Glossary of Transgender Terms

Discrimination in Schools

Insurance Gender Non-Discrimination

Transgender Law 101

Legal Protections For Transgender Persons

AB 196:  What it Means to You:  An information and resource fact sheet for transgender employees and tenants

Transgender Employees And Tenants In California:  Rights and Responsibilities as Clarified by the Gender Nondiscrimination Act of 2003 (AB 196)

Protecting Yourself in the Face of Hate

Understanding Gender Hate Crimes

This transgender terminology list is a helpful tool for educational purposes.  It is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather to be used as a guide.

Gender:  a. A psychological or social construct.  b. Sexual identity, especially in relation to society or culture.  One’s own personal sense of being a man or woman, boy or girl, or “other” gender.  Societal or cultural assumptions about people because of their “sex”/“sexual characteristics”.  These assumptions place values on how people should behave, what is important, what is right or wrong because of a person’s “sex”/“sexual characteristics”.  Such assumptions influence and control individual’s social sex/gender roles; how individuals are brought up.

Transgender:  describes a wide range of identities and experiences, and refers to many types of people, including transsexual people, crossdressers; androgynous people; genderqueers; and other gender non-conforming people whose appearance or characteristics are perceived to be gender atypical.  Transgender encompasses anyone whose identity or behavior falls outside stereotypical gender expectations.

Transsexual:  An individual who actively seeks to change or has changed his/her body through hormonal reassignment and/or various surgical procedures.

Cross-dresser/Transvestite: One who wears the clothing and cultivates the appearance of the other gender.  Cross-dressers are people who dress in clothing stereotypically worn by the other sex, but who do not intend to change their gender.  Typically, cross-dressers cross-dress on a part-time or limited basis.

Intersexed/Hermaphrodite:  A person who is born between (inter) sexes, often having partially or fully developed pairs of female and male sex organs.  Often this condition is considered a psychiatric emergency on the part of doctors and parents that is treated by operating on the genitals of the infant.  Intersexed is preferred over the word “Hermaphrodite”.

Hate Crime/Incident

Gender:  “Gender” means sex, and includes a person's gender identity and gender related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person's assigned sex at birth.”  (SB 1234, uniform definition of "hate crime" January 2005:  Penal Code Section 422.56)

Hate Incident:  Any non-criminal act including words directed against a person based on the persons’ actual or perceived race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, disability or gender.

Hate incidents include, but are not limited to epithets, distribution of hate material in public places, posting of hate material that does not result in property damage, and the display of offensive material on one’s own property.   Even though a hate incident is not considered a felony (a hate crime is a felony); it is important to realize that hate incidents often precede hate crimes.

A hate crime is any criminal act or attempt directed against a person(s), public agency or private institution based on the victim’s actual or perceived race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, disability or gender, or because the agency or institution is identified or associated with a person or group of an identifiable race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, disability or gender.  A hate crimeis a bias crime and a bias is:  “A preformed negative opinion or attitude toward a group or persons based on their race, religion, ethnicity/national origin, disability or gender.

A hate crime includes any act which results in injury, however slight; a verbal threat of violence which apparently can be carried out; an act which results in property damage; and, property damage or other criminal act(s) directed against a public or private agency.  Note:  the victim does not have to be an actual member of a protected group to establish a hate incident or crime.  It is based upon the perception of the perpetrator.