TRANSGENDER TERMINOLOGY

Transgender people stress the importance of proper language that respects their identity. The following are terms in general use, but it’s important to be sensitive to a person and use the terms they prefer.

Gender has historically been used to refer to psychological, behavioural and sociological traits, pigeonholed by society into “masculine” or “feminine”.

Sex has historically been used to refer to biological traits of male and female.

Gender dysphoria refers to the incongruity between people’s sense of themselves and the sexual characteristics they were born with. There may be a sense of being female although a person was born male (or vice versa), or a sense of mixed gender or neutrality. Trans woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans man is a man who was assigned female at birth. Non-binary transgender refers to someone who doesn’t exclusively identify as man or woman, masculine or feminine, male or female.