An Education From The Trans* Community

Glossary

Please be aware that there is no consensus on many of these identifiers, even within the trans* community, and that many can overlap.

Gender Identity:
How a person internally identifies with their gender, not necessarily related to their outward appearance or sexual preference.

Trans* or Transgender:
An umbrella term for a person who does not identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. Recently, the suffix change from “-gender” to an asterisk has been implemented to better incorporate a wider spectrum of identification and expression, and to decentralize “gender” as a point of importance. Terms such as “transsexual,” “transvestite,” “tranny” and “cross-dresser” were interchangeable in earlier decades, but are now considered to be outdated and offensive.

Female Assigned At Birth (FAAB) / Male Assigned At Birth (MAAB):
An acronym that refers to the socializing of gender at birth based on an individual’s genitalia, rather than their gender identity, which may not correspond with the normative assignments of female (vagina) and male (penis).

Agender:
“Nebulous” identification with gender, defined mostly by its fluidity and rejection of binary tags.

Genderqueer:
A person who does not identify with male or female genders.

Non-binary:
As opposed to “binary identification,” which recognizes male OR female exclusively, and conforms to the mainstream gender roles thereof.

Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist (TERF):
An aggressive segment of the feminist movement characterized by transphobia and transmisogyny, claiming gender as an oppressive system and thus attacking trans* people for their “focus” on gender, or claiming trans* women have no biological claim to feminism. Its most infamous members have outed and attacked trans* women, leading some to suicide.

Cisgender:
Can also be used as “cisfemale/cismale”; an equalizing term to distinguish people who identify with their assigned gender.