A person’s gender identity reflects their deeply felt, internal sense of self as far as their gender, whether or not it aligns with the one assigned to them at birth. It applies to all people, transgender or not.
- LGBTQIA+: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and more.
- Transgender (sometimes shortened to “trans”): Describes the entire spectrum of people who identify with a gender other than that which was assigned to them at birth. A trans person may or may not identify with the gender binary (traditional male or female). To establish a new gender identification, they may or may not use hormones or undergo surgery.
- Agender: Adjective that describes someone who identifies as having no gender or who does not experience gender as a primary component of their identity.
- Bigender: Adjective used to describe a person whose identity combines two genders or who may be sometimes male and sometimes female.
- Cisgender: Adjective used to describe a person whose gender identity is congruent, in a traditional sense, with the sex assigned to them at birth.
- Deadnaming: Calling or referring to a transgender person by a name they used previously but no longer is use, whether or not doing so intentional. It is advisable to use the name that the person has chosen.
- Gender: Behavioral, cultural, and/or psychological ideas associated with a particular gender identity. Especially considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.
- Gender affirmation: The process of recognizing, accepting, and expressing one’s gender identity. This can entail a variety of social, legal, and/or medical changes, including as changing one’s hairdo or clothing, having gender-affirming surgery, or changing one’s name and sex designation on legal documents.
- Gender expression: Ways of expressing and interpreting one’s gender through clothes, hairstyles, mannerisms, body modifications, or name. Gender expression varies, depending on culture, context, and historical period.
- Gender binary: The idea that there are only two genders, male and female, and everyone must fall into one classification or the other.
- Nonbinary: A person whose gender identity doesn’t fit into the traditional gender binary structure of man or woman.
- Queer: Those who consider their gender identity or sexual orientation to be outside of conventional norms are referred to as transgender. Although “queer” has been reclaimed by many within the LGBTQIA+ community as a term of liberation, it may still be insulting to some, especially if used by someone who is not a member of the group.
Diseases and incubation periods