Labeling the Boxes

My first few years in elementary school I learned everything that was suppose to describe me were words next to a box that I was told to check if applied to me. At the doctor's office gender, race and medical history. On standardized test letters for my name, age, grade, race, sex and answers to questions. There are so many more examples. But I learned young that there wasn't enough boxes to truly describe me. In my preteen and teens years I remember only using a few words to describe myself and other in my gay community. At that time I only know of lesbian, gay and bisexual and then I went to college. In college I started taking Gender Studies, Sociology, Psychology and Woman's Studies classes; which none of these classes where needed for my chemistry major but I learned more about hermaphrodite (now intersex), queer and transgender. Currently many people and youth have a distinct understanding of sexuality and gender to help describe themselves. So I thing now would be a perfect time to example some of the terms that I used in the pre

vious blog and will be used in future blogs. The most come “homosexual” term are represented in the LGBTQ acronym standing for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning but there are more words to describe the broader understanding of sexuality and gender. Which are listed as following:

Androgyny: a gender expression that has elements of both masculinity and femininity
Asexual: a person who generally does not experience sexual attraction (or very little) to any group of people
Bigender: a person who fluctuates between traditionally “woman” and “man” gender-based behavior and identities, identifying with both genders (and sometimes a third gender)
Bisexual:a person who experiences sexual, romantic, physical, and/or spiritual attraction to people of their own gender as well as another gender
Cisgender: a description for a person whose gender identity, gender expression, and biological sex all align (e.g., man, masculine, and male)
Drag King: a person who consciously performs “masculinity,” usually in a show or theatre setting, presenting an exaggerated form of masculine expression, often times done by a woman; often confused with “transsexual” or “transvestite”
Drag Queen: a person who consciously performs “femininity,” usually in a show or theatre setting, presenting an exaggerated form of feminine expression, often times done by a man; often confused with “transsexual” or “transvestite”
Dyke: a derogatory slang term used for lesbian women; reclaimed by many lesbian women as a symbol of pride and used as an in-group term
Faggot: a derogatory slang term used for gay men; reclaimed by many gay men as a symbol of pride and used as an in-group term
Fluid(ity): generally with another term attached, like gender-fluid or fluid-sexuality, fluid(ity) describes an identity that is a fluctuating mix of the options available (e.g., man and woman, gay and straight); not to be confused with “transitioning”
FTM/MTF: a person who has undergone medical treatments to change their biological sex (Female To Male, or Male To Female), often times to align it with their gender identity; often confused with “trans-man”/”trans-woman”
Gay: a term used to describe a man who is attracted to men, but often used and embraced by women to describe their same-sex relationships as well
Intersex: a person with a set of sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit within the labels of female or male (e.g., 47,XXY phenotype, uterus, and penis)
Pansexual: a person who experiences sexual, romantic, physical, and/or spiritual attraction for members of all gender identities/expressions
Queer: (1) historically, this was a derogatory slang term used to identify LGBTQ+ people; (2) a term that has been embraced and reclaimed by the LGBTQ+ community as a symbol of pride, representing all individuals who fall out of the gender and sexuality “norms”
Questioning: the process of exploring one’s own sexual orientation, investigating influences that may come from their family, religious upbringing, and internal motivations
Skoliosexual: attracted to genderqueer and transsexual people and expressions (people who aren’t identified as cisgender)
Transgender: a blanket term used to describe all people who are not cisgender; occasionally used as “transgendered” but the “ed” is misleading, as it implies something happened to the person to make them transgender, which is not the case
Transitioning: a term used to describe the process of moving from one sex/gender to another, sometimes this is done by hormone or surgical treatments
Transsexual: a person whose gender identity is the binary opposite of their biological sex, who may undergo medical treatments to change their biological sex, often times to align it with their gender identity, or they may live their lives as the opposite sex; often confused with “trans-man”/”trans-woman”
Transvestite: a person who dresses as the binary opposite gender expression (“cross-dresses”) for any one of many reasons, including relaxation, fun, and sexual gratification; often called a “cross-dresser,” and often confused with “transsexual”

How do you feel about labels? Do you think the above labels represent you? Which box(es) would you check if these terms were normalized to describe sexuality or gender?

****LET ME KNOW IF I MISSED ANYONE****

I borrowed this definitions from http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2013/01/a-comprehensive-list-of-lgbtq-term-definitions/