Definitions: An Inexhaustive List

Warning for the Q slur.

• Abled: someone who is both able-bodied and neurotypical.

• Able-bodied: someone who does not have any physical disabilities.

• Aromantic: someone who experiences little to no romantic attraction, regardless of gender.

• Aro: shorthand for 'aromantic' or 'arospec'; someone who is on the aromantic spectrum. Plural form is aros.

• Asexual: someone who experiences little to no sexual attraction, regardless of gender

• Ace: shorthand for 'asexual' or 'acespec'; someone who is on the asexual spectrum. Plural form is aces.

• Autism: a neurodevelopmental disability which manifests in varying degrees of social awkwardness, increased sensitivity to sensory stimuli, mutism, echolalia, awkward motor skills, discomfort with eye contact, meltdowns and burnouts, inability to understand nonverbal social cues, special interests, inability to control the volume of one's voice, and desire for self-stimulatory action (or "stimming"). There is a thriving Autistic culture and community, although its members face high levels of social stigma, violence, and persecution.

• ADHD: Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder. A neurological disability that may or may not result in disorganization, lack focus, inability to pay attention to details, tendency to make careless mistakes, difficulty staying on topic while speaking or writing, forgetfulness, short attention span, hyperactivity, impulsivity, or inattentiveness.

• Anxiety: a mental illness characterized by emotional disregulation related to panic and nervousness, resulting in spirals, intrusive thoughts, and breakdowns known as anxiety attacks.

• Agnostic: someone who believes that the existence of a higher power cannot be proven one way or another, but may or may not consider themselves an agnostic monotheist, polytheist, atheist, or henotheist based on their personal speculations on the existence of a deity or deities.

• Atheist: someone who does not believe that a higher power exists.

• Aphobia: Microaggressions and prejudice, stemming from misogyny, toxic masculinity, ableism, racism, misdirected homophobia, and/or intersexism, directed at aromantic- and asexual-identified people. Not a form of oppression.

• Bisexual: attraction to all genders.

• Biphobia: a subset of homophobia which specifically targets bisexuals and those perceived to be bisexual

• Bimisogyny: the intersection of misogyny and biphobia.

• Butch: a gender expression and relationship to gender in the LGBT community defined by subverted masculinity. On this blog, butch is most frequently discussed in relation to sapphism, but there is also a history of its use in ball culture, polari, and drag.

• Cisgender: anyone who identifies strictly with the sex they were assigned at birth. The short form of this is cis.

• Coming out: disclosing one's LGBT identity.

• Coercive heterosexuality: the social, political, and economic force that demands that women, especially, 1) be attracted (especially exclusively) to men, 2) put men's pleasures and desires first, 3) be attractive to men, 4) perform emotional, domestic, and sexual labor for men's benefit, and 5) be in relationships with men. Also known as compulsory heterosexuality or comphet, for short.

• Depression: a collection of mental illnesses caused by serotonin deficiency and resulting in bouts of lethargy, anger, mood swings, sadness, self-harm, suicidal ideation, emptiness, and/or lack of motivation.

• Disability: any long-term mental and/or physical condition that limits daily activity, including personality disorders, chronic illnesses, motor difficulties, sensory impairments (i.e. blindness or deafness), developmental conditions, learning difficulties, intellectual difficulties, and mental illnesses.

• Dual-aligned: a descriptor for nonbinary people who identify with both manhood and womanhood. Also called solunarian.

• Dyadic: someone who is not intersex.

• Ethnocentrism: evaluation of other cultures by the standards of one's own, usually dominant, culture. Also prejudice against and marginalization of ethnic and cultural minorities (whether people of color or white, i.e. Southern European, Slavic, Traveller, Latinx, Muslim, Sámi, or Jewish white people at the hands of white Anglo-Saxons. There is also a history of ethnocentrism being used to marginalize Deaf people and other sign language users, and ethnocentrism has historically been used against colonized white people in the British Isles such as Irish, Scottish, and Welsh people). Often, but not always, a form of racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, and other forms of oppression.

• Femme: a gender expression and relationship to gender in the LGBT community defined by subverted femininity. Like butch, this blog generally discusses femme identity in the context of sapphism, but it also has a history of usage in ball culture, drag, and polari.

• Feminism: a sociopolitical movement for women and woman-aligned people, focused mainly but not exclusively on the liberation of all women and others who are marginalized on the basis of gender and/or sex, the abolishment of oppression (specifically misogyny), and the destruction of patriarchy

• Femininity: the set of behaviors that women are expected to perform

• Flagging: the act of deliberately signaling one's LGBT identity, especially and almost always to other LGBT people

• Gay: generally, exclusive attraction to same and similar genders; however, this is occasionally used as an umbrella term for anyone who is attracted to their same gender. Gay people can be aro or ace.

• Gender dysphoria: mental and emotional distress caused by incorrectly, repeatedly, and coercively being mistaken for, perceived as, and treated as a gender that is not one's own. This often causes discomfort with one's sex characteristics, assigned pronouns, and various examples of gendered language being applied to them. Often intersects with gender role strain and misphoria

• Gender nonconforming: a descriptor for those who do not subscribe to or identify with heteronormative masculinity and femininity and who defy gendered institutions, such as heterosexuality and cisnormativity. Often shortened to gnc

• Gender role strain: discomfort under heteronormative gender roles, not to be confused with gender dysphoria

• Genderqueer: a synonym for nonbinary, but used less often because not everyone has reclaimed the q slur.

• Girl: an adolescent or child who is part of the social class of womanhood.

• Heterosexuality: in women and woman-aligned nonbinary people, attraction to men and non-women; in men and man-aligned nonbinary people, attraction to women and non-men. Also called straightness.

• Heteronormativity: the systems of power and oppression upheld by straight, cis, and dyadic people that marginalize people LGBT(+) people while enforcing straightness, cis-ness, and dyadic-ness as the 'norm'. May be misdirected against aces and aros who aren't LGBT.

• Homophobia: social stigma, hate, or systematic oppression based on the existence of same-gender attraction, whether exclusive or not.

• Intersex: an umbrella term for any congenital condition that is characterized by the genitals, gonads, chromosomes, hormone levels, or secondary sex characteristics like body/facial hair, breast tissue, cellulite, or voice depth not existing within socially and medically defined "normal" boundaries of male and female. No, it is not possible to transition for an intersex person to become dyadic or for a dyadic person to become intersex. No, it is also not possible to "transition to intersex", nor are intersex nonbinary people considered cis.

• Lesbian: a woman or woman-aligned nonbinary person who is only interested romantically and sexually in women and non-men.

• Lesbophobia: the intersection of homophobia and misogyny

• LGBT: a grassroots political movement with branches all over the world, focusing on combating homophobia and transphobia. Membership is currently exclusive to people who are attracted to their same gender and/or who identify with a gender different from the one assigned to them at birth, but there is an ongoing debate about whether or not aromantic, asexual, and/or intersex people should be granted membership on the basis of those identities.

• Man-aligned: a descriptor for nonbinary people who identify with manhood but not necessarily as men. Also called solarian

• Masculinity: the set of behaviors that men are expected to perform as well as the system (known as toxic masculinity or hypermasculinity) that rewards men for performing these behaviors, bans women from them, and punishes men who don't perform them

• Misogyny: the term for bias against, violence toward, or oppression of women and girls.

• Misogynoir: the intersection of misogyny and antiblack racism.

• Misphoria: the discomfort women often experience with gender while still being women; not the same as gender dysphoria; the intersection of womanhood or misogyny with gender role strain

• MLM: man-loving man or man-loving men. An umbrella term for men and man-aligned nonbinary people who attracted to men, whether romantically, sexually, or both. Often written in lowercase.

• MOGAI: an alternate version of the LGBT(+) acronym, standing for Marginalized Orientations, Gender Alignments, and Intersex. It has been criticized for potentially allowing pedophiles, kinksters, cishet crossdressers, cishet women, and others into LGBT spaces.

• MOGAI hell: a subset of the LGBT community known for embracing the split attraction model to an unhealthy extent, believing that straight cis acomm people can identify as qu**r, believing in monosexual privilege, making homophobic jokes, demonizing lesbians, calling gay people elitist, believing in allosexual privilege, believing in binary privilege, being ahistorical, sexualizing SGA identities, ignoring or not believing in compulsory heterosexuality, shaming gay people for feeling uncomfortable and unsafe around straight cis people, telling LGBT couples not to kiss in public in case they make aromantics uncomfortable, comparing trans people to TERFs, sexualizing children, downplaying homophobia, encouraging young and newly out gay people to believe that their sexual attraction is predatory and oppressive, and calling people homophobic slurs. MOGAI hell and its inhabitants, known as mogais, mostly express their harmful beliefs online - usually on AVEN, Arocalypse, or Tumblr - but they have unfortunately begun to infect LGBT spaces offline.

• m/w attraction: man/woman attraction. A man or man-aligned nonbinary person's attraction to women, or a woman or woman-aligned nonbinary person's attraction to men.

• Nonbinary: an umbrella term for anyone whose gender is neither strictly female nor strictly male. Often considered to be under the transgender umbrella.

• Neurodivergent: anyone who has any sort of medicalized disability relating to the brain.

• Neurotypical: someone who does not have any sort of mental disability.

• Neuroqueer: the intersection of neurodivergence and LGBT identity. Should not be applied to any neurodivergent LGBT people who don't want to be called queer.

• Oppression: legally, socially, institutionally, economically, and culturally sanctioned violence and exploitation from one social class (i.e. the privileged - men, cis people, white people, straight people, abled people) onto others (i.e. the oppressed - women and non-men, trans/nb people, people of color, gay/lesbian and mga people, disabled people). Extremely nuanced and occurs on various axes.

• Pagan: someone who practices and believes in one or more pagan religions.

• Paganism: a group of religions that are loosely connected by the fact that they are not Abrahamic or Eastern. However, some pagans combine their pagan religion with another one, i.e. someone who has an animist concept of God or the Goddess, worships in nature rather than a church, and does not believe in Satan or the Messiah, but celebrates both pagan and Christian holidays, feels resonance with some things from the Bible, and prays to the Virgin Mary, the Angels, and the Catholic saints, as well as to the Gaelic and Hellenic pantheons, while still keeping an open mind as to the existence of any of these entities (but is fairly sure they're real because their prayers have worked). Mod Eli is pagan, and Mod Frey is technically under the pagan umbrella because they're a Satanist. This aforementioned melding between Catholicism, Hellenismos, animism, and Gaelic Polytheism is a description of Mod Eli's religious beliefs and practices, and is known within the pagan community as christopaganism.

• Pansexual: (sexual/romantic) attraction to all genders and/or attraction regardless of gender. Short form is pan.

• Polari: a form of coded language used by gay men, mostly in the twentieth century

• Privilege: the political, social, and legal advantages enjoyed by certain groups of people, such as white people, straight people, dyadic people, men, Christians (in the United States and other western countries), middle to upper class people, abled people, and cis people.

• Polysexual: (sexual/romantic) attraction to three or more genders. Short form is ply.

• Polyamory: any relationship style that includes sex and/or romance with more than one person, with everyone involved fully aware and consenting. A person who practices this is called polyamorous. The short form is polyam or poly.

• Queer: a slur that can only be reclaimed by LGBT people. Although queer is sometimes used as a personal identity, it should never be treated as an umbrella term for the LGBT community or used for anyone without their consent.

• Questioning: the term for someone who is unsure of their gender and/or sexuality.

• Racism: systematic oppression, discrimination, or bias against PoC.

• Sapphic: an umbrella term for women and woman-aligned nonbinary people who are attracted to women.

• Sexism: gendered oppression of women and non-men.

• Sex positivity: a specific brand of feminism that focuses on the destigmatization of sex, including advocating for medically accurate sex education that doesn't assume all students are straight and cis, LGBTQ+ liberation, ace and aro visibility, educating people about consent (what it is; why it's important; why rape is never the victim's fault), putting an end to slut shaming, advocating for safe and legal abortion, supporting teen parents, emphasizing bodily autonomy, destigmatization of hypersexuality and sex repulsion, advocating for cheap over-the-counter birth control, ending sexual racism, encouraging body positivity, encouraging productive conversations about sex and sexuality, fighting patriarchal and/or heteronormative cultural norms surrounding sex, fighting pedophilia and rape apologism, and pro-sex worker activism.

• Sex worker: anyone who sells their sexual energy and the sexualized aspects of their body.

• Slut shaming: any attempt to shame, ridicule, or demean a woman or girl because of one's perception of her as sexually promiscuous.

• Split attraction model: a theory of sexuality which states that romantic and sexual attraction, and sometimes aesthetic, sensual, and platonic attraction as well, are separate and can be mismatched. It's known for sexualizing minors and promoting compulsory heterosexuality and internalized homophobia by encouraging young wlw and young mlm to not recognize their same gender attraction as actual attraction, splitting up their orientation and forcing themselves to feel m/w attraction, and pressuring them to describe their sexual attraction when they may not even feel ready for sex due to their age.

• Stag: similar to tomcat, but tomcat has more of a connotation of androgyny.

• SWE(R)F: Sex Worker Exterminatory (Radical) Feminist

• Transgender: an umbrella term for anyone who is not strictly the gender that was coercively assigned to them at birth. Short form is trans.

• Transphobia: bias against, violence towards, or oppression of trans and nonbinary people.

• T(W)E(R)F: Trans (Woman) Exterminatory/Exclusionary (Radical) Feminist. A subset of misogynists and transphobes who are devoted to the annihilation of trans identity and the endangerment of trans people, often targeting trans women and transfeminine nonbinary people. Known for outing trans people to their conservative families and employers, physically assaulting trans women, attempting to bait mentally ill trans girls into suicide, cyberbullying trans teenagers, and collaborating with right-wing organizations in order to deny trans people civil rights such as using public bathrooms without being attacked for it.

• Transfeminine: a woman or woman-aligned nonbinary person who was assigned male at birth.

• Trans man: a man who was incorrectly assigned female at birth.

• Transmasculine: a man or man-aligned nonbinary person who was assigned female at birth.

• Transmisogyny: a specific intersection of transphobia and sexism experienced only by transfeminine people.

• Trans woman: a woman who was incorrectly assigned male at birth.

• Unaligned: a nonbinary person who rejects alignment and identification with any binary gender. Also called stellarian or non-aligned.

• Woman: a member of the social class directly exploited by patriarchy

• Woman-aligned: a descriptor for nonbinary people who identify with womanhood in some way, but not necessarily as women. Also called lunarian

• WLW: woman-loving woman or woman-loving women. An umbrella term for women and woman-aligned nonbinary people who are attracted, romantically, sexually, or both, to women. Often written in lowercase.

• Witch: a gender neutral term for someone, of any religion or of no religion, who practices witchcraft. Not everyone who practices witchcraft or any similar tradition identifies as a witch.

• Witchcraft: a spiritual practice that utilizes  energy, religious entities, and/or physical resources (almost always at least two out of three) in order to bring about a desired result

• Wh*rephobia: oppression of, violence towards, or bias against sex workers.

• Xenophobia: oppression of, violence towards, or bias against immigrants and people perceived as foreign to the regional dominant culture. Usually rooted in racism, antisemitism, and ethnocentrism.