Wednesday, October 26, 2016

The Kleene Closure of Sexualities

Here's a wonderful quote from an article on sfgate entitled White Cal students blocked at Sather Gate in 'safe space' protest:

    LGBQIA+ stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex and Asexuality. The "+" symbol encompasses all other sexualities, sexes and genders not previously mentioned.

I guess the + sign is meant as a kind of Kleene Closure of Sexualities. Except then it probably should be written as LGBQIA*.

It would save a lot of characters if they just wrote S* to stand for "whatever kind of Sexuality you can come up with, including no sexuality at all". But, then, that would be thought to include regular old vanilla heterosexuality, which would be undesirable, since the tolerance for sexual diversity exhibited by the Cal student protesters most assuredly doesn't extend to heterosexuality, just as their tolerance for racial diversity doesn't extend to whites.

And then there is this other article from sfgate Oberlin activist students want conversations instead of exams, no below-'C' grades.

Oberlin students: when even sfgate is amused, you have gone too far.

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