STEPHEN IRA, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video last March on We Happy Trans<\/a>, a site that shares \u201cpositive perspectives\u201d on being transgender.<\/p>\n In the breakneck six-and-a-half-minute monologue \u2014 hair tousled, sitting in a wood-paneled dorm room \u2014 Stephen exuberantly declared himself \u201ca queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut,\u201d and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and \u201cany male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters\u201d) to his toy zebra.<\/p>\n Because Stephen, who was born Kathlyn, is the 21-year-old child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, the video went viral, garnering nearly half a million views. But that was not the only reason for its appeal. With its adrenalized, freewheeling eloquence, the video seemed like a battle cry for a new generation of post-gay gender activists, for whom Stephen represents a rare public face.<\/p>\n Armed with the millennial generation\u2019s defining traits \u2014 Web savvy, boundless confidence and social networks that extend online and off \u2014 Stephen and his peers are forging a political identity all their own, often at odds with mainstream gay culture.<\/p>\n If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage<\/a>, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male\/female. The core question isn\u2019t whom they love, but who they are \u2014 that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.<\/p>\n But what to call this movement? Whereas \u201cgay and lesbian\u201d was once used to lump together various sexual minorities \u2014 and more recently \u201cL.G.B.T.\u201d to include bisexual and transgender \u2014 the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. \u201cYouth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.,\u201d said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride<\/a>, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.<\/p>\n Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is \u201cL.G.B.T.Q.I.A.,\u201d which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.<\/p>\n \u201cQ\u201d can mean \u201cquestioning\u201d or \u201cqueer,\u201d an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. \u201cI\u201d is for \u201cintersex,\u201d someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And \u201cA\u201d stands for \u201cally\u201d (a friend of the cause) or \u201casexual,\u201d characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.<\/p>\n \u2018Some days I wake up and think, \u201cWhy am I in this body?\u201d Most days I wake up and think, \u201cWhat was I thinking yesterday?\u201d \u2019 – Britt GilbertCreditMark Makela for The New York Times<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n It may be a mouthful, but it\u2019s catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.<\/p>\n The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has anL.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center<\/a> that, among other things, helps student locate \u201cgender-neutral\u201d restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers anL.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group<\/a> on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference<\/a> next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A.<\/a> center, where every group gets its own letter.<\/p>\n The term is also gaining traction on social media sites like Twitter<\/a> andTumblr<\/a>, where posts tagged with \u201clgbtqia\u201d suggest a younger, more progressive outlook than posts that are merely labeled \u201clgbt.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a very different generation of people coming of age, with completely different conceptions of gender and sexuality,\u201d said Jack Halberstam (formerly Judith), a transgender professor at the University of Southern California and the author, most recently, of \u201cGaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you see terms like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.,\u201d Professor Halberstam added, \u201cit\u2019s because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being.\u201d<\/p>\n And with a plethora of ever-expanding categories like \u201cgenderqueer\u201d and \u201candrogyne\u201d to choose from, each with an online subculture, piecing together a gender identity can be as D.I.Y. as making a Pinterest board.<\/p>\n BUT sometimes L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. is not enough. At the University of Pennsylvania<\/a> last fall, eight freshmen united in the frustration that no campus group represented them.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2013\/01\/10\/fashion\/10LGBTQIA1\/10zJPLGBTQIA1-popup.jpg\")
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