Terminology all the way down (LGBTQ+)
A lot has changed in my life since my last post. Due to said changes, from now on, this blog will still be about LGBTQ+ terminology, but also: me making flags for identities that don't have one, talking about flags (I have a love for vexilology), and more life-general things like mental health and things of that sort.
In the last post we discussed the terms and history of the LGBTQ+ acronym. From here, we will explore other terms commonly used in other/longer forms of the acronym.
The first term in our journey is intersex. Intersex is not a term referring to gender, instead referring to sex (gender is sociocultural and nueropsychological, sex is biological). Someone who is intersex is someone who was born with sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that do not fit the most common anatomical examples of males and females. Intersex is a replacement of the outdated term "hermaphrodite" — though this term is still used in biology, when referring to animals, plants, and other non-human organisms (as a science teacher with queer and nonbinary students, this is an important note to make).
Nonbinary or non-binary (either is correct), sometimes shortened to "enby," is a gender term that refers to any gender identity that is not strictly male or female all the time, and therefore does not fit within the gender binary. This could realize as a "third gender" or a person that only partially identifies as a man or woman (demigender) or a person who exists as different genders at gender times (genderflux, genderfluid). The term "nonbinary" dates back to the 1990s, after the term "genderqueer" gained popularity in queer communities in the 1980s. While anyone identifying as nonbinary, or any gender other that which was assigned at their birth, is by definition transgender, many nonbinary folks do not identify as trans. I personally identify as trans, nonbinary, and other terms we will discuss in the future.
A semi-common acronym for nonbinary/non-binary (either is correct), is "NB." However, this acronym was already in use by the black American community, meaning "Non-Black." Because of this, NB is used less, and, if included in a larger acronym, is often denoted as a simple "N."
Footnote: There is a question whether people who identify with their gender assigned at birth as well as another gender could be trans, and is not a question I feel qualified to answer. My partner identifies as a woman (faer gender assigned at birth) and another gender, and does not identify as trans. As such, the ideas above may not be true for everyone — and that is true for most attempts at categorization of gender and sexuality.