| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Tolerance |
Usually meant as a liberal attitude toward those whose race, religion, nationality, etc. is different from oneâ??s own. Since it has the connotation of â??put up withâ??, today the term acceptance is preferred. That is, through anti-racism and equity work we aim to counter intolerance, but to achieve acceptance for all.
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| Transgender |
(sometimes shortened to trans) people are those whose psychological self ("gender identity") differs from the social expectations for the physical sex they were born with. To understand this, one must understand the difference between biological sex, which is one's body (genitals, chromosomes), and social gender, which refers to levels of masculinity and femininity. Often, society conflates sex and gender, viewing them as the same thing but they are not.
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| Transphobia |
Fear or hatred of transgender people; transphobia is manifested in a number of ways, including violence, harassment and discrimination.
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| Transsexual |
Transsexual refers to a person who experiences a mismatch of the sex they were born as and the sex they identify as. He or she sometimes undergoes medical treatment to change their physical sex to match their sex identity through hormone treatments and/or surgically. Not all transsexuals can have or desire surgery
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| Two-spirited |
Term adopted by contemporary North American Aboriginal peoples to refer to those who embody both the male and female spirit. The term is inclusive and can refer to both sexual orientation and/or gender identity or expression. Therefore, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and heterosexual trans-people may all refer to themselves as two-spirited. Terms such as "berdache" have a colonial origin, and "gay" and "lesbian" are, to many, Eurocentric and culturally irrelevant to Aboriginal two-spirited people.
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