NOTE: Understanding that participants in your conversation will arrive with differing degrees of knowledge and experience with regards to the topics Things We Dare Not Do invites you to explore, it is helpful to review common concepts and arrive at a shared understanding ahead of your discussion. This will help ensure the safety of all participants and work to support the community agreements you have established.

Gender: The attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex.

Gender binary: A system in which gender is constructed into two strict categories of male or female. Gender identity is expected to align with the sex assigned at birth and gender expressions and roles fit traditional expectations.

Gender Identity: A person’s private sense of and experience with being a boy or man, girl or woman; a blend of both or neither; or a gender that may or may not correspond to the individual’s biological sex. Gender identity is personal and is not visible to others and can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth.

Gender Normative: Behaviors, representations, and ways of being that are compatible with, or aligned to, an established cultural expectation of gender identities

Gender Nonconformity: A term referring to people whose behaviors, representations, and ways of being that are incompatible with, or reject, traditional social and cultural expectations of gender identities. Essentially, this term refers to people whose gender expression does not fit neatly into rigid categories of what gender is supposed to mean and what is expected from people of different genders.

Genderqueer: Genderqueer people typically reject notions of static categories of gender and embrace a fluidity of gender identity and often, though not always, sexual orientation. People who identify as "genderqueer" may see themselves as being both male and female, neither male nor female or as falling completely outside these categories.

Sex: The public classification of people as “male or female” at birth, based on bodily/anatomical characteristics such as chromosomes, hormones, internal reproductive organs, and genitalia.

Gender Performance/Gender Expression: External manifestations of gender, expressed through one’s name, pronouns, clothing, haircut, behavior, voice, or body characteristics. Society identifies these cues as masculine and feminine, although what is considered masculine and feminine changes over time and varies by culture. Typically, transgender people seek to make their gender expressions align with their gender identities, rather than the sex they were assigned at birth.

Gender Non-conforming: This is a term used to describe people whose gender expression is different from conventional expectations of masculinity and femininity. Not all gender non-conforming people identify as transgender, nor are all transgender people gender non-conforming.

Cisgender: A term used by some to describe people who are not transgender. “Cis-” is a Latin prefix meaning “on the same side as,” and is therefore an antonym of “trans-.” A more widely understood way to describe people who are not transgender is simply to say non-transgender people.

Non-binary: An adjective describing a person who does not identify exclusively as a man or a woman. Non-binary people may identify as being both a man and a woman, somewhere in between, or as falling completely outside these categories. While many also identify as transgender, not all non-binary people do. Non-binary can also be used as an umbrella term encompassing identities such as agender, bigender, genderqueer or gender-fluid.

Queer: A term often used to express a spectrum of identities and orientations that do not abide by traditional or mainstream expectations of gender and sexuality.

Sex assigned at birth: The sex, male, female or intersex, that a doctor or midwife uses to describe a child at birth based on their external anatomy

Sexual Orientation: Describes an individual’s enduring, inherent, and immutable physical, romantic, and/or emotional attraction to another person. Gender identity and sexual orientation are not the same. Transgender people may be straight, lesbian, gay, or bisexual. For example, a person who transitions from male to female and is attracted solely to men would identify as a straight woman. (Note: an individuals’ sexual orientation exists independently from their gender identity.)

Transgender: An umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or gender expression differs from what is typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. People under the transgender umbrella may describe themselves using one or more of a wide variety of terms—including transgender. Some of those terms are defined below. Use the descriptive term preferred by the person. Many transgender people are prescribed hormones by their doctors to bring their bodies into alignment with their gender identities. Some undergo surgery as well. But not all transgender people can or will take those steps, and a transgender identity is not dependent upon physical appearance or medical procedures.

Transitioning: A series of processes that some transgender people may undergo in order to live more fully as their true gender. This typically includes social transition, such as changing name and pronouns, medical transition, which may include hormone therapy or gender affirming surgeries, and legal transition, which may include changing legal name and sex on government identity documents. Transgender people may choose to undergo some, all or none of these processes.

Tools for Understanding:

As you review these concepts and definitions, these two graphics from TSER, the Trans Student Educational Resources) can support your community in understanding and learning:

The Gender Unicorn

Gender Pronouns