Word of the Week: Celesbian

By Emilia Marcyk History As you probably guessed, “celesbian” is a portmanteau of “celebrity” and “lesbian.” It usually refers to someone who is a famous lesbian, though can also refer to a celebrity posing as a lesbian for publicity, or spreading false rumors about their sexuality to gain attention. Wikipedia claims the term was coined […]

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Word of the Week: Gray-A

By Emilia Marcyk Sexuality is not black and white; some people identify in the gray area between asexual and sexual. People who identify as gray-A can include, but are not limited to those who: do not normally experience sexual attraction, but do experience it sometimes experience sexual attraction, but a low sex drive experience sexual […]

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Word of the Week: AFAB/AMAB

By Emilia Marcyk Assignment of gender refers to the way that we assume others’ genders based on their bodies. When a child is born, our culture slots it into one of two groups: male or female, avoiding all overlap. We “determine” the child’s “correct” identity based on a quick visual assessment of the appearance of […]

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Word of the Week: Two Spirit

By Emilia Marcyk A Two Spirit person is a male-bodied or female-bodied person with a masculine or feminine essence. Two Spirits can cross social gender roles, gender expression, and sexual orientation. – NativeOUT.com Two Spirit (or Two-Spirit) is used by many American Indian and Canadian First Nations people, and is distinct from Western ideas of […]

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Word of the Week: Genderqueer

flag with three stripes. Top purple, middle white, bottom green

By Emilia Marcyk Adjective designating a person who does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions, but identifies with neither, both, or a combination of male and female genders – Oxford English Dictionary The term genderqueer is one of many words that people may choose to describe an identity outside or beyond male/female. OthersĀ  include agender, […]

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Word of the Week: Intersectionality

overlapping rainbow circles

By Emilia Marcyk Intersectionality is the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage; a theoretical approach based on such a premise. –Oxford English Dictionary The concept of intersectionality has been around for a while, particularly in the fields of critical […]

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