Programs/Events

Safe Space Sticker Program

Definitions

Sexual Orientation: A person’s emotional, physical, and sexual attraction and the expression of that attraction.

Gender Identity: A person’s own sense of their identity as a man, woman, or a combination of both or neither. This personal sense of identity may or may not match biological sex, how the individual presents themselves to the world, or how the individual is socially perceived.

Heterosexual: A person who is primarily emotionally and physically attracted to people of the opposite sex. Also referred to as ‘straight’.

Homosexual: A person who is primarily emotionally and physically attracted to people of the same sex. Generally used as a clinical term rather than a term of self-identity.

Bisexual: A person who is emotionally and physically attracted to people of both sex. The term ‘Bi’ is also used to refer to bisexual people or communities.

Lesbian: A woman who is emotionally and physically attracted to other women.

Gay: A term usually referring to a man who is emotionally and physically attracted to other men. The term gay is also used as a blanket term to refer collectively to gay, lesbian, and bisexual people or communities.

Transgender: An umbrella term used to describe people who do not fit easily into traditional gender roles.

Transsexual: A person who pursues gender reassignment through use of hormones, surgery, and/or a change in identity, to live in a gender other than the one assigned at birth.

Intersexed: A person who is born with anatomy or physiology that differs from the cultural norms of male and female (for example, born with genitals of both sexes, ranging in degree from person to person).

Homophobia: A fear or discomfort with gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people. It can be expressed as simply as avoiding gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people or places or can be as virulent as verbally or physically harassing and harming gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people.

Heterosexism: The assumption that all people are or should be heterosexual. Heterosexism is a more subtle, but often more difficult to eradicate, means of excluding and marginalizing gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

Ally: A person who actively works to eliminate the oppression and marginalization of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. This includes providing support to individual gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people as well as challenging heterosexism and homophobia.

Coming Out: The process through which an individual accepts and acknowledges their sexual orientation and gender identity. The term also refers to the process of disclosing one’s sexual orientation publicly or privately to other people. It is an ongoing, lifelong process.

Queer: A term that has been used as a derogatory name for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. In recent years some people have chosen to reclaim this term and use it to describe themselves. It is sometimes used as a more inclusive term or a term that can describe a range of non-traditional sexual and gender identities. While some people now use the term queer in a positive way, other members of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities are still very uncomfortable with the term.