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Gender Glossary

See listing below

Gender Glossary:
(note this language varies among members of the queer and transgender communities)

Androgynous: reflecting an appearance which appears neither masculine or feminine, or is in some way “in between”.

Bigendered: refers to those who feel they have both a male and a female side to their personalities.  Some “bigendered” people cross-dress, others may eventually have a sex-change operation, others may do neither.

Binary Gender: A system of viewing gender as consisting solely of two categories, termed “male” and “female”, in which no other possibilities for gender or anatomy are believed to exist.  This system is oppressive to gender-variant people who do not fit neatly into one of these categories.

Birth Sex/Sex: the sex one is assigned at birth due to the presence of whatever external sex organs.  Once this determination is made, it becomes a label used for raising the child in either one gender image or another (male or female).

Cross Dresser: anyone who wears the clothing generally ascribed to the “opposite” gender.

Drag Queen/Drag King: gender benders or cross-dressers who wear women’s clothing (drag queens) or men’s clothes (drag kings) often in a theatrical manner.

FTM: female-to-male transgendered person.

Gender Dysphoria: Unhappiness with one’s physical/anatomical gender.  Also, dissatisfaction with one’s gender socialization.  Terms such as “gender identity disorder” and “gender dysphoria syndrome” were created by mental health providers and carry a stigma of presenting gender-variant people as mentally unstable.  Therefore trans people do not frequently use these words to describe themselves.

Gender Expression: The way a person presents their gender to the world.

Gender-Fluid: a person whose gender identity or expression is subject to periodic change.

Gender Identity: an internal sense of one’s gender.

Genderqueer: A mindset of viewing gender as having more than two options.  This is also called having an understanding of non-binary gender.  Individuals who identify as “genderqueer” may prefer not to identify as either ‘male’ or ‘female’, may see themselves as outside of the binary gender boxes, may feel restricted by gender labels, categories, and pronouns, or may be themselves comfortable identifying as ‘male’ or ‘female’, while recognizing that these categories do not fit everyone.

Genderphobia: Fear or discomfort with the idea that some people may not fit into the two restrictive categories imposed by the binary gender system.  A recent term, meaning the same thing as ‘non-binary gender phobia’.

Intersex: The physical characteristic of having been born with genitalia which do not conform completely to binary medical stereotypes of the ‘male’ penis and testes or the ‘female’ clitoris and vaginal canal.  Roughly 1 in 2000 infants is born with what doctors consider ‘ambiguous’ genitalia, putting them at risk for intersex genital mutilation.  An even higher proportion of the population is intersex in some way.  These people were formerly referred to in medical literature as ‘hermaphrodites’, but this language is now recognized as both incorrect and offensive.

MTF: male-to-female transgendered person.

Non-Binary Gender: A system of viewing gender as having more than two options.

Non-Op: transsexuals who may or may not seek hormone treatment and who live as their chosen gender, but for a variety of reasons, may not feel that surgery is neccesary for the completion of their transition.

Passing: being perceived by others as a member of a particular identity, gender, age, etc., regardless of how the individual in question identifies.  Ex: passing as straight, passing as a woman, passing as a youth.

Post-Op: (short for post-operative transsexual) a transsexual who has gone through sex reassignment surgery (SRS) and is now considered to have the physical anatomy corresponding to their chosen, binary gender.

Pre-Op: a transsexual who has not yet had surgery but plans on doing so.

Transwoman: see MTF.

Transgender:

1.     An umbrella term for transgression of the binary gender system.  May include surgical, hormonal, or non-hormonal changes to one’s body or identity, which result in a gender identity different from the one assigned at birth.

2.     Within the binary gender system, ‘transgender’ is often used to refer to people who have or are now transitioning surgically or hormonally from either male to female (MTF) or female to male (FTM).

Transman: see FTM

Transphobia: Fear and discomfort with gender variant or transgendered people.

Transsexual (TS): Within the binary gender system, a person who identifies as a gender ‘opposite’ the sex they were assigned at birth.  Transsexuals may or may not opt to pursue hormone treatment and sex reassignment surgery.

Transvestite (TV): A person who dresses in clothing of the ‘opposite’ gender for whatever reason. Often people labeled as transvestite are heterosexual and cross dress as part of sexual play.