LGBTQ+ resources:

Definitions:

Gender Identity - One’s innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how
individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One's gender identity can be the same
or different from their sex assigned at birthi.

Sexual attraction - An inherent or immutable enduring emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to other
peopleii.

Gender expression - External appearance of one's gender identity, usually expressed through behavior,
clothing, haircut or voice, and which may or may not conform to socially defined behaviors and
characteristics typically associated with being either masculine or feminineiii.

Transgender - An umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or expression is different from
cultural expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth. Being transgender does not imply
any specific sexual orientation. Therefore, transgender people may identify as straight, gay, lesbian,
bisexual, etciv.

Cisgender - (sometimes cissexual, often abbreviated to simply cis) is a term for people whose gender
identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. For example, someone who identifies as a
woman and was assigned female at birth is a cisgender woman. The term cisgender is the opposite of
the word transgender.v

Queer - umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender.
Originally meaning "strange" or "peculiar", queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-
sex desires or relationships in the late 19th centuryvi. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer activists, such as
the members of Queer Nation, began to reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and politically
radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT communityvii.

Sexual Identity vs Sexual behaviour

Sexual identity and sexual behavior are closely related to sexual orientation, but they are
distinguished, with identity referring to an individual's conception of themselves, behavior referring
to actual sexual acts performed by the individual, and sexual orientation referring to romantic or
sexual attractions toward persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, to both
sexes or more than one gender, or to no oneviii.

More resources:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-difference-between-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity/

https://www.hrc.org/resources/glossary-of-terms
https://www.thewomens.org.au/health-information/sex-sexuality/our-sexuality/sexual-identity-and-
orientation#:~:targetText=Your%20sexual%20identity%20refers%20to,to%20sexually%2C%20men%20or
%20women.

i
Retrieved from https://www.hrc.org/resources/glossary-of-terms

ii
Ibid.
iii
Ibid.
iv
Ibid.
v
Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/09/cisgenders-linguistic-uphill-
battle/380342/
vi
Somerville, S. (2014). Queer. In Burgett B. & Hendler G. (Eds.), Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Second
Edition (pp. 203-207). NYU Press. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1287j69.57
vii
Retrieved from http://www.qrd.org/qrd/misc/text/queers.read.this

viii
Reiter, L. (1989). Sexual orientation, sexual identity, and the question of choice. Clinical Social Work Journal,
17(2), 138–150. doi:10.1007/bf00756141