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April 24[edit]

Asymmetric vs uneven bars[edit]

When did the asymmetric bars event in women's gymnastics start to be called the uneven bars? In the 1970s and 1980s I cannot remember the latter term ever being used, but nowadays the former term seems obsolete. --Viennese Waltz 14:18, 24 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Google ngrams has this data. The term "asymmetric bars" has never been the predominant term, and only appears to have had a brief spurt of usage in the late 70s and early 80s. It looks like a neologism for that never caught on, and it looks like your memory is from a time and place where it briefly was popular, the term "uneven bars" has always been the favored term, even at that time. --Jayron 32 14:46, 24 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thanks for that. --Viennese Waltz 15:06, 24 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Or "uneven parallel bars". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:46, 24 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what you're talking about, they've certainly never been called that. ..Viennese Waltz 20:01, 24 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Check it out, chum.[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:29, 24 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

My Olympic Games awakening happened in 1956. I'd always known the event as Uneven Bars, and just found this from the Olympic Games official results to support my ageing memory. I desperately searched for an iconic image from those Games of one of the bars breaking during the event, but couldn't track it down. HiLo48 (talk) 00:48, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know about that, but here's some Uneven Parallel Bars action from the 1984 games.[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:04, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for the terms within Newspapers.com (pay site) for the entire history there are about 200,000 occurrences of "uneven bars" and about 60,000 of "uneven parallel bars". For just the time since the year 2000, those numbers are about 48,000 and 6,000 respectively. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:35, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Asymmetric bars" seems to be still widely used here in the UK [3] [4] [5]. According to this blog its an AmEng vs BrEng split, with the Olympics having moved to the American "uneven" terminology fairly recently. This British newspaper report from the London 2012 Olympics asks "When did the asymmetric bars become the uneven bars?" (about halfway down) without giving an answer.

However, this 2016 report from the IOC website says: "Biles shared her first Olympic title with Aly Raisman, Gabrielle Douglas (a team winner at London 2012), 16-year-old Lauren Hernandez and Madison Kocian, the favourite for the assymetric bars competition" (no points for spelling though). Alansplodge (talk) 12:40, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And "bronze for the asymmetric bars" appears in The Official History of the Olympic Games and the IOC - Part III: The Modern Era (1984-2012) by David Miller, published in Edinburgh in 2012.

Another hit in The IOC Official Olympic Companion 1996 (p. 74): "medal events are the team, individual all-round and individual apparatus finals in the beam, asymmetric bars, vault and floor". Alansplodge (talk) 12:49, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is Katrina Leskanich LGBT?[edit]

Is Katrina Leskanich LGBT? KobiNew (talk) 16:44, 24 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here is an interview with her in her own words. --Jayron 32 16:56, 24 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

While her comments there pretty clearly indicate that she falls somewhere in the LGBT spectrum, it is unclear if she identifies as lesbian or bisexual (or even pansexual). Also, no one "is LGBT". Saying someone "is LGBT" is as silly as saying they "are hair colored". --Khajidha (talk) 23:56, 24 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I love this comment from the Australian demographer and columnist Bernard Salt from a few years ago, before same-sex marriage was legalised here:

As for the LGBTQIA community, I sincerely hope the vast majority of Australians get on board with allowing everyone the right to get married regardless of sexual orientation. (Although may I say that commandeering 25 per cent of the alphabet to represent a minority does seem a bit odd. Can't there be a blanket term? Seven letters in sequence is a banking password.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:00, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The first part of that reminds me of this immortal quote from Bob Katter. --Viennese Waltz 17:24, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The definition of a very strange man. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I am a faculty adviser for my community college's LGBT club. I was often approached by individuals who felt that as they were pansexual, asexual, bigender, etc the LGBT name did not cover them. We eventually changed to "Sexuality And Gender Alliance" (SAGA) for that reason. However, we now have to make sure we aren't confused with the Student Government Association (SGA). There isn't any really good inclusive term.---Khajidha (talk) 17:18, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]