Community Terms
CMAGIC: Cheshire and Merseyside Gender Identity Collaborative. A partnership of clinicians, commissioners, providers and service users involved in the support and care of transgender and non binary individuals within Cheshire and Merseyside
GIC: Gender Identity Clinic.
IDAHOBIT: International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia observed on May 17th every year. That date was chosen to commemorate the decision to remove homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1990.
Sparkle: The National Transgender Charity. Sparkle weekend is held at the second weekend of July at Manchester’s gay village. Sparkle is considered to be the world’s largest celebration of gender diversity.
LGBTQIA+: Stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer / Questioning, Intersex and Asexual Plus to include all sexual and gender identity minorities as a coalition.
LGBT Pride: (also known as gay pride or simply pride) is the promotion of the self-affirmation dignity, equality and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people as a social group. Pride, as opposed to shame and social stigma is the predominant outlook that bolsters most LGBT rights movements. Liverpool pride is held on the closest weekend to the 2nd August, in commemoration of the death of Michael Causer, the young gay man who was murdered in the city in 2008. The festival has grown to become one of the largest free pride festivals in Europe and is praised for it’s grass-roots work and activism for the community compared to the over commercialisation of many other big city prides. Most other cities in the UK also hold a pride event throughout the summer.
TDOR: Trans Day of Remembrance which is observed on the 20th November every year to commemorate and remember those in our community we have lost due to transphobic violence, prejudice and discrimination.
TDOV: Trans Day of Visibility that is celebrated internationally at the end of March every year.
Common Gender Identity Terms
AFAB: Assigned Female At Birth, common term within transmasculine community
Cisgender: Those who identify as the sex they were assigned at birth.
Cross-Dresser (sometimes shortened to CD): A person — typically a cisgender man — who sometimes wears feminine clothing for fun, emotional satisfaction, sexual enjoyment, as a way to cope with gender dysphoria or to make a political statement.
Drag Kings and Queens: Performers who exaggerate gender-based behaviours and dress for entertainment at bars, clubs, or events. Some drag kings/queens might also identify as transgender.
Gender Dysphoria: A diagnosis that describes the distress, unhappiness, and anxiety that transgender people may feel about the mismatch between their bodies and their gender identity.
Gender Fluidity: A sense that one’s gender identity can change over time or even from day to day. A gender fluid person may feel male some days, female on others, both male and female or neither. A gender fluid person might also identify as ‘gender queer’.
GenderQueer: People who don’t identify as man or woman or whose identity lies outside the traditional gender binary (male and female). Some people use genderqueer, gender nonconforming, and non-binary interchangeably but others don’t. Many use the term to declare that their gender is non-normative in some way.
Gender ‘Non-Conforming’ and ‘Non-Binary’: When someone’s gender expression doesn’t fit inside traditional binary male or female categories.
Intersex: A general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the typical definitions of female or male and/or the gender they are assigned at birth. Some intersex people are transgender, but some don’t define themselves this way.
Transgender (sometimes shortened to Trans or Trans*): A general term used to describe someone whose gender identity is different than the sex assigned at birth. Some people put an asterisk on the end of trans* to expand the word to include all people with non-conforming gender identities and expressions.
Transgender Men (Trans Man) and Transgender Women (Trans Woman)
A person whose gender identity is different to the one assigned at birth. These can be people anywhere on the TQIA* spectrum. Many trans people identify as either men or women (not trans men or trans women). The rule is not to reach for an easy (or lazy) label but to ask how they regards themselves and wants to be referred to. These identities can also refer to someone who was surgically assigned female at birth, in the case of intersex people, but whose gender identity is male. Many trans men identify simply as men.
Transmasculine is an all-inclusive term referring to:
- Transgender men
- AFAB nonbinary people who identify with masculinity
- AFAB demiboys (someone who partially identifies as a boy, man, or masculine)
- AFAB gender-fluid people who identify with masculinity, whether it’s all, most or some of the time
- other AFAB people who identify with masculinity
Transfeminine, transfem or transfemme: transgender people whose identity is predominantly feminine. They may or may not identify as female. It can be a stand-alone or umbrella term including non-binary, gender-fluid, multi-gender, genderfae (gender-fluid), demigirls (partially feminine) and girlflux (a person’s gender fluctuates between girl, a demigirl, genderless, and various degrees of intensity in-between.
