recently, Vitale is well poised for this new role on the Board. “Paul is a longtime, dedicated Guidance Center Board member,” she says. “His knowledge and understanding of the agency’s mission and financial well-being is an invaluable asset.”
Vitale is looking forward to deepening his commitment to the Guidance Center. “It’s an honor to be President of the Board for an organization that’s been around for more than 65 years and does such important work.”
AR-15 rifles are displayed on the exhibit floor during the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky on May 20, 2016. Photo Credit: Bloomberg/Luke Sharrett
In the wake of the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, we heard a White House narrative that focused attention on the role of mental illness.
Although people living with mental illness have been targets of discrimination for centuries, studies show that they are disproportionately the victims and not the perpetrators of violence.
All people of goodwill must continue to fight against stigma and discrimination and also for the elimination of race and ethnic-based fear and intolerance.
Andrew Malekoff,
Long Beach
Editor’s note: The writer is executive director of the North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights.
Urbach–Wiethe disease in skin biopsy with H&E stain. (Image by TexasPathologistMSW via Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0)
Can you imagine what it would be like to feel no fear regardless of circumstance? I am not referring to being courageous or resolute in the face of grave danger. Rather, having no physiological response to perceived threats to one’s survival. Would you like to have that capacity? Sounds like having superpowers minus the ability to bend steel with your bare hands or leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Believe it or not, there is a condition, Urbach-Wiethe (UW) disease, that creates the no-fear effect.
In UW disease, which is incredibly rare, calcium deposits take over the amygdala, the part of the brain that is responsible for emotion and survival instincts. The result is the complete absence of fear.
A few years ago, Washington Post reporter Rachel Feltman wrote an article titled, “Meet the Woman Who Can’t Feel Fear.” She wrote about a woman that she refers to as SM who has been diagnosed with UW disease.
Feltman was able to get an interview with SM, who shared a personal example of what it is like to feel no fear. “I was walking to the store, and I saw this man on a park bench. He said, ‘Come here please.’ So I went over to him. I said, ‘What do you need?’ He grabbed me by the shirt, and he held a knife to my throat and told me he was going to cut me. I told him, ‘Go ahead and cut me.’ And I said, “I’ll be coming back, and I’ll hunt you [down].’ I wasn’t afraid. And for some reason, he let me go. And I went home.”
SM also reported being held at gunpoint on two occasions and said she did not feel the need to contact the police. After all of these incidents, she experienced no signs of trauma. She said that none of the threats to her life bothered her in the slightest.
It’s not that SM didn’t realize the grave danger she was in. She is intelligent enough to know that being held at gunpoint could lead to her death, but she lacks the acute stress response that everyone else feels when they are exposed to danger.
How would someone with UW—if they were a parent—respond to a threat of danger to their child? I imagine that if SM were a parent, when a fight-or-flight response fails, she would rely on her intelligence and her fearlessness to protect her child.
Reading about UW disease made me wonder: Are there other human conditions in which there is a profound absence of fear?
For example, people with personalities that are characterized by antisocial behavior tend to have shallow emotions and a weak conscience. Such people don’t experience anxiety or sadness like most of us do, but that doesn’t make them immune to fear in the face of mortal danger.
What they do seem immune to is shame.
There have been only about 400 cases of Urbach-Wiethe disease since it was first discovered in 1908. So there are not many people walking the earth today who experience a complete lack of fear. As for a lack of shame, I’m sad to say that it seems to be rapidly on the rise.
Thousands of children have been ripped from their mothers’ arms at the border. Many asylum seekers are living in inhumane conditions, lacking basics like food and water. Journalists, some of whom risk their lives to expose criminal and/or immoral behaviors in their search for truth, are being denigrated, threatened and even killed. Regulations protecting us and our children from toxins in the environment are being tossed out at an alarming rate.
I imagine you have other shameful things to add to that list.
For the majority of us who feel both fear and shame, it’s time to speak out—even if it can be a scary thing to do. It would be a real shame if we remain silent.
Andrew Malekoff is the Executive Director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center. To find out more, visit www.northshorechildguidance.org.
