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Although most gay-related psychosocial terms are self-explanatory, several, which we briefly define here, are somewhat confusing. If you're unclear about others and think we ought to include them, please email us and we will consider adding them.
- Gender identity: A person's sense of being male or female.
- Social gender role: Culturally-based standards of behavior for males and females.
- Sexual orientation: A person's inward and enduring sense of erotic desire. Includes instinctive attractions, feelings, thoughts and desires for sexual activity with either or both genders.
- Sexual behavior: A person's outward sexual activity. Differs from sexual orientation, which involves inner feelings of attraction and desire. Individuals often engage in sexual behavior that does not correspond to their sexual orientation.
- Sexual identity: The sex-role category such as homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual that individuals ascribe to themselves based on sexual orientation and sexual behavior.
- Homophobia: Fear or aversion to homosexuals and their lifestyle and culture. Coined in the early 1970s, the term signaled a pivotal shift in social attitude from an emphasis on the supposed psychopathology of homosexuals to an investigation of society's negative assumptions.
- Heterosexism: Belief in the inherent superiority of heterosexuality as well as the power to perpetuate and sanction prejudice against homosexuals. Heterosexism is viewed as a cultural rather than individual phenomenon and includes the exclusion or rendering invisible of homosexuals and the assumption that all people are heterosexual.
- Coming out: A process whereby individuals identify themselves as members of a sexual-minority category such as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered and begin to share this identity with others.
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