LGBTQIA+ meaning: what each letter stands for, and why it grows

LGBTQIA+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex and asexual, with the A often covering aromantic and agender people too, and the plus standing for everyone the letters do not name. No single body decides it. The letters were added one or two at a time as groups asked to be named, and each country and language has settled on its own version. Here is what each letter means, how the acronym grew, which versions are used where, and where people still disagree about it.

What each letter stands for

Where we have a fuller glossary entry, the letter links to it. The short version:

• L, lesbian: a woman attracted to women. GLAAD's media guide notes that a trans woman attracted only to women would typically call herself a lesbian.
• G, gay: attracted to people of the same gender. Many women prefer lesbian, and some lesbians call themselves gay too.
• B, bisexual: attracted to more than one gender. GLAAD is explicit that the bi refers to genders the same as and different from your own, not to men and women only.
• T, transgender: having a gender different from the one assigned at birth. It describes gender, not attraction, so a trans person can also be lesbian, gay, bi, straight or ace. GLAAD notes that many non-binary people also call themselves transgender, and others do not.
• Q, queer or questioning. GLAAD says the Q usually means queer, a reclaimed word for people who are not exclusively straight, and that in support settings, especially for young people, it can mean questioning.
• I, intersex: born with sex characteristics that fall outside typical definitions of male or female bodies. It describes a body, not an identity, and GLAAD warns against confusing it with being trans.
• A, asexual, and often aromantic and agender as well. University resource centres, such as the one at UC Santa Barbara, list all three.
• +, everyone else. GLAAD describes the plus as recognising all non-straight, non-cisgender identities, which takes in pansexual and non-binary people, among many others.

The letters answer different questions. Roughly, L, G and B are about attraction, T is about gender, I is about the body someone was born with, and Q and A can cover more than one of these. That is why one person can be several letters at once, and why the acronym is a list of groups rather than a single identity.

How the acronym grew

The letters arrived in stages, and accounts of the dates differ. Ms. magazine, drawing on Gerard Koskovich of the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco, describes gay being used for both men and women in the 1940s and 1950s, and lesbians in the feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s pushing for gay and lesbian so that women were not a footnote. Bisexual and trans activists demanded inclusion long before organisations added them, which Ms. dates to the late 1990s, giving GLBT. Other accounts have LGBT in use in the United States from about 1988.

Organisations renamed themselves as the letters grew. The US group founded in 1973 as the National Gay Task Force added Lesbian to its name in 1985 and became the National LGBTQ Task Force in 2014. By the mid-2000s LGBT had largely overtaken GLBT, perhaps, Ms. suggests, to give lesbians more visibility again.

The Q came with the reclaiming of queer. The activist group Queer Nation was founded in 1990, and in 2016 GLAAD's media guide began recommending LGBTQ, citing younger people who used queer about themselves. Not everyone followed at once: NLGJA, the association of LGBT journalists, still recommended LGBT at the time.

Asexual and aromantic people gained wider recognition in the early 2010s, and versions with an A were in circulation by around 2015. The plus was added to take in identities the letters do not capture.

Koskovich's point, in the same article, is that the argument over letters is never only about letters. Naming, he says, is about respect, about who is made visible and about how power is shared.

The versions used around the world

There is no international standard. The Canadian government calls LGBTI the internationally recognised acronym, but what people actually write varies by country, and so does the order of the letters.

English-speaking countries

• United States: GLAAD recommends LGBTQ and accepts LGBT, LGBTQ+ and other versions. In February 2025 the National Park Service's pages for the Stonewall National Monument dropped references to trans and queer people and changed LGBTQ+ to LGB, following an executive order on sex and gender. Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, both trans activists, were central figures in the 1969 uprising the monument commemorates.
• United Kingdom: Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ rights charity, uses LGBTQ+, spelled out as lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer+.
• Canada: the federal government uses 2SLGBTQI+, with 2S at the front to recognise Two-Spirit people as the first of these communities. It used LGBTQ2 before. Two-Spirit belongs to Indigenous people, as the glossary entry explains.
• Australia: the state government of Victoria uses LGBTIQA+, for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender diverse, intersex, queer and asexual, with the I before the Q.

Europe

• European Union: the European Commission's first strategy on the subject, for 2020 to 2025, used LGBTIQ. The one adopted in October 2025 uses LGBTIQ+ and spells it out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, non-binary, intersex and queer.
• France: the government's national plan for equality and against anti-LGBT+ hatred and discrimination ran from 2023 to 2026. Its successor, for 2026 to 2029, is titled against anti-LGBTI+ hatred and discrimination, adding the I.
• Spain: the usual form is LGTBI, with the T before the B. The 2023 trans equality law uses it, spelled out as lesbian, gay, trans, bisexual and intersex people. FundéuRAE, which advises on Spanish usage, notes that the order can vary and that some versions add an A for asexual.
• Germany: the letters follow the German words. The federal government writes LSBTIQ*, for Lesben, Schwule (gay men), Bisexuelle, trans, intergeschlechtliche (intersex) and queere Menschen, as in its 2022 action plan Queer leben. German writing often adds an asterisk, as in trans*, a spelling some groups use to take in every identity under the trans umbrella.
• Italy: UNAR, the national anti-discrimination office, called its first national strategy (2013 to 2015) an LGBT strategy. The current one, which runs from 2022 to 2027, is LGBT+.
• Poland: LGBT+ is widely used, for example by the campaign group KPH. The acronym itself became a political target. From March 2019, more than 100 Polish regions, counties and municipalities passed resolutions against what they called LGBT ideology, reported abroad as LGBT-free zones. In March 2021 the European Parliament answered by declaring the whole EU an LGBTIQ Freedom Zone, by 492 votes to 141.

Brazil

In the 1990s the usual form was GLBT, which had replaced GLS (gays, lesbians and sympathisers), with the T covering travestis and transexuais. At the first national GLBT conference, held in Brasília in 2008, the Brazilian Lesbian League (Liga Brasileira de Lésbicas) proposed moving the L to the front, and after a tense debate a vote made LGBT the official form.

Today the federal government has a national secretariat for the rights of LGBTQIA+ people, and spells the acronym out with travestis alongside transexuais. Some groups use LGBTQIAPN+, adding pansexual and non-binary people. A researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais told the newspaper O Tempo that no version is more correct than another.

Where people still disagree

Long or short

Longer versions are criticised as unwieldy and mocked as alphabet soup. The alternative often offered is queer as a single umbrella word. It is shorter, but as Ms. pointed out, it brings back an invisibility problem for lesbian, bisexual and trans people, and it still hurts some older people who heard it as an insult. GLAAD advises caution about calling anyone queer who has not chosen the word.

What the A is for

Today the A is usually read as asexual, aromantic and agender. But it has also meant ally. The Advocate noted in 2016 that some college groups had added an A for asexual or for ally, and a long version quoted by Ms. in 2013 included ally. The ace writer Siggy argued in 2021 that the slogan A is not for ally gets that history wrong, while still wanting asexual people in the acronym. Both can be true: the A has sometimes meant ally, and today it is usually read as the a-spec people who were missing.

Whether intersex belongs

The intersex activist Emi Koyama set out both sides in an essay for Intersex Initiative. For: intersex bodies are pathologised much as homosexuality once was, and surgery on intersex children is, in her view, heavily shaped by homophobia, transphobia and misogyny. Against: the I can suggest that most intersex people are LGBT, which many are not, can put off parents looking for help, and can make a law that protects LGBT people look as if it protected intersex people too. Her conclusion was to add the I only with real work on intersex issues behind it.

Whether the T belongs

The sharpest argument is about taking a letter out. LGB Alliance, formed in the UK in 2019, describes the orientation of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals as sex-based and campaigns for them separately from trans people. Those who keep the T often point to history: answering the monument change in 2025, the Stonewall Inn said that removing the word transgender marginalised the very people who paved the way.

Which version should you use?

There is no wrong answer in general, only in context. GLAAD accepts several versions, and the Brazilian researcher quoted by O Tempo said none is more correct. Three rules of thumb help:

• For a group or an organisation, use the version it uses: 2SLGBTQI+ for Canadian federal programmes, LGTBI in a Spanish legal text, LSBTIQ* in German official writing.
• For a person, use their word rather than the acronym. GLAAD's advice is to ask people what terms they use before assigning a label.
• For a general audience, LGBTQ+ and LGBTQIA+ are both widely understood. What matters more is not choosing a version that quietly drops people you mean to include.

Flags have grown the same way. The Progress Pride flag, designed by Daniel Quasar in 2018, added a chevron in the trans flag's colours and in brown and black for queer people of colour, and in 2021 Valentino Vecchietti added the yellow and purple of the intersex flag, a visual I. The Progress Pride flag page tells that story, older signs are explained in LGBTQ+ symbols, and every other flag is in the pride flags section.