Gender, Sex + Sexuality

Articles

Body

“Trans/Sex: From ‘Girldick’ to ‘Clit,’ What Trans Women Call Their Genitalia” | The Daily Dot

• “Outside of ‘girldick,’ ‘clit,’ and ‘outie,’ there’s a long list of words that non-op trans girls draw on to describe their privates, including gender-neutral terms like ‘strapless’ and ‘junk.'”

“Why People Are Mad About the Term ‘Menstruators’” | Xtra

• “Calling folks who menstruate ‘menstruating people’ (or the inverse) is beneficial because it allows us to narrow our focus to only the people who are affected by the issue we’re trying to address.”

“Words for Every Body” | Aeon

• Why trans-inclusive terminology doesn’t erase cis women’s identities.
• “What we need is not a single, objectively correct set of words, but an awareness of individual variation among the people that such words describe, and a willingness to adjust to changing contexts and circumstances.”

Gendered Language

“Gender-Inclusive Wedding Roles and Titles to Use While Planning” | Brides

“The Problem with ‘Man-Bag’ and Other ‘Man’ Words” | The Atlantic

• A fun pop-culture trend that has insidious effects on gender perception
• The real-life consequences of using “man words”
• Negative stereotypes of men

“Rethinking Courtesy Titles in Obituaries” | Conscious Style Guide

“6+ Easy Gender Neutral Ways to Greet People in Customer Service” | Medium

“The Violence Behind the Words ‘Be a Man'” | Bitch Media

• The unexamined role gender plays in violence
• Dealing with a culture that associates masculinity with guns and violence
• Men’s violence due to socialization and education, not inherent aggression

Labels, Occupations + Roles

“Are All Grandmothers Amazing Cooks?” | Conscious Style Guide

“4 Reasons Couples Call Each Other ‘My Partner'” | MindBodyGreen

• “‘Partner’ is free from all the cultural baggage layered onto all its gendered alternatives.”

“Here’s What to Know About the Often Misunderstood Term ‘Folx’” | Cosmopolitan

“More Inclusive Ways to Invite Caregivers to School Events” | Scary Mommy

• Replacing “Muffins with Mom” and “Donuts with Dad” with “Breakfast with Buddies, Pancakes with Pals, Muffins in the Morning, and Donuts with Grownups.”

“The Outdated Language of Space Travel” | The Atlantic

• “NASA formally codified its preference for crewed and human over manned to describe spaceflight in the early 2000s.”

“Stop Calling Women Runners ‘Joggers'” | Runner’s World

• The difference between running and jogging
• How jogger trivializes a woman’s athleticism

“An (Updated) LGBTQ+ Friendly Survey Template” | UX Collective

• “Because queer is seen as an umbrella term, it is also very common in the LGBTQ+ community to identify as multiple labels at once.”

“Women? Womxn? Womyn?” | The Butler Collegian

• “For a trans woman who has fought long and hard to be recognized as [a woman], being labeled as a womxn can be harmful and othering. For this reason, many have circled back to using ‘woman’ rather than ‘womxn.'”

“Womyn, Wimmin, and Other Folx” | Boston Globe

Orientation

“The Long Fight for Bi Inclusion” | Bi.org

• The absence of bisexual people and bi visibility in organization names, articles, discussions, and media
• The hypocrisy of the LGBT community for ignoring the needs of the bi community

“Stop Assuming Everyone Wants a Partner: 5 Ways You’re Erasing Asexual & Aromantic People and What to Do Instead” | The Body Is Not an Apology

“Why ‘Openly Gay’ Is an Offensive Term” | Advocate

“When Bisexual People Marry” | Conscious Style Guide

“When Coming Out Puts People in the Closet” | Conscious Style Guide

Pronouns

“Call Me ‘They'” | The New York Times

• “I would hope to call you ‘they’ too, because the world will be slightly better off if we abandoned unnecessary gender signifiers as a matter of routine communication.”

“Doctor He, She, or They? Changing Gender, and Language, in Doctor Who“ | Conscious Style Guide

“A Gender Neutral Spanish Pronoun? For Some, ‘Elle’ Is the Word.” | NBC News

“He, She, or…? Gender-Neutral Pronouns Reduce Biases—Study” | The Guardian

• A new study “shows how a minor change in language can help chip away at long-standing gender inequities.”

“How Sexist Language Hurts Men” | Conscious Style Guide

“Pronouns Matter: Misgendering Transgender Persons” | Communities Digital News

• How some trans people experience a lifetime of misgendering
• Deliberate misgendering as a form of resistance, erasure, psychological warfare, and/or an act of violence against trans people

“Themself Is a Perfectly Cromulent Word” | Conscious Style Guide

“Until I’m Told Otherwise, I Prefer to Call You ‘They’” | The Washington Post

“Why Some People Use She/They & He/They Pronouns” | LGBTQ Nation

• “Rolling pronouns refer to the use of multiple pronouns that can be used alternately or shift over time.”

Slurs + Reclamation

“How to Take ‘Bitch’ Down: What The New York Times Gets Right and Wrong About the Controversial Word” | Salon

“Why We Need to Reclaim the Word ‘Female'” | Time

• The history of using the noun female as a pejorative for men and women
• The problem with letting simple descriptions become derogatory
• The ongoing reclamation of broad and bossy

“Women Are Reclaiming the Word ‘Barren’ to Talk About Their Fertility Issues” | Metro.co.uk

“The Word *** Shouldn’t Be Censored, and Here’s Why” | Gay Times

• “The speech [by Zoe Leonard] contains the words ‘fag’ and ’dyke’, but in this context one would argue that it was an empowering use of this language.”

Transgender / Gender Non-Conforming / Nonbinary

“Brotherboys and Sistergirls: We Need to Decolonise Our Attitude Towards Gender in This Country” | Junkee

“Death of an Indigenous Essential Worker Sparks Debate Over Gender Identity” | Los Angeles Times

• “Though [Angela] Martinez went by ‘she,’ she was neither man, nor woman. She was ‘muxe,’ [an identity which] has existed as a respected third gender in Zapotec cultures in Oaxaca for centuries.”

“How Parents Can Support Their Trans Children” | Phys.org

“I’m a Trans Man Who Doesn’t ‘Pass’—and You Shouldn’t Either” | Advocate

• The prevalence of the word passing in the trans community despite other outdated language falling out of use
• How passing implies deception, fakery, and inauthenticity
• Being recognized vs. passing

“InQueery: What Does the Word ‘Transgender’ Mean?” | Them

“Seven Ways to Make Your Language More Transgender and Nonbinary Inclusive” | Odyssey

• The singular they
• The problem with opposite sex and both sexes
• The problem with born a girl/boy and biological woman/man

“Trans Citation Practices—a Quick-and-Dirty Guideline” | Nature

• “The issue also affects any person who changes their name on marriage or to avoid an abuser, stalker or harasser.”

“What Does Nonbinary Mean?” | Health

• agender/genderless, bigender, pangender, genderfluid, genderflux, genderqueer, neutrois, demiboy, demigirl, Latinx/Latine, two spirit, fa’afafine, hijra, māhū

“What’s the Best Way to Refer to Everyone Who Isn’t Cis?” | Radical Copyeditor

“Why the Words We Use Matter When Describing Anti-Trans Activists” | The Conversation

• “Those who deny trans rights while claiming feminism would prefer to be called gender-critical feminists. But that term too is terribly misleading. By definition, feminists are critical of gender.”

“The Word ‘Cisgender’ Is Anti-Trans” | Technology and Language

• How cisgender developed in reaction to transgender
• The four different and overlapping meanings of transgender
• How cisgender promotes a narrow definition of transgender, excluding the wider trans community by labeling them cis

+ More

“The Finkbeiner Test” | Columbia Journalism Review

• A checklist for avoiding gratuitous mentions of a female scientist’s sex, her husband’s job, childcare arrangements, and more

“A Guide to Writing Recommendation Letters That Aren’t Sexist” | Quartz

“Opinion: Animals Deserve Gender Pronouns, Too” | NPR

• “A group of more than 80 people with an interest in animal welfare, including Dr. Jane Goodall, have signed a letter calling on the editors of the Associated Press Stylebook to change their guidance so that animals in news stories would be identified as ‘she/her/hers and he/him/his when their sex is known, regardless of species, and the gender-neutral they, or he/she, or his/hers when their sex is unknown.'”

“You Just Went Full Sir on the Ma’am: How to Apologize for Misgendering Someone” | The Toast

• How to acknowledge your misgendering and handle it with aplomb