I wish I had something smart or insightful to say about Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans. Unfortunately, I?m stunned in a particularly unhelpful way.

Meanwhile, though, I?m going to blog about something I?ve been vaguely obsessed with lately. I wish there were an umbrella term for people who are queer, but not gay or lesbian. In other words, a term that encompasses trannies, bisexuals, genderqueers, pansexuals, intersex people and whoever else calls themselves queer. Just not gays or lesbians.

The word ?queer? is great as an umbrella term, but given how much visibility gays and lesbians tend to have in the ?queer? scene, it?s easy for everybody else to disappear into that term. And I feel as though there are a lot of people who are queer-but-not-gay who get lumped into the ?gay? category. Maybe we?d be surprised how many of us there were if we had a word for us.

Is this divisive? I don?t know. But in my experience of both the bi/pansexual and the trans/genderqueer scenes, I?ve found that people spend a lot of time whining that the ?mainstream? queer community doesn?t include them enough. I?d like to see us doing a better job of building our own scenes and including each other. Maybe if trans/genderqueer people had scenes that included bi/pansexual people, and vice versa, the gays and lesbians would see how cool we were and beg us to come play in their sandbox.

My suggestion for a word that means ?queer but not gay or lesbian"? I really don?t have one, I?m afraid. I thought of ?wanderqueer,? which sounds like ?wanderlust,? but is also too cutesy. Any other suggestions? Or do you think this is a bad idea in the first place?