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Trans identities
AFAB, AMAB: Acronyms meaning “assigned female/male at birth” (also designated female/male at birth or female/male assigned at birth). No one, whether cis or trans, gets to choose what sex they are assigned at birth. This term is preferred to “biological male/female,” “male/female-bodied,” “natal male/female,” and “born male/female”, which are defamatory and inaccurate.
Agender: An umbrella term encompassing many different genders of people who commonly do not have a gender and/or have a gender that they describe as neutral. Many agender people are trans. As a new and quickly evolving term, you should ask how someone defines agender for themselves.
Asexual: The lack of a sexual attraction, and one identifying with this orientation. This may be used as an umbrella term for other emotional attractions such as demisexual.
Bigender: Refers to those who identify as two genders. Can also identify as multigender (identifying as two or more genders). Do not confuse this term with Two-Spirit, which is specifically associated with Native American and First Nations cultures.
Bottom Surgery: Genital surgeries such as vaginoplasty, phalloplasty, or metoidioplasty.
Cissexism: Systemic prejudice in the favor of cisgender people.
Gender Binary: A system of viewing gender as consisting solely of two, opposite categories, termed “male and female,” in which no other possibilities for gender or anatomy are believed to exist. This system is oppressive to anyone who defies their sex assigned at birth, but particularly those who are gender-variant or do not fit neatly into one of the two standard categories.
Gender Dysphoria: Anxiety and/or discomfort regarding one’s sex assigned at birth.
Gender Expression: The physical manifestation of one’s gender identity through clothing, hairstyle, voice, body shape, etc. (typically referred to as masculine or feminine). Many transgender people seek to make their gender expression (how they look) match their gender identity (who they are), rather than their sex assigned at birth. Someone with a gender nonconforming gender expression may or may not be transgender.
Gender Fluid: A changing or “fluid” gender identity.
Gender Identity: One’s internal sense of being male, female, neither of these, both, and another gender(s). Everyone has a gender identity, including you. For transgender people, their sex assigned at birth and their gender identity is not necessarily the same.
Gender Queer: An identity commonly used by people who do not identify or express their gender within the gender binary. Those who identify as genderqueer may identify as neither male nor female may see themselves as outside of or in between the binary gender boxes, or may simply feel restricted by gender labels. Many genderqueer people are cisgender and identify with it as an aesthetic. Not everyone who identifies as genderqueer identifies as trans or nonbinary.
Intersex: Describing a person with a less common combination of hormones, chromosomes, and anatomy that are used to assign sex at birth. There are many examples such as Klinefelter Syndrome, Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, and Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. Parents and medical professionals usually coercively assign intersex infants a sex and have, in the past, been medically permitted to perform surgical operations to conform the infant’s genitalia to that charities to donate to black & brown trans org trans identities
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