THE ORIGIN AND HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LGBTQIA+ PRIDE MONTH

• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Ally, + (LGBTQIA+) Pride Month is currently celebrated each year in the month of June to honor the June 28, 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan. The Stonewall Uprising was a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States.

• The purpose of the commemorative month is to recognize the impact that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals have had on history locally, nationally, and internationally.

• Today, celebrations include pride parades, picnics, parties, workshops, symposia and concerts, and LGBTQIA+ Pride Month events attract millions of participants around the world. Memorials are held during this month for those members of the community who have been lost to hate crimes or HIV/AIDS.

• First, President Bill Clinton declared June "Gay & Lesbian Pride Month" in 1999 and 2000. Then from 2009 to 2016, each year he was in office, President Barack Obama declared June LGBT Pride Month. Later, President Joe Biden declared June LGBTQ+ Pride Month in 2021. Donald Trump became the first Republican president to acknowledge LGBT Pride Month in 2019, but he did so through tweeting rather than an official proclamation; the tweet was later released as an official "Statement from the President."

• Gender and Sexuality are often assumed to be related concepts but in reality they are separate and distinct.  For example, some people may assume that someone who is transgender is gay, but in reality, a transgender person's gender identity (the gender that they are) and sexual orientation (those they are attracted to) aren't connected. However, both gender identity and sexual orientation are important parts of an individual's sense of self.

  • Gender is socially constructed and is one's innermost concept of themselves as a man, woman, and/or nonbinary person. People define their gender identity in a variety of deeply personal ways that can include man or woman, but can also extend to identities such as agender, genderfluid, gender nonconforming, and a variety of others.​

  • Meanwhile, sexuality refers to who a person is attracted to and can include a plethora of orientations. While being gay, heterosexual, and bisexual are perhaps the most well-known sexual orientations, there are many others, such as asexual and pansexual.

  • Click here for additional reading on Gender and Sexuality.

• ABC's of LGBTQIA+ - What follows is a by-no-means inclusive list of vocabulary.

  • GAY AND LESBIAN It’s important to start with the basics, and “gay” and “lesbian” are as basic as it gets. As “homosexual” began to feel clinical and pejorative, gay became the de rigueur mainstream term to refer to same-sex attraction in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Gradually, as what was then called the gay liberation movement gained steam, the phrase “gay and lesbian” became more popular as a way to highlight the similar-yet-separate issues faced by women in the fight for tolerance.  Gay is still sometimes used as an umbrella term, but these days, it also refers specifically to men, as in “gay men and lesbians.”

  • BISEXUAL Someone who is attracted to people of their gender or other gender identities. It is not a way station from straight to gay, as it had once been described. The stereotypes around bisexuality — that it’s a transitional stage or a cover for promiscuity — have been at the center of fraught conversation within L.G.B.T.Q. circles for years. The musical television show “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” which features a bisexual male character, had an entire song refuting this. As advocates speak out more about what they see as “bisexual erasure” — the persistent questioning or negation of bisexual identity — the term has become resurgent. But some people also argue that the prefix “bi” reinforces a male/female gender binary that isn’t inclusive enough.

  • PANSEXUAL Someone who is attracted to people of all gender identities. Or someone who is attracted to a person’s qualities regardless of their gender identity. (The prefix “pan” means “all,” rejecting the gender binary that some argue is implied by “bisexual.”) Once a more niche term used by academics, pansexual has entered the mainstream, pushed in part by celebrities bringing it visibility. The singer Miley Cyrus identified as pansexual in 2015. In April, after the singer Janelle Monàe came out as pansexual in a “Rolling Stone” article, searches for the word on Merriam-Webster’s website rose 11,000 percent, according to the dictionary.

  • ASEXUAL Or “ace.” Someone who experiences little to no sexual attraction. They are not to be confused with “aromantic people,” who experience little or no romantic attraction. Asexual people do not always identify as aromantic; aromantic people do not always identify as asexual.  More generally, some people (asexual or otherwise) identify as having a romantic orientation different than their sexual orientation. The terminology is similar: homoromantic, heteroromantic, biromantic and so on.

  • DEMISEXUAL Someone who generally does not experience sexual attraction unless they have formed a strong emotional, but not necessarily romantic, connection with someone.

  • GRAYSEXUAL Someone who occasionally experiences sexual attraction but usually does not; it covers a kind of gray space between asexuality and sexual identity.

  • CISGENDER Someone whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth.

  • TRANSGENDER A wide-ranging term for people whose gender identity or gender expression differs from the biological sex they were assigned at birth.

  • TRANS* OR TRANS+ Two umbrella terms for non-cisgender identities.

  • GENDER NONCONFORMING, OR G.N.C. One who expresses gender outside traditional norms associated with masculinity or femininity. Not all gender-nonconforming people are transgender, and some transgender people express gender in conventionally masculine or feminine ways.

  • NONBINARY A person who identifies as neither male nor female and sees themselves outside the gender binary. This is sometimes shortened to N.B. or enby. One notable example: Taylor Mason, a financial analyst on the show “Billions,” who is believed to be the first gender nonbinary character on television and is played by the nonbinary actor Asia Kate Dillon.

  • GENDERQUEER Another term often used to describe someone whose gender identity is outside the strict male/female binary. They may exhibit both traditionally masculine and feminine qualities or neither.

  • GENDER FLUID A term used by people whose identity shifts or fluctuates. Sometimes these individuals may identify or express themselves as more masculine on some days, and more feminine on others.

  • GENDER-NEUTRAL Someone who prefers not to be described by a specific gender, but prefers “they” as a singular pronoun (the American Dialect Society’s 2015 Word of the Year) or the honorific “Mx.,” a substitute for “Mr.” or “Ms.” that entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2015.

  • M.A.A.B./F.A.A.B./U.A.A.B. Male-assigned at birth/female-assigned at birth/unassigned at birth.

  • INTERSEX A term for someone born with biological sex characteristics that aren’t traditionally associated with male or female bodies. Intersexuality does not refer to sexual orientation or gender identity.

  • + Not just a mathematical symbol anymore, but a denotation of everything on the gender and sexuality spectrum that letters and words can’t yet describe.

Information from: Library of Congress, Wikipedia, and NY Times.