Ally: An ally is a member of a privileged group who stands against oppression. Anyone can be an ally and practice allyship through actively listening, respecting lived experiences, acknowledging privilege, and more.
Cisgender: Someone who is not transgender. ‘Cis’ is a Latin prefix that means ‘on the same side of’, while ‘trans’ means ‘across’ or ‘on the other side’. [source]
Gender Dysphoria: Distress arising from the incongruence between one’s gender identity and sexual characteristics or how others perceive them. [source]
Gender Identity: One’s sense of self as a man, woman, both or neither. This is independent of gender expression (how masculine or feminine someone is), sexual orientation (who one is attracted to) or gender roles (what one’s society expects of men and women). e.g. a woman can have both stereotypically masculine interests and a strong sense of self as female. [source]
LGBTQIA+ is an acronym that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual. The + holds space for the expanding and new understanding of different parts of the very diverse gender and sexual identities. [source]
Microaggressions are the everyday, subtle, intentional — and oftentimes unintentional — interactions or behaviors that communicate some sort of bias toward historically marginalized groups. The difference between microaggressions and overt discrimination or macroaggressions, is that people who commit microaggressions might not even be aware of them. [source]
Non-binary: A trans person whose gender identity is both, neither or in-between the usual binary of male and female. e.g. those who consider themselves a third gender rather than a man or woman, or whose identity fluctuates between male and female. Non-binary people may use gender neutral pronouns like “they” and “them”, while others use male or female pronouns, or are okay with either. [source]
Outing: The act of sharing or disclosing someone else’s LGBTQIA+ status (their sexual orientation or gender identity) without that person’s permission.
Pronouns: Words used in place of nouns and are used to refer to other people. (e.g he/him/his, she/her/hers, they/them/theirs are the most commonly used pronouns).
Transgender: A transgender person is someone with a gender identity that does not match their sex. The dissonance between that sense of self and body often leads to intense distress, known as gender dysphoria. The word is an adjective, not a noun. “Transgenders” is thus grammatically incorrect, and the proper terms would be ‘transgender man/woman/people/community’, sometimes shortened to ‘trans’ for convenience. In contrast, the term ‘tranny’ is usually considered offensive and should not be used. [source] [source]
Transsexual: The subset of transgender people who experience body dysphoria and/or pursue medical transition. However, due to the historical stigma of the word and its connotations with sex, the word ‘transgender’ is more commonly used. [source]