The Big Picture

 

People trying to understand the abundance, complexity, and diversity of LGBT identities can easily find themselves bewildered and confused.

Hopefully, this guide will help readers easily understand the most common LGBT identities and how they are similar, and different, from each other.

 

Before we begin, there are a few things I need to clarify.

Other people might define these terms differently than I do. They also might organize the relationships between these identities differently.

 

In explaining these identities, I make three claims.

 

1. This is how I understand these concepts, identities, and how they relate to each other.

 

2. I believe this is a useful way to understand the relationships between these concepts and identities.

 

3. My understanding of these concepts, and the relationships between them, is consistent with how they are generally understood by members of the LGBT community.

 

It’s also worth noting that the general understanding of these concepts within the LGBT community could change in light of subsequent developments.

 

I don’t argue that my way of understanding these ideas is inarguably correct, now and forever.

But I do believe that it’s important to help LGBT people and our allies better understand these concepts, as they are currently understood.

 

 

 

LGBT

 

Enough with the disclaimers, let’s get started.

I believe you will find this infographic useful as we discuss LGBT identities and the conceptual relationships between them.

 

[UPDATE (Nov. 16): I made an adjustment to this infographic, in response to feedback. I discussed the change in "Feedback on the Diagram."]
 

 

LGBT is an acronym whose letters stand for, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender.”

But there are other LGBT identities beyond the four listed in the most common form of the acronym.

Sometimes people add additional letters to the acronym to include groups not listed in the original four. This can easily create an unwieldy alphabet soup of letters. 

I will return to discuss the long form of the acronym later in this series.

It will be easier to understand LGBT as a category after we explore the subcategories it includes. 

The rainbow flag, and its most common variant, the progress pride flag, are commonly used to represent the LGBT community as a whole.

Originally, the rainbow pride flag primarily represented gay people, but over the years it has come to represent all LGBT people.

Let's take a quick look at the history of these pride flags. 

 

Rainbow Pride Flag 

 

 

 

Gilbert Baker, a gay man, designed the Rainbow Pride Flag in 1978. A group of artists lead by Baker, Lynn Segerblom, and James McNamara created the first Rainbow Pride flags.

The Rainbow flags flew in the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade in June 1978.

Baker was born and raised in Kansas.

The current six-stripe version of the rainbow flag was adopted in 1979.

 Progress Pride Flag

 

Daniel Quasar, a nonbinary artist and designer, created the Progress Pride Flag in 2018. 

In addition to the stripes from the rainbow flag, Quasar added triangular stripes on the left of the flag to represent certain groups.

The white, pink, and blue stripes represent transgender people. The black and brown stripes represent people of color. The black stripe also represents people with AIDS. 

According to Quasar, the arrow created by the new stripes symbolizes forward movement, while recognizing that progress still needs to be made.

 

 

 Queer

Queer is commonly used as a synonym for LGBT, but the term has been used in many ways over the decades. 

Queer was previously used to refer to something that is strange, unusual, odd, or peculiar. 

Tolkien frequently used the term in this way in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. 

 

Queer was also previously used as a slur against gay men, and men perceived to be more feminine, who were rightly or wrongly believed to be gay.

The term has now been reclaimed, and many LGBT people now proudly describe themselves as queer.

The term queer, in its contemporary meaning, carries an understanding that society views LGBT people as different, and embraces the need to confront traditional and restrictive attitudes about sexuality and gender. 

 

As with all of these terms, make sure someone is comfortable with a given term before using it to describe them.

Some older gay men, in particular, have difficult memories associated with this term.

But there are many people, gay men included, who proudly consider themselves queer.

Just be careful before using terms that might apply to someone before knowing if they are comfortable with them.

Linguistically, I find it convenient to have a synonym for LGBT that can be used without having to repeat the acronym every time.

 

There are some pride flags that symbolize people who identify as queer. I discussed those flags in a previous article.

These flags are rare compared to the rainbow and progress pride flags, which also symbolize the LGBT community as a whole. 

 

Alexander Cheves wrote a fascinating article for The Advocate about the words the LGBT community has reclaimed and the ones it hasn’t.

If you're interested in learning about the complicated dynamics of language in the LGBT community, it’s an interesting read.

NPR reporter Juliette Rocheleau wrote a great article about the debates within their newsroom regarding whether, and when, to use the term queer in their reporting. The article explores how the public use and meaning of the term has changed over time.

 

 

 

Sexual and Romantic Orientation

 

There are two main subcategories of LGBT identities, which are themselves broken down into two further subcategories.

 

1. Sexual and Romantic Orientation Minorities

2. Gender Identity and Biological Sex Minorities

 

Someone’s sexual orientation refers to who they could be sexually attracted to.

Someone’s romantic orientation refers to who they could be romantically attracted to.

 

Sexual and romantic orientations often reference the gender of the person someone could be attracted to.

 

For many people, their sexual and romantic orientations align.

For others, most notably for some asexual people, their sexual and romantic orientations are different.

I will discuss sexual and romantic orientations in greater detail in the next article in this series.

  

Gender Identity and Biological Sex

 

Now let’s take a look at the other side of the infographic, which contains identities many readers might have a more difficult time understanding.

 

Someone’s gender identity refers to their internal perception and experience of their own gender.

Someone’s biological sex refers to the physical traits, such as their sex chromosomes, anatomy, and secondary sex characteristics, which are associated with the physical differences between men and women, or boys and girls. 

Secondary sex characteristics are physical traits, such as female breasts or male facial hair, that develop during puberty.

 

Most people have a gender identity that aligns with the gender they were assigned at birth, based on their biological sex. These people are known as cisgender.

Some people have a gender identity that is different than the gender they were assigned at birth. These people are known as transgender.

 

There are two subcategories of transgender identities, binary and nonbinary.

 

Some transgender people identify with the binary gender that is different than the one they were assigned at birth.

Trans women are people who identify as women who were assigned the male gender at birth.

Trans men are people who identify as men who were assigned the female gender at birth.

 

As a quick aside, I use the term “identify,” because it helps people who are unfamiliar with these identities understand what they mean, rather than because I’m trying to cast doubt on whether these identities are legitimate.

As far as I’m concerned, trans women are women, and trans men are men, but those affirming statements aren’t particularly helpful in teaching people who are unfamiliar with these terms what they mean.

 

Nonbinary 

The second category of transgender identities are the nonbinary gender identities.

 

Nonbinary refers to someone whose gender identity isn’t exclusively male or female.

There are many specific non-binary gender identities, but some people identify as nonbinary without feeling the need to choose a more specific nonbinary gender identity.

 

Genderqueer, which is often used as a synonym for nonbinary, refers to someone whose gender identity or expression falls outside the boundaries of those typically considered male or female.  

The difference between the terms non-binary and genderqueer primarily refers to their connotations, rather than their definitions.

Genderqueer reflects a more rebellious and confrontational attitude toward traditional, binary, and transphobic beliefs about gender.

Those who resist attempts to make people conform to gender norms they find oppressive and limiting adopt the confrontational attitude conveyed by this term.

Nonbinary is more matter-of-fact. It reflects a self-understanding that doesn’t feel the need to prove itself as an inherent act of rebellion against limiting gender norms.

 

Someone who doesn’t identify as nonbinary who engages in gender expression in a non-conforming way, such as drag queens, could describe themselves as genderqueer.  

But I’ve primarily seen the term genderqueer used by nonbinary people to describe themselves.

 

 

Intersex

 

Intersex refers to people who have physical traits different than those traditionally considered male or female. 

Sometimes these differences are noticed at birth. Other times, they aren't apparent until puberty or later in life. 

Intersex people may have differences in sex chromosomes, genitals, internal anatomy, or hormones compared to how male and female bodies generally develop.

 

Intersex people can identify as male, female, or nonbinary.

Their biological sex and gender are separate aspects of their identity. 

Some intersex people are subjected to genital surgeries as children. Later, as adults, they sometimes wish they hadn’t received these surgeries without being able to choose whether to have them.

Some intersex people aren’t told they are intersex in an attempt to avoid confusing them. That can lead to intersex people feeling important information about themselves was unfairly withheld from them by their parents and doctors. 

  

I will further discuss transgender and intersex identities in future articles in this series. 

But first, we're going to take a closer look at the sexual and romantic minorities in the LGBT community.