SEXUAL ORIENTATION
- Heterosexuality refers to those whose primary attractions are to people of the different sex. Such individuals are sometimes referred to as straight.
- Homosexuality refers to those whose primary attractions are to people of the same sex. Typically, men who are attracted to men are referred to as gay and women who are attracted to women are referred to as lesbians (though they may also identify as gay).
- Bisexuality refers to those who are attracted to both sexes; such individuals are often referred to as bisexual or bi.
- Some individuals avoid labels such as straight, gay, or bi and may refer to themselves as samegender loving or use no label at all.
- Queer is now used more often as an all-encompassing term that refers to all individuals who defy sexual or gender norms, including transgender or transsexual individuals.
- LGBT(IQ) is also used to refer to those within this group and stands for lesbian-gay-bisexualtransgender (intersex and queer /or/ questioning).
Gender Identity Gender identity refers to each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech and mannerisms;
The umbrella term transgender is used for people whose gender identity and/or gender expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. The term may include, but is not limited to: transsexuals, intersex people, cross-dressers, and other gender variant people. ILGA-Europe is aware that the issues relating to intersex people can be significantly different and need to be addressed separately where relevant. Transsexual (or “trans”) persons are individuals who identify with a different sex than that associated with the biological sex that was ascribed to them at birth. A transsexual person can be male-to-female or female-to-male. Additionally, some people who are undergoing hormone therapy, but who do not intend to undergo surgery, also refer to themselves as transsexual.
Transsexual women who were born biologically male are often referred to as MTF, which stands for male-to-female. Transsexual men who were born biologically female are often referred to as FTM, which stands for female-to-male. Transgender and transsexual people may identify as straight, gay, lesbian, bi or any other sexual orientation. In other words, sexual orientation and gender identity are independent of each other. (The definitions presented here for sexual orientation and gender identity find source in definitions offered by the Centre for Women and Men at UCLA, http://www.thecenter.ucla.edu/sexorien.html)
MSM MSM (men who have sex with men or ‘men having sex with men’, or ‘sex between men’) is a public health term describing any man who has sex with another man, whether occasionally, regularly, or as an expression of a gay identity. The term is meant to be descriptive without attaching an identity or meaning to the behaviour, so that health interventions -especially HIV/AIDS education and services - can be directed to persons on the basis of need. UNAIDS and other policy-makers use the term to describe one of four particularly ‘marginalized groups’ – the others being sex workers, injecting drug users and prison populations (UNAIDS Global Report 2006 – see Core document 5. While useful or strategic as a term (minimum offense to hetero-centered policy), it can also be used to avoid or deny a right to an identity. The equivalent term WSW does not appear in public policy documents, although it does in research – see Supporting Document 7 – Amnesty’s Women and HIV/AIDS). (MSM description adapted from texts from the Open Society Institute, 2007 http://www.soros.org/)