glossary

Integration needs space. For instance: In order to not leave out anyone while talking about homophobia and discrimination, it shouldn’t be only talked about gay and lesbian – bisexuals and transgender also need to be included. But if you put all the proper words together, you’ll already have almost one whole sentence. Therefore there exists LGBT.

More explanations to used short-forms on this page or other term that you might not have heard of, you’ll find here.

Bisexual/Bisexuality

A person that is bisexual has the ability to fall in love with or/and to be carnally attracted by persons irrespective of the sex. Some bisexuals have sexual relations with persons irrespective of the sex, but fall in love just with persons of the same sex. For others it can be the opposite.

Coming Out

To tell other people that you differ from the heteronorm. This is a process that goes on the whole live.

FTM

“Female to male” – is used for transpersons to describe a direction from one sex to another. The expression explains both which sex the person has/had biologically and which sex the person feels like or considers having.

Gay

Boy that falls in love with or/and is sexual attracted by boys.

Gender

An academic term that is used for the description and theoretical education of sex and sex roles.

Heterosexual/Heterosexuality

A person that is heterosexual has the ability to fall in love with or/and be carnally attracted by persons of the opposite sex than the persons self has got.

Heteronorm/Heteronormativity

A norm that takes it for granted that there exist two separate biological sexes and that we are born in into one of them. To this sex belong certain behaviours, sex stereotypes that everybody has to follow. This expects also that everyone is and acts as if they were heterosexual and that they want to live in togetherness.

Homophobia

Homophobia is an ideology, an opinion or the aware knowing by an individual, a group or the society that give expression to a strong negative view to homosexuality or to homo- and bisexual people.

Homosexual/Homosexuality

A person that is homosexual has the ability to fall in love with or/and feel carnally attracted to person with the same sex as the person self has got.

Intergender

A person that is intergender feels that he/she stands between or beyond the traditional sex categories.

Intersexual

An Intersexual person’s biological sex is hard to categorize as whether male or female. A big number of different permissions and diagnoses are gathered under this concept.

Lesbian

Girl that falls in love with or/and is carnally attracted by girls.

LGBT

Short version that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.

MTF

“Man to female” – is used for transpersons to describe a direction from one sex to another. The expression explains both which sex has/had biologically and which sex the person feels like to be or considers having.

Norm

A norm is a social rule. Different norms can victimise for instance by the exclusion of one group.

Queer

In the beginning an English swearword that meant something like weird, perverse or different. Activists started to use the term as a collective term for LGBT-persons. Today the term is partly used as an identity term and partly used as a questioning of norms. A person that is queer questions heteronorms and does not want to follow the traditional categorizations.

Queer Theory

An academic theory about society’s views and norms. Questions mainly heteronormativity.

Sex

A person’s sex consists of many part categories. Traditionally is the sex divided into two categories: man and woman, but there are many ways to define your belonging.

Part categories:

– Biological sex: Sex-chromosomes, inner and outer sex-organs, sex-hormones

– Sex identity: How you yourself define your sex

– Sex behaviour: How you signal to others, which sex you want to be understood of

– Social sex: Which sex you are in the eyes of others

– Legal sex: The sex that stands in your pass or your personal number

Sexuality

A way to describe a person‘s carnal attraction. A person’s emotionality und sexuality does not need to be the same.

Transphobia

An ideology, an opinion or the aware knowing by an individual, a group or the society that give expression to a strong negative view to transpersons or to persons that differ from the sex-norms.

Transgender

Partly an English term that means transperson in Swedish, partly a way to describe a person’s sex identity. Persons that are transgender feel that they find themselves outside the traditional sex categories.

Transperson

Is a collective term that describes individuals whose sex-identity or/and sex-expression partly or always differs from the norm of the sex that they have been registered to by birth. The term includes transsexuals, transvestites, transgenderpersons and intergenderpersons.

Transsexual/Transsexuality

A person that is transsexual defines oneself to be another sex than the one given by birth and ask for hormone therapy or/and operations in order to change ones physical sex. Some keep on identifying them as transsexuals also after the therapy, while others don’t.

Transvestite/Transvestism

A person that is a transvestite wants periodically, often or always to dress or use attributes that traditionally belong to another sex. For certain people this has a connection to carnal enjoyment, which is called fetishistic transvestism, but this is not the same for all transvestites.