Table 1 Key terms related to gender, gender identity, expression, and sexuality [20]
Term | Significance |
|---|---|
Sex assigned at birth | Refers to a person’s status as male, female, or intersex based on physical characteristics. Sex is usually assigned at birth based on appearance of the external genitalia. AFAB is an abbreviation for “assigned female at birth.” AMAB is an abbreviation for “assigned male at birth.” |
Gender | Depending on the context, gender may reference gender identity, gender expression, and/or social gender role, including understandings and expectations culturally tied to people who were assigned male or female at birth. |
Gender identity | Refers to a person’s deeply felt, internal, intrinsic sense of their own gender. Gender identities other than those of men and women (who can be either cisgender or transgender) include transgender, nonbinary, genderqueer, gender neutral, agender, gender fluid, and “third” gender, among others; many other genders are recognized around the world. |
Gender expression | Refers to how a person enacts or expresses their gender in everyday life and within the context of their culture and society. Expression of gender through physical appearance may include dress, hairstyle, accessories, cosmetics, hormonal and surgical interventions as well as mannerisms, speech, behavioral patterns, and names. A person’s gender expression may or may not conform to a person’s gender identity. |
Sexual Orientation | Refers to one of different dimensions of the person’s sexual identity, and refers to attractions, and behaviors in relation to people on the basis of their gender(s) and or sex characteristics and those of their partners. Sexual orientation and gender identity are distinct terms. |
Cisgender | Refers to people whose current gender identity corresponds to the sex they were assigned at birth. |
Transgender (or trans) | Umbrella terms used to describe people whose gender identities and/or gender expressions are not what is typically expected for the sex to which they were assigned at birth. These words should always be used as adjectives (as in “trans people”) and never as nouns (as in “transgenders”) and never as verbs (as in “transgendered”). |
Gender diverse | Term used to describe people with gender identities and/or expressions that are different from social and cultural expectations attributed to their sex assigned at birth. This may include, among many other culturally diverse identities, people who identify as nonbinary, gender expansive, gender nonconforming, and others who do not identify as cisgender. |