zlacker

> Isn't the concept of 'lgbt' (etc.) inherently political?

I mean in the sense that literally everything is political, yes, I suppose so. Certainly if you ask, say, a Marxist, then yes. But in that sense, so is, say, a chocolate bar.

In the more narrow everyday sense of the word, though, nope, my mere existence isn't a political matter.

>>rsynno+(OP)
> In the more narrow everyday sense of the word, though, nope, my mere existence isn't a political matter.

It isn't, but neither is your existence 'lgbt' since you are not defined solely by your sexual orientation. You may have been gathered - by whom? - under this moniker but had nobody ever thought to create an identity category related to sexual orientation your existence would not have been changed in any way. It is the fact that one of your characteristics has been turned into a 'membership card' of a specific identity which makes 'lgbt' political.

I'm left-handed and as far as I know - ... - there is no identity category related to handedness (yet). If one were to be dreamt up by someone and that person decided I would be counted in as a member of this identity group and be represented by some self-appointed spokesperson my handedness would have been politicised. It would not make a whit of difference as far as my 'existence' were concerned, I'm left-handed with our without a related identity group.

>>hagbar+P9
Okay, so on _your_ basis (that it is an identity), being, say, a bird-watcher, or a nerd, or from a rural area, or all sorts of other things, can be, and often is, treated as an identity, and is thus political.

(Ditto for left-handed people to some extent; less of a thing these days, but there _was_ a time they were kinda treated as an outgroup in many places.)

>>rsynno+1A
Only if people start talking about the 'bird-watching' community instead of individual bird watchers and people who happen to like watching birds begin to talk about themselves in that way: as a member of the bird-watching community I .... The same for the other examples: nerds, 'farmers', etc. In essence it comes down to this: when people start being identified and as a result start identifying themselves by some specific characteristic - bird-watcher, nerd, etc - it starts becoming political. Some of these examples - especially the nerdy one - won't come to much but it wouldn't surprise you to read about an organised group of bird-watchers from the bird-watching community staking out a protest in front of some planned building site where a small patch of forest is to be razed to the ground to make place for some housing project. The same is true for the rural example, especially those who actually derive their living from 'rural activities' - farmers and those dependent on them for their livelihood have been active as political groups for a very long time.

Here's one of the many ways the Open University answers the question on what politics is:

Among the broadest ways of defining politics is to understand it as a ‘social activity’ – an activity we engage in together with others, or one through which we engage others. Politics, in this sense, is ‘always a dialogue, and never a monologue’ (Heywood, 2013, p. 1). A similarly broad (or perhaps even broader) definition is offered by Arendt (2005), who argues that politics does not have an ‘essence’ – it does not have an intrinsic nature, or an indispensable element according to which we can definitively, and in all circumstances, identify something as political. Thus, there are no quintessentially political acts, subjects or places. Politics, rather, is the world that emerges between us – the world that emerges through our interactions with each other, or through the ways that our individual actions and perspectives are aggregated into collectivities. [1]

[1] https://www.open.edu/openlearn/society-politics-law/what-pol...