Glossary of Terms
Language matters! Please see this inconclusive list of terms that each member of our community can integrate into their vocabulary as we all work together to foster inclusion on our campus.
- Ally: Someone who supports a group other than one’s own (in terms of multiple identities such as race, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, etc.). An ally acknowledges oppression and actively commits to reducing their own complicity, investing in strengthening their own knowledge and awareness of oppression.
- Antiracism: The policy or practice of opposing racism and promoting racial tolerance.
- Asexuality: Generally characterized by not feeling sexual attraction or a desire for partnered sexuality. Asexuality is distinct from celibacy, which is the deliberate abstention from sexual activity.
- Bias: A form of prejudice that results from our tendency and needs to classify individuals into categories.
- Bigotry: Obstinate devotion to one’s own opinions and prejudices and intolerance toward other diverse social groups.
- Biphobia: fear or hatred of people who are bisexual, pansexual, or omnisexual.
- Bisexual: A person whose primary sexual and affectional orientation is toward people of the same and other genders, or towards people regardless of their gender
- Cisgender: The prefix cis- means "on this side of" or "not across." A term used to call attention to the privilege of people who are not transgender.
- Color Blind: The belief that everyone should be treated “equally” without respect to societal, economic, historical, racial or other difference. No differences are seen or acknowledged; everyone is the same.
- Coming Out: Refers to voluntarily making public one's sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
- Cultural Appropriation: The non-consensual/misappropriation use of cultural elements for commodification or profit purposes – including symbols, art, language, customs, etc. — often without understanding, acknowledgment, or respect for its value in the original culture.
- DACA: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. A kind of administrative relief from deportation. Its purpose is to protect eligible immigrant youth who came to the United States when they were children from deportation. DACA gives young undocumented immigrants: 1) protection from deportation, and 2) a work permit. The program expires after two years, subject to renewal.
- Decolonize: The active and intentional process of unlearning values, beliefs, and conceptions that have caused physical, emotional, or mental harm to people through colonization. It requires a recognition of systems of oppression.
- Disability: Physical or mental impairment that affects a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.
- Diversity: Socially, it refers to the wide range of identities. A broad includes race, ethnicity, gender, age, national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education, marital status, language, veteran status, physical appearance, etc. It also involves different ideas, perspectives, and values.
- Discrimination: The unequal treatment of members of various groups, based on conscious or unconscious prejudice, which favor one group over others on differences of race, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, physical ability, religion, language, age, national identity, religion, and other categories.
- Equity: The fair treatment, access, opportunity and advancement for all people, while at the same time striving to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented the full participation of some groups. The principle of equity acknowledges that there are historically underserved and underrepresented populations and that fairness regarding these unbalanced conditions is needed to assist in the provision of adequate opportunities to all groups.
- Gay: A sexual orientation toward people of the same gender.
- Gender: A social construct used to classify a person as a man, woman, or some other identity. Fundamentally different from the sex one is assigned at birth; a set of social, psychological and emotional traits, often influenced by societal expectations
- Gender Expression: How one expresses oneself, in terms of dress, mannerisms and/or behaviors that society characterizes as "masculine" or "feminine."
- Gender-neutral/Gender-inclusive Pronoun: A gender neutral or gender inclusive pronoun is a pronoun which does not associate a gender with the individual who is being discussed.
- Genderqueer: A person whose gender identity and/or gender expression falls outside of the dominant societal norm for their assigned sex, is beyond genders, or is some combination of them.
- Harassment: The use of comments or actions that can be offensive, embarrassing, humiliating, demeaning, and unwelcome.
- Heterosexism: The assumption that all people are or should be heterosexual. Heterosexism excludes the needs, concerns, and life experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer people while it gives advantages to heterosexual people. It is often a subtle form of oppression, which reinforces realities of silence and invisibility.
- Heterosexuality: A sexual orientation in which a person feels physically and emotionally attracted to people of a gender other than their own.
- Homophobia: The irrational hatred and fear of LGBTQIA+ people. Homophobia includes prejudice, discrimination, harassment, and acts of violence brought on by fear and hatred. It occurs on personal, institutional, and societal levels.
- Homosexual/Homosexuality: An outdated term to describe a sexual orientation in which a person feels physically and emotionally attracted to people of the same gender.
- Internalized homophobia: The fear and self-hate of one’s own LGBBTQIA identity, that occurs for many individuals who have learned negative ideas about LGBTQIA+ people throughout childhood. One form of internalized oppression is the acceptance of the myths and stereotypes applied to the oppressed group.
- Intersex: People who, without medical intervention, develop primary or secondary sex characteristics that do not fit “neatly” into society's definitions of male or female. Many visibly intersex people are mutilated in infancy and early childhood by doctors to make the individual’s sex characteristics conform to society’s idea of what normal bodies should look like. Intersex people are relatively common, although society's denial of their existence has allowed very little room for intersex issues to be discussed publicly.
- Implicit Bias: Negative associations expressed automatically that people unknowingly hold and that hat affect our understanding, actions, and decisions; also known as unconscious or hidden bias.
- Inclusion: The act of creating environments in which any individual or group can be and feel welcomed, respected, supported and valued as a fully participating member. An inclusive and welcoming climate embraces differences and offers respect in words and actions for all people.
- Institutional Racism: Institutional racism refers specifically to the ways in which institutional policies and practices create different outcomes and opportunities for different groups based on racial discrimination.
- Intersectionality: A social construct that recognized the fluid diversity of identities that a person can hold such as gender, race, class, religion, professional status, marital status, socioeconomic status, etc.
- “Isms”: A way of describing any attitude, action or institutional structure that subordinates (oppresses) a person or group because of their target group. For example, color (racism), gender (sexism), economic status (classism), older age (ageism), religion (e.g., anti-Semitism), sexual orientation (heterosexism), language/immigrant status (xenophobism), etc.
- LGBTQIA: An inclusive term for those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual.
- Lesbian: A woman whose primary sexual orientation is toward people of the same gender.
- Microaggression: The verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, insults, or belittlement, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon discriminatory belief systems.
- Multicultural Competency: A process of embracing diversity and learning about people from other cultural backgrounds. The key element to becoming more culturally competent is respect for the ways that others live in and organize the world, and an openness to learn from them.
- Nonbinary: A gender identity that embraces full universe of expressions and ways of being that resonate with an individual. It may be an active resistance to binary gender expectations and/or an intentional creation of new unbounded ideas of self within the world.
- Oppression: The systemic and pervasive nature of social inequality woven throughout social institutions as well as embedded within individual consciousness. Oppression fuses institutional and systemic discrimination, personal bias, bigotry and social prejudice in a complex web of relationships and structures.
- Pansexual/Omnisexual: Terms used to describe people who have romantic, sexual or affectional desire for people of all genders and sexes.
- Patriarchy: Actions and beliefs that prioritizes masculinity. Patriarchy is practiced systemically in the ways and methods through which power is distributed in society (jobs and positions of power given to men in government, policy, criminal justice, etc.) while also influencing how we interact with one another interpersonally (gender expectations, sexual dynamics, space taking, etc.).
- People of Color: A collective term for men and women of Asian, African, Latin and Native American backgrounds; as opposed to the collective “White”.
- Prejudice: an inclination or preference, especially one that interferes with impartial judgment and can be rooted in stereotypes that deny the right of individual members of certain groups to be recognized and treated as individuals with individual characteristics.
- Privilege: Exclusive access or availability to material and immaterial resources based on the membership to a dominant social group.
- Queer: An umbrella term that can refer to anyone who transgresses society’s view of gender or sexuality. The definitional indeterminacy of the word Queer, its elasticity, is one of its constituent characteristics: “A zone of possibilities.”
- Race: A social construct that artificially divides people into distinct groups based on characteristics such as physical appearance (particularly color), ancestral heritage, cultural affiliation, cultural history, ethnic classification, and the social, economic and political needs of a society at a given period of time
- Safe Space: Refers to an environment in which everyone feels comfortable in expressing themselves and participating fully, without fear of attack, ridicule or denial of experience.
- Sex: a categorization based on the appearance of the genitalia at birth.
- Sexism: Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.
- Sexuality: The components of a person that include their biological sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, sexual practices, etc.
- Sexual Orientation: An enduring emotional, romantic, or sexual attraction. Sexual orientation is fluid. Asexuality is also considered a sexual orientation (See above definition of asexuality)
- Social Justice: Social justice constitutes a form of activism, based on principles of equity and inclusion that encompasses a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure. Social justice involves social actors who have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others and society as a whole.
- System of Oppression: Conscious and unconscious, non-random, and organized harassment, discrimination, exploitation, discrimination, prejudice and other forms of unequal treatment that impact different groups.
- Stereotype: A form of generalization rooted in blanket beliefs and false assumptions, a product of processes of categorization that can result in a prejudiced attitude, uncritical judgment, and intentional or unintentional discrimination. Stereotypes are typically negative, based on little information that does not recognize individualism and personal agency.
- Tokenism: Presence without meaningful participation. For example, a superficial invitation for the participation of members of a certain socially oppressed group, who are expected to speak for the whole group without giving this person a real opportunity to speak for her/himself.
- Transphobia: The fear or hatred of transgender people or people who do not meet society’s gender role expectations.
- Transgender: Used most often as an umbrella term, some commonly held definitions: 1. Someone whose gender identity or expression does not fit (dominant-group social constructs of) assigned birth sex and gender. 2. A gender outside of the man/woman binary. 3. Having no gender or multiple genders.
- White Supremacy: A power system structured and maintained by persons who classify themselves as white, whether consciously or subconsciously determined; and who feel superior to those of other racial/ethnic identities.
- Xenophobia: dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries.