Glossary of Anti-Oppression Definitions
Ally: A person who supports marginalized, silenced, or less privileged groups without actually being a member of those groups. This includes educating oneself and others, providing support to individuals, and challenging oppressive remarks, behaviors, policies, and institutional structures. This person will often directly confront and challenge systems of oppression.
Anti-Racism: More than an intellectual opposition to the principles of racial supremacy, it is the recognition of racism as part of institutional structures and the struggle to stop power and gain based on racism and/or race bigotry
Anti-Semitism: Prejudice and/or discrimination, either personally or institutionally, against Semitic people (specifically Jews). This can be based on hated against Jews because of their religious beliefs, their perceived group mentality, and sometimes on the erroneous belief that Jews are a "race".
Archetype: An original model or type after which other similar things are patterned; a prototype. Archetypes such as "gold-digger", "femme-fatale," "the whore" or "Virgin Mary" have been used to describe women.
Assimilation: the process whereby newcomers to society are encouraged to give up their cultural way of life and accommodate as quickly as possible to values and culture of the host society. It is an ethnocentric, one-way process of cultural exchange, in that only the newcomer is expected to adapt, with the implied promise that group acceptance will be the social reward.
Assigned Sex: The sex (female, male, intersex) assigned at birth based in the appearance of genitalia.
Biphobia: The fear or hatred of bisexual people. This term addresses the ways that prejudice against bisexuals differs from prejudice against other queer people. There is often biphobia in gay, lesbian, and trans communities, as well as straight communities.
Bisexual/Bi: Someone who is or is capable of being attracted to members of both sexes or genders as prescribed by the binary gender system. Many people avoid this term because of its implication that there are only two sexes/genders to be sexually attracted to and thus reinforces the binary gender system.
Cisgender: Cisgender is a concept in queer studies that labels persons who are not transgendered as something other than simply "normal." That is, it provides a name for a gender identity or performance in a gender role that society considers to match, or be appropriate for one's assigned sex.
Class: A class consists of a large group of people who occupy a similar economic position in the wider society based on income, wealth, property ownership, education, skills, or authority in the economic sphere. Class affects people not only on an economic level, but also on an emotional level.
Classism: Prejudice and/or discrimination, either personally or institutionally, against people because of their real or perceived economic status or background.
Feminism: A term commonly and quite indiscriminately used. Some of the currently used definitions are: (a) a doctrine advocating social and political rights for women equal to those of men; (b) an organized movement for the attainment of these rights; (c) the assertion of the claims of women as a group and the body of theory women have created; (d) belief in the necessity of large-scale social change in order to increase the power of women.
Fluid Identity: The concept that identity is not rigid but can and does change. This idea is often used in terms of gender, sexuality, and race, as well as other factors of identity. This concept is fundamentally contrary to binary systems. A person who feels her/his identity is fluid often believes that rigid categories are oppressive and incapable of accurately describing her/his experience and identities.
FtM/MtF: Two more genders. Also abbreviations used to refer to specific members of the trans community. FtM or F2M, stands for female-to-male, as in moving from the female pole of the spectrum to the male. MtF, or M2F, then, refers to people moving from the male location to the female. FtM is sometimes, though not always, synonymous with transman. Similarly, one who identifies as MtF might also identify as a transwoman.
Gay: Someone who is primarily and/or exclusively attracted to members of their own sex or gender. In certain contexts, this term is used to refer only to those who identify as men.
Gender: A. In its most accepted definition, gender refers to the social roles (e.g., men, women) and characteristics that develop through cultural interpretations of biological or anatomical sex. In this definition, sex is seen as natural, and gender as the social construction that stems from readings of sex. B. A societal construct referring to roles, characteristics, behaviors, appearances, and identities that develop through cultural interpretations of genetic sex. one's sense of being woman, man, girl, boy, androgynous, or something else entirely, or of being perceived as woman, man, etc.
Gender Binary/Gender Dualism: A system that defines and make room for two and only two distinct, natural, and opposite genders (i.e., male and female). These two genders are defined in opposition to each other, such that masculinity and femininity are seen as mutually exclusive. In this system, there is no room for any ambiguity or intermingling of gender traits.
Gender Identity: The gender with which a person identifies, or is identified. This can be different from a person's assigned gender, which is determined as birth to be male or female or manipulated to resemble one or the other. It is important to note that gender identity, biological sex, and sexuality are not necessarily linked.
Gender Oppression: Oppression of women and transgendered people because of the gender binary system, gender roles and norms. Privileges cisgendered men, people who appear to be men, and people raised as men. Sexism and transphobia are two forms of gender oppression.
Genderqueer: A person who redefines or plays with gender norms, or who refuses the gender binary altogether. A label for people who bend/break the rules of gender and blur the boundaries.
Gender Roles: Cultural norms dictating how "men" and "women" are supposed to behave and look in a society. Expects people to have certain personality characteristics, act, and dress a certain way based on their assigned sex. Labels these behaviors as either masculine or feminine.
Heterosexism: The concept that heterosexuality and only heterosexuality is natural, normal, superior, and required. This can refer to any institution or belief system that excludes or makes invisible questioning, lesbian, non-labeling, bisexual, transgender, queer, and gay people, as well as any system that constructs queer sexualities as deviant, wrong, or immoral. Heterosexism is deeply rooted in the culture and institutions in our society. Homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia all stem from and are supported by heterosexism. Heterosexism enforces and is enforced by a binary gender system. Binaries similarly enforce racism and other systems of power.
Heterosexual: A person who is primarily and/or exclusively attracted to members of a gender or sex which is seen to be "opposite" or other than the one with which they identify or are identified.
Homosexual: A person who is primarily and/or exclusively attracted to members of what they identify as their own sex or gender. Because the term can have connotations of disease and abnormality, some people do not like to identify as homosexual. Others do not feel that it accurately defines their chosen identity.
Homophobia: The fear or hatred of gays, lesbians, or queer-identified people in general. This can be manifested as an intense dislike or rejection of such people, or violent actions against them.
Intersections of Oppression: These occur when an individual is defined by more than one oppressed element of their identity. Often these intersections are used to further oppress an individual; this manifests frequently in situations where an individual is forced to choose one oppressed element of their identity over another for political reasons.
Intersex: An anatomical variation from typical understandings of male and female genetics. The physical manifestation, at birth, of genetic or endocrinological differences from the cultural norm. Also a group of medical conditions that challenge standard sex designations, proving that sex, like gender, is a social construct. Intersex and transgender folks share some overlapping experiences and perspectives, but the terms are not synonymous, and the issues are not the same. "Intersex" or "intersexual" is used today in favor of the term "hermaphrodite".
LGBTQ: An identity group consisting of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer self-identifying individuals.
Lesbian: One who identifies as a woman who is primarily and/or exclusively attracted to others who identify as women.
Minority Group: any group that is socially defined as different from the dominant group in society, is at a power disadvantage, receives less than its proportionate share of scare resources due to its power disadvantage, and finds its differential treatment justified in terms of socially define differences.
Oppression: 1. Prejudice and power. 2. A systematic social phenomenon based on the difference between social groups that involves ideological domination, institutional control, and the promulgation of the oppressor group's ideology, logic system and culture on the oppressed group. The result is the exploitation of one social group by another for its own benefit, real or imagined.
Patriarchy: In its narrow meaning, patriarchy refers to the system, historically derived from Greek and Roman law, in which the male head of the household had absolute legal and economic power over his dependent female and male family members. Patriarchy in its wider definition means the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general. It implies that men hold power in all the important institutions of society and that women are deprived of access to such power. It does not imply that women are either totally powerless or totally deprived of rights, influence, and resources.
Power: The ability to exercise control. Having access to systems and resources as legitimated by individuals and societal institutions.
Prejudice: A positive or negative attitude toward a person or group, formed without just grounds or sufficient knowledge--will not be likely to change in spite of new evidence or contrary argument.
Privilege: An "unearned advantage" that works to "to systematically over empower certain groups" in society/the world. Privilege assigns dominance simply based on gender, race, sexuality, and nationality, among other factors of identity. Privilege is "an invisible package of unearned assets" that members of privileged groups "can count on cashing in every day," but about which they "are meant to remain oblivious."
Queer: An umbrella identity term encompassing lesbians, questioning people, gay men, bisexuals, non-labeling people, transgendered folks, and anyone else who does not strictly identify as heterosexual. "Queer" originated as a derogatory word. Currently, it is being reclaimed by some people and used as a statement of empowerment. Some people identify as queer to distance themselves from the rigid categorizations of "straight" and "gay". Some transgendered, lesbian, gay, questioning, non-labeling, and bisexual people, however, reject the use of this term due its connotations of deviance and its tendency to gloss over and sometimes deny the differences between these groups.
Race: A specious classification of human beings created by white Europeans. Race has no genetic or scientific foundation. However it assigns human worth and social status using "white" as the model of humanity for the purpose of establishing and maintaining racism, power and privilege. Thus, race is socially constructed but has real impacts on people's everyday lives.
Racism: Racism= Race prejudice+ Power. Racial and cultural prejudice and discrimination, supported intentionally or unintentionally by institutional power and authority, used to the advantage of one race and the disadvantage of other races. The critical element that differentiates racism from prejudice and discrimination is the use of institutional power and authority to support prejudices and enforce discriminatory behaviors in systemic ways with far-reaching outcomes and effects.
Religious Oppression: The subordination, marginalization and persecution of an individual or group based on their religious or non-religious belief and/or practices. Occurring on the individual, cultural/societal, and institutional levels, religious oppression stems from opposing dualistic beliefs around religion, as well as certain teachings and traditions. Much like ethnocentrism, the dominant religious group of the society becomes engrained in its customs and traditions including those that are secular/non-religious (e.g. court system, swearing on the Christian Bible).
Sexism: Sexism = Prejudice+ Power against women and people perceived as female. Sexism is the outward manifestation of an inward system of values deliberately designed to structure privilege by means of an objective, differential, and unequal treatment of women, for the purpose of social advantage over scarce resources. This values system gives rise to an ideology of supremacy, which justifies power of position by placing a negative meaning and value on perceived or actual biological/cultural differences.
Sexual Orientation, Sexual Preference, Sexual Object Choice: These terms refer to categories of sexuality, as indicated by the object of one's sexual desire (e.g., members of the "opposite sex/gender, member of any gender, etc.). "Sexual orientation" can imply biological roots of sexual attraction, whereas "sexual preference" and "sexual object choice" may connote an element of choice. Some people who see all these terms as loaded prefer the more general term "sexuality".
Sexuality: This term can be used as a general term to refer to sexual orientation, sexual object choice, or sexual preference. It can also be used to describe the nature of one's desire, e.g., SM, monogamy, polyamory, etc.
Transgender: This term has many definitions. It is frequently used as an umbrella term to refer to all people who deviate from their assigned gender or the binary gender system, including intersex people, transsexuals, cross-dressers, transvestites, gender queers, drag kings, drag queens, two-spirit people, and others. Some transgendered people feel they exist not within one of the two standard gender categories, but rather somewhere between, beyond, or outside of those two genders. The term can also be applied exclusively to people who live primarily as the gender "opposite" to that which they were assigned at birth. These people may sometimes prefer the term "transsexual".
Transsexual: A person who has altered or intends to alter their anatomy, either through surgery, hormones, or other means, to better match their chosen gender identity. As a medical term, transsexual was coined in the 1950s to refer to individuals who desire not only to live as another gender, but also to change their bodies through surgery to reflect the gender that often feels more "natural" or authentic. This group of people is often divided into pre-operative, post-op, and non-op transsexuals. Due to the high cost, not all transsexuals can have genital surgery. Others do not feel that surgery is necessary, but still maintain a transsexual identity.
Transphobia: The fear or hatred of transgendered and transsexual people. Like biphobia, this term was created to call attention tot he ways that prejudice against trans people differs from prejudice against other queer people. There is often transphobia in gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities, as well as straight communities.
Womanism: The word womanism was adapted from author Alice Walker. In her book In Search of Our Mother's Garden: Womanist Prose, Walker used the word to describe the perspective and experiences of "women of color". The need for this term arose from the early feminist movements that were led specifically by white women who advocated social changes such as woman's suffrage. The feminist movement focused largely on oppressions based on sexism. But this movement, largely a white middle-class movement, ignored oppression based on racism and classism. It was at this point that Womanists pointed out that black women experienced a different and more intense kind of oppression than white women.