Glossary

Ally

An ally is a heterosexual, non-transgender person who, nevertheless, fully supports the rights of LGBT people. Allies are educated about LGBT issues and are willing to speak up against discrimination.

Bisexual

Bisexual people are romantically, sexually and emotionally attracted to both men and women.

Cisgender, cissexual

The opposite of transgender or transsexual. If you're not "trans," you're "cis" (pronounced like the first syllable of Sicily).

Cross-dresser, cross-dressing

People who cross-dress wear clothing tailored toward their opposite gender; cross-dressing men wear clothes made for women, and vice versa. A desire to sometimes cross-dress isn't uncommon in heterosexual men, but a few people who cross-dress later figure out that they are transgender.

FTM, FtM, F2M

An adjective or noun for men who were born with typically female bodies. Transgender/transsexual people who consider themselves FTM undergo a social and medical transition from female to male, hence the acronym.

Gay

An adjective used to describe those who are primarily attracted to people of the same gender — women who're attracted to women, men attracted to men. It's not a noun; calling someone "a gay" is both offensive and grammatically incorrect. Also, note that it doesn't mean "stupid", "broken" or "annoying."

Gender

This is a confusing one, and in a lot of ways it's not entirely related to the GSA. But in this context, what "gender" means is "a cultural system which describes people as part of two categories: masculine and feminine." Gender is not the same as sex. When you look at someone and decide that she's a girl, based on her appearance and behavior, you're judging her gender. When you examine her anatomy (chromosomes, genitals, bone structure) and conclude that she is female, you're judging her sex.

Gender identity

Another confusing one. Gender identity is whether you perceive yourself as a woman, a man, or maybe something between/beyond those two choices. Most people have gender identities that "match" their sexes — they were born with female bodies, and they think of themselves as women, or vice versa.

Heterosexism

Heterosexism isn't the same as homophobia. Homophobia is hostility toward gay/lesbian people; heterosexism is when gay/lesbian people are flat-out ignored or minimized by society. Calling someone "fag" is homophobia; assuming that everyone you meet is straight, unless proven otherwise, is heterosexism.

Heterosexual

Heterosexual women are attracted to men; heterosexual men are attracted to women.

Homophobia

Fear, hostility, dislike or hatred towards gay/lesbian people. The three most common anti-gay arguments used by homophobes are: 1) "The Bible says that gayness is a sin. " 2) "Being attracted to people of the same gender is unnatural, and this unnaturalness will destroy our culture." 3) "Gay sex is gross/disgusting/weird." None of these arguments stand up particularly well to debate, but homophobes keep using them anyway.

Homosexual

A fairly old word that means the same thing as "gay," except that it's a noun as well as an adjective. The word was coined by psychologists who believed that being gay was a sexual perversion caused by a mental disorder; "homosexual" was a medical diagnosis. Needless to say, a lot of gay people don't like to be called "homosexual" because of the legacy that that carries!

Lesbian

A woman who is primarily attracted to other women.

MTF, MtF, M2F

An adjective or noun for women who were born with typically male bodies. Transgender/transsexual people who consider themselves MTF undergo a social and medical transition from male to female, hence the acronym.

Out (coming out)

Not bothering to hide your sexual orientation or gender identity; truthfully stating that you are "gay" (or "bi," etc.) when asked, instead of claiming that you're straight. "Coming out" is the process of telling people that you are LGBT.

Pansexual

Pansexual people are attracted to men, women, and people who have gender identities that are neither male nor female. For many pansexual people, the gender of whoever they're attracted to is irrelevant; they like who they like, and gender is just another trait, not a determining factor in any way.

Polyamory

Engaging in consensual romantic relationships with more than one person at the same time. Not really an LGBT thing per se, but it can be.

Queer

The million-dollar word! Roughly, "queer" means "GLBT, pansexual, and anyone else who doesn't fit in with society's norms of gender and sexual behavior (for example: very masculine straight women, very feminine straight men, sometimes polyamorous people, asexual people)." There's a mouthful.

The word also can be used as a fairly strong slur, and a lot of people dislike it for that reason. If you don't consider yourself to be queer, you definitely shouldn't call anyone else queer, unless they explicitly tell you that it's okay. Even if you are queer-identified, it's still a strong and controversial word, so it's good to ask.

Questioning

An obvious one: someone who's not sure of their gender identity and/or sexual orientation.

Sexual orientation/sexual identity

Your sexual orientation is, well, a label describing to whom your sexual desire is oriented. Gay is a sexual orientation. So's lesbian. So's straight/heterosexual, bisexual, pansexual and asexual (that last one means not attracted to anybody).

Straight

Can mean either "not gay/bisexual/pansexual" or "not queer," depending. If a very feminine man is attracted to women, he's straight in the first sense of the word — but he could also call himself "queer" because he defies traditional expectations of gender. So, in a way, he's "heterosexual" but he's not "straight." It's all pretty complicated ... mostly, when people say "straight," they do consider it to mean "heterosexual."

Transgender

This is a terribly complicated one. A lot of people, however, take it as a word describing people who:

1. Were initially raised as males, but now live as females (or vice versa);
2. Think of themselves as neither male nor female;
3. Cross-dress;
4. In general, are not "traditionally masculine men-raised-as-men" or "traditionally feminine women-raised-as-women."

However, not all masculine women or feminine men consider themselves transgender. Many cross-dressers do not self-identify as transgender, and some transsexual people don't, either. As with the word "queer," it's best to ask first. But, if you need to be general, "transgender" is a word for people whose genders or gender identities are in some way fairly different from most people's.

Transsexual

A person who was assigned to one gender at birth, but whose identity lies within the other gender. (People with male bodies who consider themselves to be women, and the other way around; MtFs and FtMs, that is.) Transsexual people make changes in their lives — social changes, and often physical ones, too — so that they can live as people of their true gender, the gender they feel most comfortable in.

Some transsexual people state that their transsexuality is a type of birth defect that caused their body to develop incorrectly. Since the word "transgender" has to do with a lot of the social aspects of gender, and since some see transsexuality as a purely medical rather than social issue, some transsexual people dislike being called transgender. Yet again, it's very complicated.