Pan/Omnigender: People who experience many, and sometimes, all genders.
Pansexual/romantic a.k.a. Omnisexual/romantic: Capable of being attracted to any or all gender(s).
Policing: The imposition of norms, or personal beliefs, by way of telling others how they should, or should not, identify, behave, or express themselves. In this book, policing is used in the context of gender and sexuality. (Example: “You can’t do ballet, you’re a boy!” or “You can’t call yourself a lesbian until you’ve dated a girl.”)
Polyamory: The practice or desire of relationships involving more than two people. Like any relationship, these require communication, honesty, and consent in order to be successful.
Polysexual/romantic: Someone who experiences attraction to multiple, but not necessarily all, genders.
Privilege: Benefits and opportunities automatically afforded to majorities or non-oppressed groups of people, that are usually unnoticed or taken for granted and occur at the expense of oppressed groups of people.
Pronouns: In this book the types of pronouns explored are words used to refer to specific people when their proper names are not being used (e.g. he, she, they, ze, e, etc.). Our society has strong associations between certain pronouns and gender.
Queer: An umbrella term or identity taken on by some LGBTQIA+ people to describe a sexual and/or gender identity that falls outside societal norms. This term has a history of being used as a slur. Although it has been reclaimed by many LGBTQIA+ people, not everyone is comfortable using it.
Questioning: Being unsure of one’s sexual/romantic orientation or gender identity.
Quoisexual/romantic a.k.a. WTFromantic: A person who can’t tell the difference between attractions they experience, is unsure if they experience attraction, and/or doesn’t think romantic and/or sexual attractions are relevant to them.
Recipsexuality/romanticism: Experiencing attraction to someone only after knowing that they are attracted to you.
Same gender loving/SGL: This term refers to Black LGBTQIA+ people.
Self-Identification: The act of identifying a particular way, one that feels right or true for someone.
Sex: A socially constructed classification system based on a person’s biology. Society typically recognizes only two sex categories, male and female, each with specific biological requirements. The reality though, is that people’s biology is often more diverse than society’s categories and requirements. Intersex people are an example of this.
Sex/gender assignment: Society’s propensity to label an infant as male or female, man or woman, at birth, usually based on the appearance of their genitals.
Skoliosexual/romantic a.k.a. ceterosexual/romantic: People who are attracted to people of non-binary (nb) genders.
Society: The dominant community of people, laws, traditions, values, and culture in a particular area.
Spectrum: Concepts and models of identities that challenge mainstream beliefs about the rigidity of sexuality and gender. Spectrums illustrate that people can exist in the spaces between the more commonly established identities.
-spike: A suffix that indicates a person’s attractions fluctuate. Spike people often feel they experience no attraction, but then suddenly and intensely experience a spike in attraction(s). (Example usages: acespike, arospike.)
Stigma: Negative associations and/or expectations which are tied to specific groups/labels/identities that are usually based in misconception and/or stereotypes. (Example: Bisexuals are sometimes stigmatized as being greedy, promiscuous or confused.)
Trans man: Someone who was assigned female at birth and is a man.
Trans woman: Someone who was assigned male at birth and is a woman.
Transfeminine: A term used to describe someone who was assigned male at birth, and who has a predominantly feminine gender and/or expresses themselves in a way they describe as feminine.
Transgender/Trans: An umbrella term for anyone whose gender identity does not match their sex and/or gender assigned at birth.
Transition: The process of accepting oneself and/or pursuing changes in order to affirm one’s gender and/or alleviate dysphoria.
Transmasculine: A term used to describe someone who was assigned female at birth, and who has a predominantly masculine gender and/or expresses themselves in a way they describe as masculine.
Transsexual: A person whose gender is different from their sex/gender assigned at birth. Sometimes this identity is associated with having undergone and/or wanting to undergo some kind of medical transition. This is an older term that has fallen out of popular usage in favor of the word “transgender.”
Trigender: Someone who has/experiences three genders.
Trisexual/romantic: Someone who experiences attractions to three genders.
Trysexual/romatic: Someone who is sexually and/or romantically open to experimenting.
Umbrella term: A word or phrase that collectively describes or refers to more than one identity/orientation/group of people. Many of the umbrella terms in this book can also double as specific, or stand-alone identities. (Example: Genderqueer can be both a specific gender identity as well as an umbrella term which includes many gender nonconforming identities and people.)
Validate: To acknowledge, support, and/or accept that something is real and legitimate.
Woman: Someone who identifies as a woman.
Womasexuality/romanticismm a.k.a. gynesexuality/romanticism: Attraction to women and/or femininity.
Zedsexual/romantic, a.k.a. allosexual/romantic: A person who experiences sexual/romantic attraction. (Aka someone not on the ace/aro spectrum.)
Introduction
Who is writing this book?
Hello, and welcome to The ABC’s of LGBT+! Before we dive into the fun stuff, like what this queer-catalog-of-sorts is going to cover and why you should care, I want to take a few moments to introduce what inspired this project, and who helped make it possible.
Thirteen years ago I sat under a blanket at the foot of my bed armed with a pen and flashlight. After staring at my diary for what seemed like an eternity, I finally mustered the courage to, with tentative, shaky handwriting, come out for the very first time as “maybe, I don’t know, like-liking girls sometimes.”
Adorable, right? I was eleven years old, awkward, shy, and terrified of letting my secret out. As a result, I stayed closeted for seven more years and used every ounce of energy I had repressing my adolescent lady-crushes.
Hi. My name is Ashley Mardell, and some of you may know me from my YouTube channel. Online, I’m known for doing a variety of bizarre activities such as participating in drunken arts and crafts, pie’ing my fiancée in the face, and even dressing my cats up in impressive displays of drag. Among the goofy shenanigans there are a few important, underlying themes that permeate my channel. Most notably, this includes LGBTQIA+3 visibility and education. I especially enjoy delving into the many mis- and underrepresented identities of the LGBTQIA+ world. This may be because I identify with several marginalized and misunderstood identities myself.
By the time college came around, I had finally amassed enough self-acceptance to come out beyond the pages of my diary. It took almost a year, but before we parted ways for summer break, I’d told my most important university friends (including my serious boyfriend at the time) that I was…
I was a piece of work. While a part of me desperately