Learning the Lingo for Youth
[www.imatyfa.org/foryouth/learningthelingo-youth.pdf]
Sexual Orientation - Sexual orientation is related to who you are attracted to. Some common sexual orientations are queer, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, pan-sexual and heterosexual.
Gender Identity - Gender identity is who you are, not who you like or are attracted to. It is how you feel you were born to be--masculine, feminine or somewhere in between. This identity doesn’t always match up with your biological sex, or the gender you were assigned at birth.
Gender Dysphoria - Feeling extremely uncomfortable (persistently in distress) with your physical sex characteristics or your sex assigned at birth.
Gender Expression - The way a person presents themselves to the world through clothing, hairstyles, toys and other preferences. Most people’s gender expression matches up and/or is congruent with their physical sex characteristics or birth sex.
Gender Variant - This occurs when your gender identity or expression is different from your physical sex characteristics or birth sex.
Gender Fluid/Gender Queer - Someone who identifies as both male and female at once or at different times, or a someone who identifies as neither male or female, but somewhere in between.
Affirm - This is a term we use to acknowledge the gender identity of a person. They are not changing their gender. We are changing our perceptions of a person by what he or she has told us/expressed to us.
Affirmed Female - (mtf or m2f) A person who was born anatomically male but identifies as female.
Affirmed Male - (ftm or f2m) A person who was born anatomically female but identifies as male.
Social Transition - A change in appearance and or presentation in order to express your gender identity (usually changes in clothing, hair or make up).
Medical Transition - Medical intervention to alter the physical/sexual characteristics of your body in order to affirm your gender identity.
Puberty Inhibitors - A group of drugs that are prescribed by an Endocrinologist to suppress or stop the production of estrogen or testosterone in a gender variant child. Doing this in early puberty will prevent many unwanted secondary sexual characteristics, such as breast development and facial hair.
Hormone Treatment (HRT)- Introduction of hormones by a health care provider to help develop the desired secondary sexual characteristics associated with a person’s gender identity. Some effects of this treatment may not be reversible.
Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS), Gender Reconstructive Surgery (GRS), top surgery, bottom surgery- Surgical procedures that alter one’s anatomy in order to make the body congruent with their gender identity. Surgical procedures are typically irreversible.