Words

Follows some words and various definitions or usages I have heard or inferred from books for them.

Transgender

1. Umbrella term meaning 'cross gender' and referring definitely to anyone whose gender identity does not match up with their assigned sex, whether their gender identity is male, female, or something else. May also include intersex people and/or cross-dressers, or may not.
2. People who were a. assigned female at birth and identify as male or b. assigned male at birth and identify as female. No one else.

Trans*

1. Umbrella term referring definitely to anyone whose gender identity does not match up with their assigned sex, whether their gender identity is male, female, or something else. May also include intersex people and/or cross-dressers, or may not.

Transgendered

1. Umbrella term referring definitely to anyone whose gender identity does not match up with their assigned sex, whether their gender identity is male, female, or something else. May also include intersex people and/or cross-dressers, or may not.  
2. A pejorative, outdated term for transgender.

Transsexual

1. People who were a. assigned female at birth and identify as male or b. assigned male at birth and identify as female. No one else.
2. People who have undergone physical transition, possibly including genital surgery, to match the sex opposite from the one they were assigned at birth.
3. A pejorative, outdated term for transgender.

Transvestite

1. Someone who, usually, identifies as male but dresses up as a woman for a multitude of purposes. Less commonly, the other way around.
2. A pejorative, outdated term for cross-dresser.

Cross-dresser

1. Someone who, usually, identifies as male but dresses up as a woman for a multitude of purposes. Less commonly, the other way around. 

Drag queen/king

1. Someone who identifies as male but dresses up as a woman (drag queen) or identifies as female but dresses up as a man (drag king), specifically for performance.
2. New definition I think I'll be using: The use of a gender expression distinctly different from one's own for purposes of performance, or the performance of a gender identity different from one's own. Somehow this has got to be differentiable from ordinary theatre, but I haven't thought of a way to word it.

Sex (ignoring certain uses, here)

1. The biological makeup of a person as either male or female as determined by organs, hormone makeup, chromosomes, and secondary sex characteristics.
2. An assignment at birth by a medical professional based on that medical professional's perception of the above.
3. The unique biological makeup of any distinct person, free of determination into categories.

Gender

1. The social construction which tells us that people are divided into men and women, usually correlated with sex.
2. The personal identity of male, female, or something else that is inherent to the individual.

Gender identity

1. The personal identity of male, female, or something else that is inherent to the individual.

Gender expression

1. An individual's use of mannerisms, clothing, hairstyle, makeup or lack thereof, and other attributes that tend to be associated with either masculinity or femininity.

Whenever I mention a definition as being pejorative and outdated, I include it at all because I have heard someone use it to self-identify.
These definitions come from memoirs of trans people, from surveys of trans people, from scientific studies on trans people, not from lay cis people. Is it any wonder no one can get the words right when we can't even agree on what they mean? Not enough time has gone by for the language to catch up. I'm not saying we should just let people get away with not bothering, but maybe give people a little slack for not using the exact wording we like.

A few less debated terms, for those just here for info:

MTF/FTM

1. Male to female/female to male. Respectively, people who were assigned male at birth and identify as female, and people who were assigned female at birth and identify as male. An imperfect term, as it implies there is some sort of change from one to the other. Many people always identified as the same gender, and the changes trans people make to their bodies vary widely in scope (from nothing to extensive, multiple surgeries). However, it's still in wide use, and important to know.

AMAB/AFAB/MAB/FAB/MaaB/FaaB

1. Various permutations of Assigned Male at Birth and Assigned Female at Birth. These encompass cis and trans people, and refer specifically to the sex assigned by a medical professional and marked on the birth certificate, without implying correlating gender identity or, in some cases, perfectly correlating biological makeup. These words are much more politically correct, as they avoid problematic ideas like gender and sex being binary, among others.

Genderqueer

1. (I think) An umbrella term to encompass people who do not identify as either male or female.
2. More commonly, a specific gender identity somewhere between the poles of male and female, as opposed to off this spectrum entirely.

Agender

1. A gender identity meaning without gender. 

Bi-gender

1. Someone who identifies as both male and female, not (I believe) at the same time, but who is in a fluid state that moves from one pole to the other.

Genderfluid

1. Someone whose gender identity is fluid and moves along the spectrum.

Cisgender

1. Not trans. Sex assigned at birth and gender identity match up just fine.

While we're at it, a few words for sexual orientations that still get confusing.

Bisexual

1. Someone attracted to men and to women.
2. Someone attracted to multiple genders.

Pansexual

1. Someone attracted to people of all genders.
2. Someone who experiences attraction as to people rather than to their gender. 

The difference is still hotly argued over, and the safest thing to do is ask people which word they use.

Asexual (Ace)

1. Someone who does not experience sexual attraction to anyone. Does not directly correlate with no sex drive or unwillingness to have sex--everyone's different.

Greysexual

1. Someone with sexual attraction between completely asexual and completely not asexual.

Demisexual

1. Someone who only experiences sexual attraction to people with whom they already have a close bond.

Asexual spectrum (A-spectrum)

1. Just what it sounds like, the spectrum of sexual attraction including asexual, greysexual, demisexual, and anything in between.

Allosexual

1. I think this one means not asexual in the same way cisgender means not trans.

And let's not forget romantic orientation! This is the ability to be romantically attracted toward people. It often, but not always, lines up with the sexual orientation. I've heard people use aromantic (not romantically attracted toward anyone) and panromantic (capable of being romantically attracted to anyone) most frequently, but I see no reason why people can't keep on combining prefixes with suffixes and use homoromantic, heteroromantic, and biromantic.

I often think of graphing the interactions of all of these--sexual orientation, romantic orientation, a-spectrum, gender identity, biological makeup, gender expression--and quickly realize I'm out of axes. Especially if I want to allow for change over time. The most axes I've ever seen is five over on www.gapminder.org, but one of them kind of has to be time. Not that I can actually use the software--though with enough time, it doesn't look hard to recreate.