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5.14: Glossary

  • Page ID
    167820
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    1. Agender: a person who has an internal sense of being neither male nor female nor some combination of male and female
    2. Bigender: a person whose gender identity is a combination of male and female or is sometimes male and sometimes female
    3. Cisgender: a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth
    4. Gender is a term that refers to social or cultural distinctions associated with a given sex
    5. Gender Binary: The word “binary” comes from a Latin word meaning "consisting of two.” When we refer to “gender binary” we are referring to the two common categories for gender, man and woman. Most of our world separates men and women using cultural stereotypes - from what we wear, how we smell, and the roles we are expected to play in the workplace and the home.
    6. Gender Expression: Refers to the aspects of a person's behavior, mannerisms, interests, and appearance that are associated with gender in a particular cultural context, specifically with the categories of femininity or masculinity.
    7. Gender Identity: a person’s sense of self as a member of a particular gender.
    8. Gender Spectrum: If we imagine gender is a spectrum with male and female at either end, some people feel like they fit a different category than the gender they were given at birth, and move from one side to the other, and some people feel they are a mix and somewhere in between the ends of the spectrum.
    9. Genderqueer: a person whose gender identity cannot be categorized as solely male or female
    10. Gender Neutral: not referring to either sex but only to people in general
    11. Intersex: those with a variation in sex characteristics, including chromosomes, gonads, or genitals that do not allow an individual to be distinctly identified as male or female
    12. Non-binary: Some people don’t feel like they fit on the spectrum at all, and reject those terms altogether. Some people refer to their gender as “non-binary” to describe when their gender falls outside the gender binary system. These people can sometimes use gender-neutral pronouns such as “they” instead of “him” or “her”.
    13. Sexuality: a person’s capacity for sexual feelings
    14. Transgender: a person whose gender identity differs from the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth
    15. Two-Spirit: an umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people in their communities who fulfill a traditional third-gender (or other gender-variant) ceremonial and social role in their cultures.

    This page titled 5.14: Glossary is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Susan Rahman with Nathan Bowman, Dahmitra Jackson, Anna Lushtak, Remi Newman, & Prateek Sunder.