What's LGBTI Mean?

I've been writing about TBLG issues for over seven years here at TransGriot and looking at them in many cases from a chococentric perspective because frankly, it's one that is sorely needed in the trans community discourse..

But for those of you who may be new to this who are wondering what the heck does LGBTI mean, just thought it was time to give you a handy guide to what the letters in the rainbow community alphabet mean.

The first thing that you need to understand which is critical to this is sexuality and sexual orientation (who you like to sleep with behind closed doors) and gender identity (who you are, your sense of who you are, the gender role you perform and project to the word) are two distinct and separate issues.

So let's get started.

Lesbian (L) describes a woman who is sexually attracted to other women.
Gay (G) describes a man who is sexually attracted to other men
Bisexual (B) describes a person who is sexually attracted to other male or female persons
Transgender (T) describes a person whose gender identity and sense of self doesn't correspond to the genitalia they arrived with at birth.
Intersex (I) describes someone who is born with genital anatomy, reproductive organs, and/or chromosomal patterns that don't fit the general definition of male and female.

In some sectors of the African-American community and in this blog, you will see at times the term SGL (same gender loving) as a substitute for the lesbian, bisexual and gay ones that was created by activist Cleo Manago in the 1990s as an Afrocentric alternative..

You will also see transgender shortened to trans or trans*  because there are some people in this community that prefer being called by the medical term transsexual while others prefer the transgender umbrella term or interchange them. On this blog I increasingly use the term trans in my writing to avoid the drama.

While LGBTI is increasingly used internationally, in many parts and regions of the world, other local terms may be used to convey these concepts.

So hope that helps clarify some things as you read the posts on this blog.