Educational Terms

All Gender

Gender:
A set of cultural identities, expressions and roles—codified as feminine or masculine—that are assigned to people, based upon the interpretation of their bodies, and more specifically, their sexual and reproductive anatomy. Since gender is a social construction, it is possible to reject or modify the assignment made, and develop something that feels truer and just to oneself.

Gender Identity:
One’s internal deeply-held sense of one’s gender which may be the same or different from one’s sex assigned at birth. ^ 

Gender Expression:
The representation of gender as expressed through, for example, one’s name, use of pronouns, clothing, haircut, behavior, voice or body characteristics.  Gender expression may not be distinctively male or female and may not conform to traditional gender-based stereotypes assigned to specific gender identities.^

Gender Nonconforming, Gender Variant, Genderqueer:
A person who has a gender identity and/or gender expression that does not conform to the gender they were assigned at birth. People who identify as “gender nonconforming,” “gender variant,” or “genderqueer” may or may not also identify as “transgender.”

Sex:
A combination of bodily characteristics including chromosomes, hormones, internal and external reproductive organs, secondary sex characteristics, and gender identity.  Most people are assigned male or female at birth based on their appearance of external genitalia.^

Transgender:
An adjective used to describe someone whose gender identity or expression is not typically associated with the sex assigned at birth.  It can be used to describe people with a broad range of identity or expression.  Someone who identifies their gender as androgynous, gender queer, non-binary, gender non-conforming, MTF (male to female), or FTM (female to male) may also consider themselves to be transgender.^

^ Definitions were taken from the CUNY Memorandum ‘Gender Identity/Gender Expression and Use of College Facilities’ on May 12, 2016, which were originally found in ‘NYC Commission on Human Rights Legal Enforcement Guidance on Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Expression” at 6, dated December 21, 2015.