Glossary of terms: sexual orientation and gender identity
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Sexual identity or orientation | The direction of one's sexual interest or attraction. It is a personal characteristic that forms part of who you are. It covers the range of human sexuality from lesbian and gay, to bisexual and straight. (1) |
| Gay | A person whose enduring physical, romantic, spiritual, emotional, and/or sexual attractions are to people of the same gender. The word can refer to men or women, although some women prefer “lesbian.” (1) |
| Lesbian | A woman who is emotionally, physically, spiritually and/or sexually attracted to women. (1) |
| Bisexual | A person who is emotionally, physically, spiritually and/or sexually attracted to people of more than one gender, though not necessarily at the same time. (1) |
| Queer | Formerly derogatory slang term used to identify LGBT people. Some members of the LGBT community have embraced and reinvented this term as a positive and proud political identifier when speaking among and about themselves. (1) |
| Pansexual | A person who has the potential for romantic and sexual attraction to people of any gender or sex. (1) |
| Demisexual | Demisexuality is a sexual orientation in which someone feels sexual attraction only to people with whom they have an emotional bond. (2) |
| Questioning | A period where a person explores their own sexual and/or gender identity, reflecting on such things as upbringing, expectations from others, and inner landscape. The person may not be certain if they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or trans and may be trying to figure out how to identify themselves. (1) |
| Two-Spirit | A term used by Indigenous People to describe from a cultural perspective people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or intersex. It is used to capture a concept that exists in many different Indigenous cultures and languages. For some, the term two-spirit describes a societal and spiritual role that certain people played within traditional societies; they were often mediators, keepers of certain ceremonies; they transcended accepted roles of men and women, and filled a role as an established middle gender. (1) |
| Straight / Heterosexual | A person who has romantic or sexual attractions to people of another gender. (1) |
| Asexual | A sexual orientation where a person experiences little or no sexual attraction. |
| Gender Identity | A person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is a person’s sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum. A person’s gender identity may be the same as or different from their birth-assigned sex. A person’s gender identity is fundamentally different from and not related to their sexual orientation. (1) |
| Trans Woman | A person whose sex assigned at birth is “male” and identifies as a woman may also identify as a trans woman (male-to-female, or MTF). (1) |
| Trans Man | A person whose sex assigned at birth is “female” and identifies as a man, and may also identify as a trans man (female-to-male, or FTM). (1) |
| Genderqueer | Individuals who do not follow gender stereotypes based on the sex they were assigned at birth. They may identify and express themselves as “feminine men” or “masculine women” or as androgynous, outside of the categories “boy/man” and “girl/woman.” People who are gender non-conforming may or may not identify as trans. (1) |
| Gender Fluid | People who have a gender or genders that change. Genderfluid people move between genders, experiencing their gender as something dynamic and changing, rather than static. (3) |
| Androgynous | Identifying and/or presenting as neither distinguishably masculine nor feminine. (4) |
| Non-Binary | An umbrella term for gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine. (3) |
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Glossaire: Orientation sexuelle et identité de genre
