glossary

LIVING DOCUMENT

we start with descriptions, then add as we go along and adjust as we learn. If you disagree with how we characterize a term or think there’s nuance that we missed, please reach out to us. It’s a collaboration between all of us.

Assigned sex (or "sex assigned at birth”) refers to the sex category that someone, usually a doctor, applies to a person when they’re born. Usually, if the doctor sees a penis above a certain length, they declare the baby male; otherwise, female. In some cases, babies are born with “ambiguous” or multiple sexual organs. Doctors often perform genital surgeries on these intersex babies to make them fit neatly into one of the binary categories.

You might see folks talk about assigned sex using the acronyms AMAB or AFAB—assigned male at birth and assigned female at birth, respectively.

Cis (or cis*) is a shortening of cisgender or cissexual, which refer to people whose gender identities correspond to their gender assigned at birth. Often framed as the complement of trans*

bi(sexual)

When trans people change their names to better match their identities, people often call their previous name a “deadname.” In contrast, someone’s chosen name is just their name—it doesn’t require any qualifiers.

Conversations about gender often include variants: gender identity, gender expression, gender roles. These refer to how one understands their own gender, how they show their gender through clothes, mannerisms, etc. (and how others “read” these expressions), and the cultural expectations about how differently gendered people should act.

Genderqueer is a gender identity under the nonbinary umbrella (which is, itself, under the trans umbrella). It’s a label that’s usually a little more on the indeterminate side: it doesn’t represent any one specific or fixed point along the gender spectrum.

Aster is genderqueer.

Gender dysphoria is the bad feelings (the "psychological distress" as the APA says) resulting from a mismatch between one's gender and the gender associated with their sex assigned at birth. It's common but not universal for trans people to experience gender dysphoria. Some things that can make gender dysphoria worse are being misgendered or seeing or being made aware of gendered body parts that don't match with one's gender.

Refers to anything other than discrete binary categories. The most common use in the context of the podcast will probably be as an umbrella term for gender identities other than the binary ends of the spectrum (man and woman).

Non-binary gender is an umbrella term that is, itself, under the umbrella of trans*.

”queer” as a verb is a core idea to the queer/privilege podcast. When we say we want to queer a thing, we mean to experience it queerly, to read it through a queer lens. It means that we not only attend to the explicitly queer themes or elements in a thing, but we explore ways to learn about or understand queer experience through the thing. Sometimes that involves finding the subtle queer-coding that mainstream audiences might not pick up on or appreciate. As Mike put it, queering a piece of media involves:

“picking up the rug and looking at what the creators swept beneath it”

Fictional characters often have characteristics that are traditionally associated with queerness or any of its more granular varieties. Queer coding can include things like dress, mannerisms, voice, and behaviors. Audiences interpret these things in the context of cultural tropes (including stereotypes) about how queerness looks/acts, regardless of whether or not the character’s gender or sexuality is ever made explicit.

Sometimes queer coding is a way to “sneak” queer characters into a piece of media where some people would object (e.g. attempts to get around the mid-century morality regulations for what could appear on film). Sometimes queer coding is the result of creators’ implicit biases against queer people (e.g. Disney’s long history of queer coded villains).

Queer theory is a relatively new area of discourse—it’s not exactly an academic field, a body of theory, or a political orientation, but something related to each of those things. Central to queer theory is critical analysis of the power of “normal” and the “other” category it necessarily creates. It originated in the last couple decades of the 20th century when scholarly work started to coalesce around and formalize critiques of gender and sexuality. Queer theory represents an interplay between thought and action. It has a history of questioning assumptions, essentialism, binaries, and performances.

trans* originated from transgender and transexual. Trans/trans*/transgender are more common now, and refer to people whose gender doesn’t correspond to the gender traditionally associated with their sex assigned at birth. The asterisk—used like a “wildcard”—is to include all possible endings to the word.

Tumblr is a “microblogging” platform where users can post multimedia and text posts and reblog posts from other users.

started in 2007, Tumblr has changed hands many times over the years and is notoriously un-profitable. The top “people also ask” suggestions when you Google “tumblr” are “what is Tumblr used for?” “Is Tumblr shutting down 2020?” “Is Tumblr dead?” and “Why did Tumblr close?”