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.
    

TransGriot Speak 101

In the interest of making your blogging experience a fresh, pleasant and informative one here at TransGriot, every now and then I'll slip in a few terms that you probably won't see elsewhere.

I'm going to break them down for you in this post.

When I want to insult Republicans or conservatives, I'll use either 'Republi' or 'conserva' in front of the word I want to insult them with.

example: conservalogic, conservaidiot, Republidolt, Republifool

I will sometimes use the Russian word 'nekulturny in my posts. Nekulturny means 'uncultured' in Russian.

When I'm slamming the Religious Right, I'll sometimes used the term 'faith-based' to properly attribute their stupidity and Hateraid to them

example: faith-based hatred

Sometimes I'll even come up with acronyms to whack my opponents with like those latte-drinking haters the WWBT's. WWBT stands for White Women Born Transsexual. They're the transgender community's version of the rad fems. Just as nasty, reeking with privilege, clueless, and just as deserving of any lack of civility.

Note to the WWBT's, the rad fems still hate you and don't want you either, irregardless of how much you spent on that neocoochie.

That's a nice segue into my next terms, neocoochie or neovagina. I will sometimes call the post sex realignment surgery (SRS) genitalia by those names. Neoclit is the genital organ of a pre-op/non-op transwoman.

I don't like the term 'passing', because when I hear it, my thoughts go immediately to our history and light-skinned Blacks who had the features and opportunity to do so passing for white. I also don't like the connotation of deception. I use the word 'blending' as a stand in for a transperson who looks their gender best and is easily fitting in with society in their desired gender role.

There are probably some others I've coined, and as I do, I'll define them for you in future TransGriot Speak 101 posts.