Center for Diversity and Inclusion—LGBTQ+ Resource Center

Terms and Definitions

Ally

An individual or group that supports the LGBTQ community.

LGBTQQIAA

Acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally

Pansexual

Sexual attraction to people regardless of gender.

Gender Expression

The way a person is seen as male, female, some combination, or neither. Constructed by societal norms.

Lesbian

A woman, woman-aligned and/or feminine-aligned non-binary person who is attracted to women, woman-aligned and/or feminine-aligned non-binary people.

Bisexual

Someone who is attracted to two or more genders

Sex

Biological differences determined at birth, usually in reference to sexual organs

Nonbinary

Someone who’s gender identity does not fall strictly into the Western gender binary of male/female

Asexual

A term for people who do not experience sexual attraction toward others.

Cisgender

Someone who gender identity matches their assigned sex. Example: If Tiffany feels she is female, and was assigned female at birth, she is cisgender.

Queer

Reclamation of a slur by the LGBT community to represent someone who falls outside of and/or rejects the cultural norms around sexuality, gender identity, and/or gender expression. This can also be used as an umbrella term for the LGBTQAI+ community as a whole.

Homophobia

Ignorance or fear of non-heterosexual people. Homophobic actions can include prejudice, discrimination, harassment, and acts of violence.

Heterosexism

Bias against any person that is not exclusively heterosexual. This can include assuming that everyone is heterosexual.

Gay

Attracttion towards same gender. Term can be applied to all genders, but is usually used for men.

Gender Identity

A personal sense of one’s own gender. It can correlate with your assigned sex at birth or differ from it.

Gender

One’s internal sense of identity and relation to socially constructed gender roles in one’s society

Intersex

A term for those born with physical sex characteristics that cannot be tradtionally classified as male or female. This is an umbrella term for a broad range of conditions. Intersex people may identity as any gender identity, thus not every Intersex person is inherently part of the LGBT community.

Transgender

A term referring to people who do not identity as their gender assigned to them at birth