I feel sorry for them too, but not because they can't keep up with my identity politics

Get hip to the new generation of queers, or whatever they're calling themselves these days:

The list of terms -- which have hotly contested definitions -- goes on: "FTM" for female to male, "MTF" for male to female, "boydyke," "trannyboy, " "trannyfag," "multigendered," "polygendered," "queerboi," "transboi," "transguy," "transman," "half-dyke," "bi-dyke," "stud," "stem," "trisexual," "omnisexual," and "multisexual."

"The language thing is tricky," said Thom Lynch, the director of the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center. "I feel sorry for straight people."

That's the compassionate view, I guess -- that a well-meaning but clueless straight person might use the wrong term when dealing with their local neighborhood queer boy or girl. (Even by using "queer," I'm dating myself, I suppose.)

I remember being about 10 years old -- it was about 1966 -- and correcting my mother when she used the adjective "Negro." "They prefer to be called 'black,' mom!" I said, much as Michael Doonesbury's daughter might earnestly correct him on some politically incorrect terminology. She laughed in my face and told it as a funny story that night to my father -- I can still hear her voice imitating mine. Typically, my father just sniffed. "Don't correct your mother, son," he said, never lowering the newspaper.