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A Language of Pride: The Terms Around LGBTQ+ Identity

June is Pride Month in the United States and around the world. Pride, formerly known as Gay Pride, is a recognition of LGBTQ+ identity, affirmation of equal rights, and celebration of visibility, dignity, and diversity in the LGBTQ+ community. During Pride Month, communities hold marches and other events to raise awareness about LGBTQ+ issues such as transphobia (anti-transgender) and workplace discrimination.

Pride Month is also an excellent time learn more about some of the language used to describe LGBTQ+ identity. After all, the words used to talk about LGBTQ+ people and issues are constantly changing. In this article, we will cover some of these essential terms.

🔑 Key message about LBGTQ+ language

A guiding principle is to use the language that an LGBTQ+ person asks you to use when talking with or about them. This glossary will cover some general do’s and don’ts, but it won’t apply to every individual person in every specific situation. If someone asks you to use a word that seems to not quite match what we describe, it’s a good idea to defer to their preference.

Our vocabulary for all kinds of things in the modern world is constantly changing. Changes to society, culture, and technology give rise to neologisms, or new words, like Bluetooth or yeet. Similarly, as the LGBTQ+ community changes, and the world changes around it, the community’s vocabulary changes, too.

This glossary will cover some of the key terminology related to Pride, from what LGBTQ+ itself means to what “preferred pronouns” are. If you’ve felt confused by this panoply of vocabulary in the past, or simply want a refresher on what language is the best fit in various contexts, read on.

What does LGBTQIA+ mean?

You have likely come across the acronym (technically, initialism) LGBTQIA+ or one of its variants before. Here’s what each letter in this acronym means:

We are going to go over the definition of some of these terms shortly, but first—what is going on with all the variants of this acronym? To break it down simply:

  • LGBT: This short acronym is used to represent gender and sexual diversity. Sometimes the letters are rearranged, as in GLBT.
  • LGBTQ+: This acronym includes the Q for “Queer” to be more inclusive of a variety of gender and sexual identities. The plus sign symbolizes other gender or sexual identities that are not already included in the acronym.
  • LGBTQIA+ and beyond: Depending on the community, organization, or culture, other variants of these acronyms have been adopted to best suit how the people in those communities self-identify.

Find out how the rainbow flag, and the subsequent Rainbow Flag emoji 🏳️‍🌈, came to be the symbol for Pride.

Why gay or lesbian and not “homosexual”?

While the word homosexual is still occasionally used in some contexts, you might have noticed that it doesn’t make an appearance in any version of the LGBTQ+ acronym. That’s because this word for describing same-sex or same-gender relationships has a controversial past.

As our usage note on the term states, “up until 1973, homosexuality was listed in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry’s standard reference on the classification of mental illness. For this reason and others, some people feel that the term homosexual still carries a negative connotation. And many feel that this word places undue emphasis on sexual activity, or that it sounds overly clinical. In fact, the term homosexual was deliberately rejected by early gay rights activists because, according to The New York Times, “they did not want to be identified as exclusively sexual beings.”

For these and other reasons, the term homosexual is seldom heard in language meant to be positive and inclusive. Instead, the terms gay and lesbian are generally preferred for same-sex attraction. Lesbian is used to describe a woman who is sexually attracted exclusively to women. Gay, on the other hand, can be used to describe a person of any gender who experiences same-sex attraction, although it is commonly used to describe a man who is attracted to men.

Why is the term Pride used?

On June 28, 1969, the New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar frequented by gay and gender-nonconforming people (at a time when terms like LGBTQ+ didn’t yet exist). They attempted to arrest the gay and trans bar patrons, which started a series of protests against the police. Partially in response to Stonewall, in 1970, activists in New York City organized a march to Central Park with the theme “Gay Pride.” A more comprehensive history of the Stonewall Riot or the Stonewall Uprising can be found in our Pride Month explainer.

Pride means, among other things, “a becoming or dignified sense of what is due to oneself or one’s position or character.” By adopting this term, the LGBTQ+ community is asserting their right to exist freely, without shame. To learn more about the word pride and other affirming, positive words, click here. Not all activists agreed with the use of the term Pride. Trans activist Sylvia Rivera in particular advocated for the more forceful slogan “Gay power.”

What does queer mean?

The term queer, like the term homosexual, has a troubled history. However, unlike homosexual, it has been reappropriated by many in the LGBTQ+ community as a label.

Queer literally means “strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint,” and by at least the late 1800s, queer was deployed as a derogatory term for an effeminate or gay man. But, beginning in the 1980s, a movement began to reclaim the term queer and adopt it as a positive descriptor of members of the LGBTQ+ community. In the 1990s, this effort focused on queer as a collective term for gay and lesbian people. Queer was seen as a way to refer to gays and lesbians without being gender-essentialist or causing divisions within the community.

Today, the word queer can refer to members of the LGBTQ+ community in general and collectively — with the usual caveat that not everyone feels comfortable with the term. Queer in this sense has become mainstream enough that it is even featured in the name of popular media products, like the Netflix show Queer Eye.

What are terms to describe gender?

The two most widely used terms used to describe gender are male and female. But while these are the most common gender identities, they are not the only ones. Other adjectives to describe gender include:

  • trans(gender): a person whose gender identity does not correspond to that person’s sex assigned at birth. For instance, a trans man would have been assigned “female” at birth but identify as male.
  • cis(gender): a person whose gender identity corresponds with that person’s sex assigned at birth. A majority of people are cisgender.
  • nonbinary (NB): a gender identity that does not fit into the binary male/female division.

When using any of these terms, use them as adjectives, not as nouns. The noun form of these terms, particularly of transgender, is considered offensive.

The term intersex describes individuals who have biological sex characteristics, such as chromosomes or genitalia, that do not fit typical definitions of male and female bodies. Intersex has long been included under the umbrella of the LGBTQIA+ community as intersex people may face challenges or have unique experiences related to their gender or sexual identity. However, some intersex activists argue that this inclusion causes society to overlook the specific concerns and issues faced by intersex people.

Gender-confirming pronouns

Use the personal pronouns that match a person’s gender identity — the ones that they use. (These are often referred to as a person’s preferred pronouns, but it’s becoming more common to simply refer to them as a person’s pronouns, which avoids implying that their gender identity is necessarily a preference.)

This is an expression used to describe the third-person personal pronouns (e.g., she or him) that people want others to use when talking about them. You may have come across preferred pronouns on name tags or on social media.

When sharing gender-confirming pronouns, typically you include:

  • subject pronoun (he, she, they, etc.)
  • object pronoun (him, her, them, etc.)

In some cases, you might choose to include a possessive pronoun as well, such as his, hers, or theirs. However, it’s increasingly common to leave out the third pronoun.

Typically, pronouns are written something like this:

  • he/him
  • she/her
  • they/them

Examples of talking about your own pronouns or those of someone else are:

  • My pronouns are he/him.
  • Their pronouns are they/them.

People may choose to use different pronouns or a combination of these pronouns, depending on their gender identity, as in he/they. For more on pronouns and gender, check out this guide at the Trevor Project.

Sexual attraction vs. romantic attraction

We have already touched on the terms gay and lesbian. These are two of the most common examples of terms used to describe sexuality, but there are many others. For example:

  • bi(sexual): a person who is sexually or romantically attracted to people of two or more genders
  • pansexual or omnisexual: expressing sexuality in all its forms, or involving sexual activity with people of any gender or with people regardless of their gender
  • asexual: experiencing little or no sexual attraction to other people

Sexual attraction is not the same as romantic attraction. In other words, you could have romantic attraction for people of a particular gender and desire a loving, intimate relationship with them, and not experience sexual attraction for people of that same gender. For example, you could have romantic desire for women, but not sexual desire for them. Sexual desire towards a particular gender or genders is known as sexual orientation, whereas romantic desire is known as affectional or romantic orientation.

Learn how younger generations are redefining sexuality and attraction for themselves here.

Some terms that are used to describe romantic, rather than sexual, orientation are:

  • aromantic: a person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to other people
  • heteroromantic: a person who is romantically attracted to people of the opposite sex
  • homoromantic: a person who is romantically attracted to people of the same sex or gender

Finally, while gender and sexuality are often discussed together, they actually describe different parts of one’s identity. One could be a trans lesbian, or a nonbinary asexual, or any other of countless combinations of both gender and sexuality.

Further reading

Gender and sexuality are complex topics, and our understanding of them changes all the time. We couldn’t possibly cover the whole diversity of LGBTQ+ vocabulary here. If you’re interested in learning more about this lexicon, here are a few reliable resources to explore:

We hope this glossary has made it easier to adopt and correctly use some of this vocab. But, even if you master it, expect it to change in the future — that’s just how language works. Don’t worry, though. When the words do change, we will be here to break it all down for you again.