As humans, we love categorising things, labelling them, and putting them in a box. Whether plants, animals, flavours, gender or sexuality, the walls of the boxes are changing and keeping up can be challenging.
Before you get stuck into this article, take a moment and think about how you identify yourself. Your name, gender, interests, sexuality, what you do for a job, your political bent. What makes you, you?
The LGBTQA+ community has always been defined by identity, both sexuality and gender. In the past, it was relatively simple, albeit restrictive – Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender. Four boxes defined a massive spectrum of human experience and identity.
Today, the letters that encompass the LGBTQ+ community can stretch on for days and can be confusing and, at times confronting as we work through a minefield of gender, sexuality, pronouns and self-identity.
Let’s unpack some of the boxes within the acronym and explore our identity.
Firstly, here are some basic concepts that might help understand the letters;
Gender is part of how you understand who you are and how you interact with other people. Many people understand their gender as female or male, and some understand their gender as a combination of these or neither. Gender can be expressed in different ways, such as through behaviour or physical appearance.
Sex refers to a person’s biological sex characteristics. Historically understood as either female or male. However, we now know that some people are born with natural variations to sex characteristics.
Sexuality or sexual orientation describes a person’s romantic and/or sexual attraction to others.
A person’s gender does not necessarily mean they have particular sex characteristics or a particular sexuality, or vice versa.
LGBTQA+ terminology is constantly changing and evolving
Like any good dictionary, the letters of the LGBTQ+ community are constantly changing as our community changes over time. Some language becomes outdated or offensive as we evolve and learn as a community. For example, The word homosexual has slowly moved out of fashion, although still in use. Non-Binary (and its various abbreviations) is a relatively recent term gaining popularity in the late nineties, is fast-evolving as more younger members of our community identify with this term.
