The LGBTQIA history of the North Star state, then, is also a history of language and tradition, and of the variations in gender and sexuality that have been (in)visible in different eras.
But there have always been people in Minnesota, as in the rest of the world, who have lived outside perceived norms of gender and sexuality the words used to name them have just changed over time. This might at first suggest that people representing each of those categories did not exist before the development of the terms themselves. The identities in the LGBTQIA acronym-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual-are relatively recent inventions.
