Podcast intro:

Welcome to the InFluency podcast. I’m Hadar and this is episode number 230. Today we are going to talk about LGBTQ+ pride.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the InFluency podcast. Welcome back, if this is not your first time. I hope you are having a beautiful, beautiful day. When we are releasing this episode, it is June, actually the end of June, closer to the end of June. And June is pride month, apart from it being the exact middle of the year. Which, by the way, can you believe it has already been six months since the beginning of the year? I don’t know about you, but to me it was super quick.

So anyway, it is June and it is pride month. And I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity and talk about terms that you might be hearing a lot, and maybe you don’t know exactly the different terms in English. So, I wanted to talk about it here. I think it’s important. I think it’s important to understand, I think it’s important to know how to talk about it. You know, equality starts with the language. And this podcast is all about language. So let’s tune into today’s episode. Thank you so much for being here. And I hope you enjoy it.

Video transcript:

Hey everyone. It’s Hadar. Thank you so much for joining me. The month of June, which is when this video is released, is pride month, where the world’s LGBTQ+ communities come together and celebrate the freedom to be themselves. LGBTQ+ pride is the promotion of the self affirmation, dignity, equality, and increased visibility of people who identify themselves with this community. And why pride? As opposed to shame and social stigma.

LGBTQ+ is an acronym, meaning Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer or Questioning, and the ‘+’ stands for other specific sexual or gender minorities. We’ll talk about what goes into that in just a minute. But before that, I’d like to share relevant terminology that might be helpful.

First, biological sex. Biological sex is assigned at birth, based on anatomy, chromosomes, or hormones. And there we have male and female. We also have gender identity. It’s really how you feel inside. And that’s usually when we use man or woman. Sexual orientation is basically who you like, who you are attracted to. And here we have heterosexual or homosexual. We can also have bisexual.

A cisgender is a person whose gender identity corresponds with their birth sex. So for example, a person who identifies as a man and whose biological sex is male is a cisgender man. Now, the cisgender man could be heterosexual, could be homosexual still because he identifies as man, and he was born as a male, then he would be considered a cisgender man. Same goes for a cisgender woman.

So from here, let’s talk about the LGBTQ acronym. L stands for lesbian. A lesbian is a female who experiences romantic love or sexual attraction to other females. G (LGBTQ) – G stands for gay. Now, gay has two meanings. The narrow meaning: the narrow meaning means a male who experiences romantic love or sexual attraction to other males. But we also have a broader meaning for the word gay, which means a male or a female who experiences romantic love or sexual attraction to people of their own sex.

B is bisexual. Bisexual is attraction to more than one gender. So it could be a man or a woman who is attracted to both men and women. T stands for transgender. Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity differs from what is typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. And here we can have a trans woman and a trans man.

Now, it’s not the same. Transgender is not necessarily the same thing as transsexual, which is a transgender person who desires to also align their body with their sexual and gender identity. Which generally includes medical procedures. Q stands for queer. Queer is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities that are not heterosexual or cisgender.

Now, the letter Q can also refer to questioning – the questioning of one’s gender, sexual identity, sexual orientation, or all three – is a process of exploration by people who may be unsure, still exploring and concerned about applying a social label to themselves for various reasons.

So, all of the things that we talked about are labels. But remember that all of this is a spectrum. And some people may find themselves on different places on the spectrum or might be moving from one place to another. And this is why Q helps them identify themselves without putting a specific label on who they are, how they identify themselves, and who they’re attracted to.

Now, listen, the most important thing is to be respectful and use the terms that each person prefers. So we talked about LGBTQ, but there’s also the plus (+). The plus stands for other communities and gender identities. For example: pansexual, asexual, intersex, androgynous, non-binary, genderqueer, and more.

So, if you want to educate yourself and learn more about those communities and gender identities, I’m going to link more information in the description below. I hope this video helped you understand better some of the terms we discussed. I’m sure you were exposed to a lot of these terms. And sometimes you have to make sense of all of it because there’s a lot. And sometimes, if you don’t learn it properly, it’s not always clear. So, that’s it.

And to all my LGBTQ+ community members and allies, I wish you a happy pride month. Love is love. Have a beautiful rest of the day. I love you all. And I’ll see you next week in the next video.