2STING stands for Two Spirit, Transgender, Intersex, Non-binary and Gender Non-conforming.

Acronyms are always problematic.  Any limitations are my own.

For my dissertation research, I wanted to use a more deliberately inclusive acronym than the TGNC (trans and gender non-conforming) more specifically about gender diversity than LGBTQ and it was important to me to include explicitly Two Spirit, Intersex, and Gender non-conforming people along with transgender and non-binary people in my discussion about the impact of gender expansiveness in educational spaces as workplaces. I know no acronym can include all named and unnamed identities that make up those of us who are not cisgender, but a more inclusive acronym was worth a try. 

I wanted to put Two Spirit people first because when I think about my 16 years of experience in the classroom,  and consider the students who are most vulnerable, students who are indigiqueer - indigenous, and differently-gendered top that list along with other gender-diverse students of color, and other gender fabulous students who have multiple marginalized identities with ability, class, ethnicity, and race are important to me and the silence of the academic discourse about them is a glaring defect to me.  As a trans person, who transitioned a life age of the Earth ago, (OK, the early 1990s) it was important to me to explicitly include intersex, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people so people did not assume I was only concerned with people who identify specifically as trans.  (My very developmentally different son is very into High School Musical, so you can cue up the "We're all in this together" theme song to get the vibe.)

 I have multiple aspects of unearned privilege as a white person who appears masculine.  I know there are a million things I don't know, and can't know. But I'm not afraid to hustle, and I'm not afraid to grind to try to make this world a better place for people I may never meet.  That is the onus of privilege.  Use it as selflessly as possible. I am mindfully using that privilege to attempt to make the lives of those who do not share it better, as I have done since my days in ACT UP and Queer Nation Chicago, and my early HIV prevention activism in San Francisco.